Living Heritage Podcast Ep203 The Furniture Art of Henry William Winter

During the late 19th and early 20th century, Henry William Winter, an ambitious self-taught furniture maker in Clarke's Beach, Conception Bay, mass-produced furniture using simple hand tools and a few primitive machines. These included a foot-powered jig saw, a foot-operated lathe and a larger lathe designed to be driven manually or powered by a dog. His home stands today, beautifully restored by his family, as a Registered Heritage Structure. Recorded on October 4th, 2008, folklorist and storyteller Dale Gilbert Jarvis had a conversation with the grandson of this legendary furniture maker, William (Bill) Winter, and Newfoundland furniture expert Walter Peddle, about Henry William Winter's life and legacy.

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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.

Rural Routes Podcast: Along The Baccalieu Trail

 

This week, we are turning the podcast over to Bojan Furst at Rural Routes. In this episode, Bojan talks to Dale Jarvis, intangible cultural heritage officer for the province of Newfoundland and Labrador and research associate at the Folklore Department at Memorial University, and Natalie Dignam, a researcher and a broadcaster based in St. John's. We talked about intangible culture heritage along Baccalieu Trail in Newfoundland and how it can create tourism opportunities for the region. We also talked about community radio, Newfoundland ponies, traditional skills, and why we need to start paying attention to local knowledge.

https://soundcloud.com/ruralroutes/s3e12-along-the-baccalieu-trail

Rural Routes · S3E12-Along The Baccalieu Trail

Engaging Seniors in Heritage Projects - notes from Heritage NL's Intangible Cultural Heritage office

The current COVID-19 crisis is difficult for seniors on many fronts.  In addition to creating serious health risks, it has further isolated many.  Heritage NL has been working with seniors for a number of years to capture their stories and offer validation of their lives and experiences.  While engaging seniors in a time of social isolation is challenging, telephone conversations and video interviews can serve as a useful way to connect.

As a guiding principle, Newfoundland and Labrador’s provincial Intangible Cultural Heritage strategy recognises that incorporating multiple voices, including those of seniors, is important in all work relating to ICH. ICH is kept alive and is relevant to a culture when it is regularly practised and learned within communities and between generations. In many instances, elders in our communities are the bearers of many of our traditions and customs and have an important role in setting priorities for community-based research and being valuable information sources for documenting traditional knowledge. We strive to celebrate the voices of seniors by keeping them involved in the various levels and types of work we do and by documenting their knowledge in the process.

In 2016, Heritage NL launched its Collective Memories Project - an initiative which invites seniors to record their stories and memories for archiving and sharing. It was established as a joint project of Heritage NL, the Provincial Advisory Council on Aging and Seniors, the Interdepartmental Working Group on Aging and Seniors, and the Department of Seniors Wellness and Social Development.  

The Collective Memories Project is an umbrella for a number of initiatives designed to create venues for community members to come together to share ideas, experiences, memories, and traditional knowledge. One of our tools is the “Memory Mug Up” program, initially developed by Dr. Martha McDonald at the Labrador Institute. As she describes it, “A mug-up is a snack that people have when they're in the woods,” and the idea behind the Memory Mug Up is easy to apply anywhere.

“One thing we wanted to do was community outreach,” McDonald says, “and so we thought it would be a good idea to just go visit people in their communities and talk to them about days gone by, a very simple idea.” The goal is to help participants share and preserve their stories: a personal story, a story about a family member, or a story about the community as a whole.

Often, the Memory Mug Up is the start of a longer conversation. Community storytelling sessions help identify tradition bearers and knowledge keepers. We record their names, and follow up with one-on-one oral history interviews. All of these are archived in partnership with a local university. Then, we develop online content, short digital storytelling videos, or community history booklets from some of these collected stories.  An important part of keeping stories alive is to make sure that collected materials get back out to the community, and ensuring people’s memories don’t languish on a shelf in an archive. One of the first booklets in our Collective Memories Series featured the experience of five City of St. John’s volunteers and their reflections and advice on volunteering in the community.

Stories of our elders are an important part of understanding our historic places.  The Historic Places Initiative defined heritage value as: “the aesthetic, historic, scientific, cultural, social or spiritual importance or significance for past, present or future generations.”  All of these are related to our collective memories, and the knowledge of those who came before us.  You can’t save historic places without also collecting the stories associated with them, so Heritage NL assists to make existing oral history collections more accessible to the general public, and can help communities start up new oral history projects to interview local seniors. 

Over the course of several years, we’ve come to realize that these projects benefit more than just us as a heritage organization.  Event organizers in particular stressed how beneficial the project was for the seniors of their community, and for community pride. Several people noted the importance of capturing seniors’ stories. A recurring theme was a call to continue to make sure seniors are involved in safeguarding their heritage.

Heritage projects that involve seniors in all parts of the process validate and recognize the contributions of seniors to our communities. They reduce isolation of seniors at risk, and support mental and emotional health and well-being. They also can support mentorship of younger people by their elders through intergenerational exchange.

For more information on how Heritage NL engages seniors in heritage work, email folklorist Dale Jarvis at dale@heritagenl.ca. To see publications resulting from this work go to:  https://heritagefoundation.ca/discover/publications-ich/

Volunteers collect shipyard memories as part of the Marystown Oral History Project.

Construction of the Marystown Shipyard circa 1965

Marystown, located on the Burin Peninsula, has a long history related to the ship building industry. Concerned that some of these stories might be lost, volunteer Patrick Baker has been working with community members to record interviews with local citizens.

To date, 12 of these interviews have been placed online as part of Memorial University's Digital Archives Initiative, where they are accessible to researchers, students, and anyone interested in Marystown's rich heritage.

You can browse the collection at:

https://collections.mun.ca/digital/collection/ich_en/search/searchterm/Marystown/field/subcol/mode/all/conn/and/cosuppress/

Interested in starting a similar project in your community? Email dale@heritagenl.ca 

Photo credit: The History of Shipbuilding in Marystown, NL

Living Heritage Podcast Ep202 Black Cat Cemetery Preservation

Black Cat Cemetery Preservation specializes in historic gravestone and monument conservation and restoration in Canada. Husband and wife team Robyn Lacy and Ian Petty, have a combined 20 years of experience in the heritage sector as archaeologists, gravestone conservators, and cultural heritage technicians. They have worked across Canada and the United States, as well as on the Isle of Man, recording gravestones and cemeteries, conducting archaeological surveys, mapping sites, and evaluating heritage structures and landscapes.

What's that strange image on the stone? Listen in to find out!

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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.

Salmon Fishing on the Quinton Premises

Historic image of a schooner in Red Cliff

The Quinton Premises was an important, central, place of business in Bonavista Bay from the mid 19th century until the late 20th century. In fact, in an interview with Hilda and Dorothy Quinton, who both married into the Quinton family and worked for the premises for many years, the women recall that people would come from all over to package their fish and purchase bulk supplies from the shop. In this interview, Hilda and Dorothy also talk about the salmon fishery on the premises - and how the business would ship fish across Eastern Canada and as far as New York.

The salmon fishery was not a small operation. Dorothy told us that at its peak, she remembers they packaged and shipped 100 boxes of salmon in a day - with each box weighing around 100lb. Preparing salmon is a different process from preparing cod, in part because salmon needed to be kept cold unlike cod - which doesn’t need to be cold once salted. Before refrigerators were invented, and before electricity was installed in Red Cliff, the best way to keep salmon cold was with an ice house. In the winter, men from the town of Red Cliff would cut ice from nearby Tickle Cove Pond and stored in sawdust in the ice house to keep it from melting. During the fishing season, men would go up to the shore of Labrador to catch salmon in a schooner. When the salmon arrived on the premises it would be prepared and packaged in the icehouse before being sent off to North Sydney, where it would be re-iced and shipped off to its final destination.

While they didn’t fish themselves, Dorothy and Hilda played their part in the fishery as well. When the fishermen came into town the population would temporarily grow, with many people staying at or near the Quinton Premises during their stay. In addition to their duties in the shop, Hilda, Dorothy, and other women on the property would make sure that all the workers had something to eat. In fact, both Hilda and Dorothy made sure to tell us that getting to eat fresh, fatty salmon was the best part of the fishery!

Living Heritage Podcast Ep201 Shetland History and Folklore with Dr Andrew Jennings

Lerwick, Scotland. Image via swifant/wikimedia.

Dr Andrew Jennings is based in Lerwick, Shetland's capital. He enjoys everything about life in this beautiful archipelago, from rowing in the local yoal team and taking part in the Fire Festival, to walking the dog and experiencing the wild Shetland weather. Living in Scotland's most northerly islands, with their Nordic cultural inheritance, inspires his research and his teaching. He is the programme leader on the MLitt Viking Studies, Island Studies, Orkney and Shetland Studies and Highlands and Islands Literature.

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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.

Join us for our Baccalieu Trail Thriving Regions: Researcher Updates & Community Conversation March 19

Are you from the Baccalieu Trail Region? Join us for our Baccalieu Trail Thriving Regions: Researcher Updates & Community Conversation

On March 19th (Friday) from 11:30am - 1pm, the Harris Centre of Memorial University will be hosting a virtual session at which two of our researchers will present the results of their work: 

Hidden Gems of the Baccalieu Trail
Ms. Natalie Dignam 

Traditional Knowledge Inventory of the Baccalieu Trail: Mobilizing Intangible Cultural Heritage
Mr. Dale Jarvis 

There will be opportunities to ask questions of the two researchers and to explore potential opportunities for using their products.

Registration information can be found here on the Harris Centre website:
https://www.mun.ca/harriscentre/news.php?id=14112&type=news 

New Publication on the Burgess Property, Whiteway NL

Burgess Property in 1948, taken by Margaret Mackintosh

Heritage NL has been researching the Burgess Property, a designated Registered Heritage Structure in Whiteway comprised of six buildings built throughout the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Over 150 years and several generations of the Burgess family have operated fishing, coopering, and sawmilling industries from the property. Collectively, the Burgess Property buildings today are an excellent example of the diverse economies outport families participated in, in addition to showcasing typical Newfoundland vernacular architecture. Today, the property is still being taken care of by the sixth consecutive generation of Burgesses, and holds an impressive collection of historic documents and artefacts used throughout the building’s history. 

Working with the Burgess family, Heritage NL received an overwhelming amount of information carefully curated on the property. Using these resources and additional research, Heritage NL has created an initial report documenting the historic buildings currently on the property and mapping the historic landscape. 

• You can download the full report in pdf format to get all the details on this unique property.