Baccalieu Trail Traditional Skills Inventory Facebook Live Event

Do you know an expert berry-picker? The best local net mender or sheep shearer? Who in your community hooks mats or makes furniture? We want to know!

Terrence Howell teaching a print making course at his studio in Grates Cove, NL. Photo by Kathi Penney-Stacey

Today, Dale Jarvis is hopping on Facebook Live to talk about the Baccalieu Trail Traditional Skills Inventory. He'll let you know more information about the project and let you know how you can get involved!

Tune in at 10am to find out more!

The Baccalieu Traditional Skills Inventory Project Launch

Do you know an expert berry-picker? The best local net mender or sheep shearer? Who in your community hooks mats or makes furniture? We want to know!

Terrence Howell teaching a print making course at his studio in Grates Cove, NL. Photo by Kathi Penney-Stacey

We are looking to identify people in the Baccalieu Trail region who are the ‘hidden gems’ of Newfoundland traditions: storytellers, musicians, berry-pickers, hooked mat makers, carvers, knitters, guides, craft producers, and people who know traditional recipes, dances, or other local knowledge. 

The purpose of the project is to build a publicly accessible inventory of tradition bearers which will serve as a local resource to match people who have valuable traditional skills with tourism operators in the region. The inventory project is part of Memorial University’s Thriving Regions Partnership Process, which supports research partnerships that help promote thriving social and economic regions.

We are eager to learn more about a variety of traditional skills in the area. We are curious about skills like net making and mending, pottery making, furniture making, tinsmithing, crocheting, tatting, and running birch brooms, but all kinds of skills or crafts are of interest.

We will be launching the project on Wednesday, May 20th at 10am NDT with a Facebook Live event on the Heritage NL facebook page. Join Dale Jarvis as he talks about the importance of the project and how to get involved.

We've created a brief online survey to help identify these hidden gems. Do you practice a traditional skill along the Baccalieu Trail? Does someone you know? Please fill out our survey or contact us at research@heritagenl.ca.

The Sourdough Revolution with Dee Payne - part of our ongoing Covid-19 NL Oral History project

As part of the ongoing Covid-19 NL Oral History project, folklorist Dale Jarvis sits down for a virtual chat with Dee Payne, admin of the Newfoundland/Labrador Sourdough Revolution Facebook group, taking a deep dive into the world of sourdough starters and bread-making during the Covid-19 pandemic.

Learn more about the group here:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/243414046963940/

Double Your Bubble with Mike Hickey - documenting social interaction during #COVID19

Here in Newfoundland we’ve been lucky enough to reach a stage of the COVID-19 lockdown where we’re now allowed to “Double Bubble”, choose another household to socialize and interact with as we move forward, learning to live with Covid-19.

In this interview, filmmaker Mike Hickey chats with folklorist Dale Jarvis about his new "Double Your Bubble" podcast, how it got started, the kinds of stories he's been collecting, and some tips for people new to the world of podcasting/recording about where they might start.

You can find the "Double Your Bubble" podcast at https://anchor.fm/hickeycommamike or follow Mike on Twitter @hickeycommamike





Do you have a suggestion for someone we should interview as part of the NL Covid-19 Oral History Project? Email us at covid19@heritagenl.ca

Hey NL Students! We want your family stories about the #Covid19 pandemic!

Photo by cottonbro from Pexels

Covid-19 NL Oral History Project with Heritage NL and The Rooms

We want your family stories about what is happening in Newfoundland and Labrador during the Covid-19 pandemic! Here are some sample questions to get you started on your home oral history interview. You can answer these yourself, or sit down with a family member and interview them. Don’t forget to start your interview by spelling out your full name, and including the date of the interview.   You can record your interview in any format (audio or video) on your smartphone or digital device, and email it to covid19@heritagenl.ca.  If it is a large file, you can use the free www.wetransfer.com website to send it to the same email address, or post it on YouTube and send us the link.

All submissions welcome, including songs, recitations, poetry, or music!

Sample Questions

• Can you describe the community where you live?
• When did you first learn about the coronavirus? What were your initial reactions?
• How did your community respond to the virus? What closures, restrictions, or safeguards were put in place?
• Describe any events you witnessed that express your or your community’s response to the virus.
• How are you personally responding to the virus? What has changed in your daily routine?
• How has your family been impacted by the Covid-19 pandemic?
• How are you staying in touch with family and friends?
• What will you remember most about this time in our lives?
• Who is in your Double Bubble, and why?

Feel free to make up your own questions!

What will happen to my audio/video file?

Once you contact us, we will ask you to fill out this brief, confidential consent form so that we can add your story to a permanent collection on Memorial University’s Digital Archives Initiative, where it can be seen and accessed for educational and non-commercial use only, and where it may be used as part of a future physical or online exhibit at The Rooms about the Covid-19 pandemic. Your story will become part of the historical record! If at some point you want your story taken down from the website, we can always remove your records from the archive.

• Download this page as a pdf here. 

For more information, contact:

Dale Jarvis, Heritage NL  dale@heritagenl.ca
@dalejarvis on Twitter   www.hfnl.ca 

Wicker work and woven furniture in Newfoundland - Have you seen a chair like this?

I've been scanning some photos from North River and Halls Town in Conception Bay, as part of an ongoing project we have there. If you are on Facebook,  you can look at all those photos in the North River Halls Town Memories group.

One of the photos is scanned from a slide from the Baccalieu Trail Heritage Corporation, circa 1994. I have no information for it, but am assuming it came out of a house in North River, and was photographed when the Heritage Corp was doing heritage inventory work there in the 1990s. It shows a wicker rocking chair, painted white. I don't know if it was made locally or imported, but I'd love to have more information on it, or pieces like it.

Back in 2012, I photographed the woven bassinet below, owned by the Barnable family. It was purchased in 1959, and was made as part of a craft training program run by the Canadian National Institute for the Blind (CNIB). You can see more on that here.

If you have any pieces of Newfoundland (or Labrador) made woven furniture or basketry, or if these spark a memory for you, email me at dale@heritagenl.ca or comment below.

Living Heritage Podcast Ep173 Collecting Covid with Maureen Peters (with video!)

Welcome to the  Covid-19 version of the Living Heritage Podcast! We've shifted the format a bit, and are recording on Zoom, which lets us bring you some video as well. We'll still be podcasting the audio on our Anchor.fm station so if you want to listen to just the audio, head over there and download it. But since you are here, enjoy the video version!
In this episode, Maureen Peters, Curator of History at The Rooms, St. John's, NL, chats with Dale Jarvis of Heritage NL about documenting the Covid-19 Pandemic in Newfoundland and Labrador. They chat about what The Rooms is collecting in terms of material culture, why it is important to collect this material now, looking back at polio and smallpox in the province, Corona beer facemasks, and crocheting a model of the human intestines! 

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Living Heritage is about people who are engaged in the heritage and culture sector, from museum
professionals and archivists, to tradition bearers and craftspeople - all those who keep history alive at the
community level. The show is a partnership between HeritageNL and CHMR Radio.
Theme music is Rythme Gitan by Latché Swing.

Living Heritage Podcast Ep172 Dr. Laura Sanchini of the Canadian Museum of History

Photo courtesy of Laura Sanchini

Dr. Laura Sanchini, the Curator of Craft, Design, and Popular Culture at the Canadian Museum of History, talks about her work and background as a folklorist. Laura has an M.A. and a Ph.D. in Folklore from Memorial University. Before she began her work at the Canadian Museum of History, Laura worked at the Canadian Museum of Immigration at Pier 21 and travelled all over the country conducting oral history interviews.

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The Living Heritage Podcast is about people who are engaged in the heritage and culture sector, from museum
professionals and archivists, to tradition bearers and craftspeople - all those who keep history alive at the
community level. The show is a partnership between HeritageNL and CHMR Radio.
Theme music is Rythme Gitan by Latché Swing.

Remembering Dr. Ivan "Bud" Green, Deer Lake. Do you have a memory of him?

A while back, I posted about the work we've started with the Town of Deer Lake to map out heritage assets (read that here).  One of the people of possible historic interest that was noted at our workshop was Dr. Ivan "Bud" Green. When we posted our note, Antony Berger sent us the following clips. Do you have a memory of Dr. Green? If so, post below!