Collection Resurrection

Collection Resurrected

2007-09-02T14:44:00.000-07:00

After almost a year of working with the Gananoque Museum Collections, I leave them for now and head back to the University of Western Ontario to begin working on my PhD. The collections, although resurrected, still need years of work and I am confident that there are scores or volunteers and professionals ready to jump in and do the research and book work needed to restore as many of the personal histories that lay in the past of the artefacts. Sadly, the donor information for many objects were lost long ago, but we can still build up information on the artefacts themselves – where they were manufactured, what they were used for etc. I have included here a few before-and-after shots from the work to give some perspective on the amount of work completed. It’s not the Smithsonian, but it’s an excellent start. The before are on the left, the after on the right.

This summer was extremely busy as we finished off sorting through the collections. The final hurdle to get over was the immense collection of textiles – uniforms, dresses and other pieces of clothing. The sheer size of this collection was surprising once the old and decaying boxes were cracked open. This collection was poorly documented and I would like to thank Jordyn Thompson for her willingness to help take this one on. The collection will still need loads of research as many of the items look quite impressive, but again, like the china collection, it will need an expert to figure out what exactly they are.

Working through the collections was a personally rewarding experience as much as it was professional. I felt connected to the things I was searching through. My own family has deep roots in the community and I came across a good deal of evidence to prove it. I often think of my grandfather’s stories of his days in the citizens band when, in the bleak days of the Great Depression, little Gananoque produced an award winning band that was in demand across Ontario. To find the exact trophies he spoke of and to see pictures of them all in their smart uniforms produced that inescapable twinge of nostalgia. On another level, the collections reveal a great deal about life in Gananoque’s past. In the back of a police log book from 1916 were page after page of houses quarantined for contagious diseases like diphtheria, measles etc. Sometimes entire streets were shut down by order of the police. The prim ideal of carriages and bonnets quickly evaporated in light of these little discoveries.

On another level, the tale of the Gananoque Museum is a profoundly sad one. For thirty years it stood as a place where people donated items with the hope - with the assurance - that those items would be preserved, that they would be used to teach future generations about
who their predecessors were and what things were like in the past. Yet, the actual closure of the Gananoque Museum in 2001 was merely the final event in a string of failures and the breaking of a public trust. A museum collection of such size can not be run by hobbyists. I often came across well-meaning, yet terribly damaging, results of amateur museum work. Green arrows glued to ancient documents, newspaper used to stuff rare flight suits, Bic pens used to affix accession numbers to leather pouches, sunlight pouring onto irreplaceable garments and objects. The remains of Gananoque’s past were rotting away. Now, the restoration of the public trust must continue by making these objects available for proper display and interpretation.

Many people have asked me why the Gananoque Museum closed in the first place. There were many reasons it seems. Money, of course, was a factor. But, in the end I think that the problem lay in the conflicts that arose amongst the people in charge towards the end of the museum’s life. From what I have read in newspaper clippings, in the files and elsewhere, basic museum ethical practices were not followed, there were severe personality clashes and there was a total lack of coherent procedures when items were brought in. Although there were periods of great work in the history of the museum and although there is always a backlog of paper work in a museum - the sheer amount of undocumented artefacts was inexcusable and is a result of not having professionally trained staff. In the late nineties, a new group came on board and sincerely worked to turn things around - but, it was too late. The community and council were tired of the constant infighting, and with such negative feelings in a small town, few people felt like getting involved. If the champions of history in a small town – or in any local community - cannot work together, then the chances of animating popular support and interest are minimal.

Now, the question is, with the collections stabilized can there ever be another Gananoque Museum? Before that question can truly be addressed, the various institutions in Gananoque need to be consolidated. The Heritage Committee, the Arthur Child Heritage Museum, the Gananoque Museum Collections and the Gananoque Historical Society have to start working together as one. Only then, with all the different collections consolidated and everyone following a similar path, can our resources be pooled and something new built. For now, the arrangement of the Arthur Child Heritage Museum rotating the artefacts through will have to suffice. In addition, the recent news that the Antique Boat Museum is ploughing ahead should give everyone time to pause and watch how a truly professional institution is built – slowly, deliberately, and cautiously. There is nothing worse than a failed museum. A museum (which is a public institution like a library or school) needs to be built on a sound foundation of long-term planning. The enthusiastic pushers of history always need to bear in mind the difference between what is possible to create and what is practical to sustain. I call upon all concerned parties in Gananoque to begin talking and working together.

With that said, I would like to offer a huge thank you to all the people and institutions that helped out. Without the many volunteers and help from town staff and officials this project could not have been accomplished.

My heartfelt thanks to Eileen Truesdell, John McDonald, David Wells, Marcia McRae, Kathy Karkut, Kathy and Aidan Baker, Erin Findlay and Jordyn Thompson whose enthusiasm for the work kept me energized and without whom the work could never have been completed. My thanks also to the staff of the Arthur Child Heritage Museum for all their support and help in this: Linda Mainse, director of the ACHM, Linda Davis, Educational Programmer, Mary Ford, financial officer and Marcia McRae, Visitor Services. Thanks also to Layne Larsen and the Board of Directors. Without the staff and board of directors, this project never could have gotten off the ground.

My thanks to Paul Banfield, director of the Queen’s University Archives, as well as to Conservator Margaret Bignell, assistant Heather Wolsey, and to Susan Office and Elaine Savor for their work in conserving and copying the Joel Stone papers. Thanks also to archivists Heather Home, Jeremy Heil and Deirdre Bryden for paying the project a much appreciated visit, and delivering the Archive’s loan of a computer – perhaps one of the most pressing needs of the collection. Queen’s University Archives provided a great deal of advice and vital equipment, without which the project could not have been completed.

Thanks also to Doug Mainse for all his help and creative solutions to many technical issues, Noel Bullock for his insightful ideas and help with conservation issues, Art Shaw for his help and interest in identifying many of the curious industrial and agricultural pieces, Linda Hocking and the staff of the Litchfield Historical Society, especially for her help with some of the head-scratching issues related to creating the archives. My appreciation also to Westley Cote for his much-needed help and artistic talents in the creation of the “Gananoque in the Gilded Age” displays. A sincere thank you to the Mayor, Council, and staff at the Town Hall for having the faith to let the project go ahead, but also for providing funding – without which nothing could have been done. I’d like to extend a special thank you to Councillor Frank O’Hearn and now-Mayor of Leeds Township Frank Kinsella, for their support of this project and their help in pushing ahead in the early, uncertain stages of the project. An additional thank you to Councillor O’Hearn for making the Heritage Committee a reality; to Kent Fitzhugh for his enthusiasm and help in many matters; to Steve Silver, the town CEO, for always having time to talk to me, even though I knew he really didn’t have the time; to Brenda Guy for her help and leadership in getting the heritage committee underway, and to Jim Guest and the board of works for lending some muscle in carting away 30 years of accumulated debris.

I was also very gratified to have so much support from other local institutions. Early on Bonnie Burke at the Brockville Museum and Ann Blake at the Marine Museum of the Great Lakes were of enormous help setting me on the right path. Providence Continuing Care and the Museum of Health Care helped out with the donation of second-hand display cases. Bill Beswetherick from the Royal Canadian Legion Branch # 92 in Gananoque helped bring many of the military artefacts back to life, and included them in a set of very nice displays to accompany the visit of Victoria Cross won by Gananoque’s own Harry Brown in World War One. John Love at the Gananoque Public Library was also a great help in providing some much-needed shelving and always having some sort of humorous insight into the work. And finally, how could I not thank Bonnie, Rosanne and all the workers at the Chamber of Commerce over the past year who always made me feel welcome in their workspace and for putting on an interested face when I bounced out to show them something I had found.

So, with that, I finish. The computer catalogue is still being worked on, but should eventually be ready for public inspection. For those that may be curious on the ongoing creation of the Joel Stone comic, I will be beginning a new blog very shortly. This will be part of the Digital History Class at the University of Western Ontario. The blog will be more wide-ranging with the different areas of history I’ll examine, from Museums, and academia to theories and ideas about history in general. I’ll post again very shortly with the new URL.

It’s been a blast!

New Homes for Old Things

2007-07-10T07:08:00.000-07:00

This week I’ll be showing you around the new storage area in the old Jones Shovel Factory; talk a little about what became of the old, tattered flight suit; show off a new display of a birch bark canoe, and finally reveal a few more of the historical figures turned into comic book characters, and brought to life by artist Westley Cote.

First of all, I’d like to welcome Jordyn Thompson to the team. Jordyn just graduated from Gananoque Secondary School and will be working with us for the summer. She’ll be helping us get the computer catalogue set up for the fall.

Storage Solutions

When I first began this project almost a year ago now, I originally pushed for the removal of everything from the Chamber of Commerce building (formerly the Gananoque Museum, which was formerly the Jones Shovel Company, which was formerly the Victoria Hotel, formerly known as the Albion Hotel…that gets us back to the 1840s) to some other, more suitable building. My concern was the fact that with so many artefacts and display cases taking up space, there was no way to fit everything in safely and efficiently. An additional problem was/is the fact that the attic storage space, about 4 rooms in total, is not really suitable for the what was up there as temperatures often soar in the summer to well over 100ºF with no way to control humidity.

My grand schemes quickly had to face up to the realities of small town museums – there is what is possible, then there is what is practical, and more importantly, there is what is affordable. A small museum must do the best it can with what it has. Also, there just weren’t any other buildings to take in the collection. So, I decided then to try and fit as much as I could into 750 sq. ft. of space on the main floor. With the display cases put into off-site storage, space was freed up to erect 5 rows of shelves, making a total of 75 3’ x 2’ shelves. The majority of 3D artefacts could then be moved to the main floor, where it is cooler and there is air circulating. The high ceilings pose a problem when it comes to maintaining a steady level of humidity, but, again, it’s better than the attic.

In addition to the shelves, space was left over to store most of the large pieces of furniture, the link trainer, the two huge safes, and room to set up more shelves for the books, textiles, archives and two cabinets for the photograph collection and the large framed portraits and photos.

The attic is still being used for storage of some items, but instead of 4 rooms, we’re down to 1.5. As a bonus, it turned out that one of the rooms actually had an air conditioning vent that was simply blocked. Now, with that uncovered, I have devoted the large attic room to house the extensive collection of tools. Pre-existing wooden shelves, usually a no-no in the museum business, have been resurrected and lined with acid-free tissue and poly-foam to store the china collection.

Deaccessioning

Many objects in the collection were brought in as props over the years, were reproductions, or were simply second-hand cleaning equipment used by former staff – the same way as if someone were to take their old vacuum to use at their cottage. For example, a stainless steel steam iron from 1964 looks quite old-fashioned by today’s standards, but is not an artefact. In 1998 and 1999, the museum staff of the time hired on some students to do a massive inventory. Thinking it better to err on the side of caution, they accessioned everything. Curtains, those steam irons, dinner plates made in Japan, plastic umbrellas from the courtesy bin etc. etc. Some old objects were also accessioned that really shouldn’t have been. For example, these film developing chemicals – I have no idea what happens to developing agents after 70 years and I don’t see the point of trying to find out – all these will have to be, what we call in the business – deaccessioned. This is, in my opinion, the trickiest problem involved in museum work. Items get deaccessioned because: 1) they don’t fit the collection mandate, 2) we have too many of a particular item, 3) they are in poor condition and could damage other objects, or, 4) like the curtain rods in the front room, never should have been accessioned in the first place.

One of the things I’ve been trying to do is find the original donors and see if they’ll take the items back. The problem with that is most donors have passed away, and their children moved away long ago. Of course, we’re not looking to give back the entire collection, but items that have no bearing on the history of Gananoque and the 1000 Islands are simply taking up room, and could be enjoyed elsewhere. For example, I had the pleasure to return an ink well, framed print and large framed plaque of the Lord’s Prayer to one family. To another I returned their grandparents Victrola Talking Machine and record collection, to another family I was able to return a portrait of their great-grandfather – all these items were interesting, but are more valuable as family heirlooms where they can be appreciated than stowed away in museum storage. Another option is throwing out damaged or fake items as a last resort, or, as we have done with three garbage bags of old clothes, transfer them to the education department. One of the best ways to deaccession is to transfer to other institutions that have the mandate to take the items in.

In the first few months I wrote about a “Forgotten Knight of the Air” – being a World War I flight suit and helmet. Both were in terrible condition and were quickly reaching the point of no return for conservation. It was my pleasure last week to transfer this very rare set – the jacket once belonged to Lt. Col. Eric Warwick, a Gananoque resident and artillery commander, (still unsure about the helmet’s provenance) – to Canada’s Aviation Museum in Ottawa. I was actually not aware of just how rare these objects were and I am very happy that the Gananoque Museum Collections could fill the gap at a national institution, while at the same time ensuring that Col. Warwick’s flight suit will be preserved. My thanks to Mr. Bill Manning and Dr. Renald Fortier for taking the time to consider the transfer and for their hospitality.

Finally, on the theme of new homes for old things, there was a birch bark canoe that sat in the rafters of the storage area. The jury is still out on where this came from and who made it, but it is now on display as part of the “Plying the River” exhibit which details the use of the St. Lawrence by the Native Peoples and the French Explorers. Just another example of how this old, forgotten collection is coming to life again.

Comic Book

This project really blurs the line between Canadian and American history. The story of Gananoque’s founder is both. Although it has been compartmentalized neatly into Canadian history, and until recently, written out of the American story, it is part of our shared past.

As far a title is concerned, the tentative title for the project is “Tory”…but I’m not yet 100% on that – there’s a lot of baggage with the term for a modern Canadian or British reader – but its short and to the point. It’ll probably stick. You can see here a few of the Patriots that will inhabit the pages: Oliver Wolcott, a signer of the Declaration of Independence and leading citizen of Litchfield (the town where the events of the story take place) and Moses Seymour, another prominent figure in Litchfield, a little angry at having been duped by the scheming mayor of New York City. Finally, a Patriot Dragoon, who populates the story in background shots and lends his intimidating weight to cause of independence in Connecticut.

Next time I’ll discuss a few of the challenges and surprises involved in going through the huge collection of uniforms and clothing.

Adopt a Collection: Archaeological Artefacts

2007-05-28T12:14:00.000-07:00

Shoebox Archaeology

Growing up at my grandparent’s cottage on Gananoque Lake, I was often told stories of the native people who once lived in the area and hunted and fished on the Lake. We’d often explore what seemed like endless miles of woods in the hopes of coming across some ancient and forgotten piece of evidence from the times before the coming of Europeans. I can recall my brother finding a stone arrowhead while digging up the garden – a one in a million chance find that I remember being an almost mystical experience. There were no other artefacts anywhere around, so either the place had served as a brief camp, or more likely, an arrow had been shot and lost in the brush only to be uncovered by fluke circumstance centuries later. Native peoples, such as the Mississauga, Ojibwa, and other First Nations, used the Thousand Islands as a meeting and summering place and evidence of their occupation was obvious to arriving settlers. Early maps of Gananoque show “Indian Burying Places” on the rocky points jutting into the confluence of the Gananoque and St. Lawrence Rivers, and the thin soil of the Islands easily revealed the scattered remnants of former camps to the inquisitive newcomers. The First Peoples of the region sold their lands to the British government who then parcelled it out to the settlers and refugee Loyalists. The various native bands living in the area were slowly driven out as the landscape changed drastically. The trees were cleared, farms were established and the wildlife was decimated, taking away the native people’s traditional way of life. The place names, though, often remained in spite of the fact that the meanings were generally obscured by time. In Thaddeus Leavitt’s History of Leeds and Grenville (1879), he presents the then popular image of the “noble savage” and includes a poignant section of a poem from W.E. Guest:

“They have all passed away,
That noble race and brave,
Their light canoes have vanished,
From Oft the Crested Wave,
But
Their name is on your waters,
You may not wash it out.”

There is a certain truth to this, at least with regard to Gananoque. At one point Colonel Stone attempted to change the name to the Thames River, but it just didn’t catch on, even though the Gananoque is called the Thames on a number of early maps.

The romanticism of the period inspired people to souvenir hunt through the Thousand Islands and elsewhere before the sites were properly identified and protected as parks. There was nothing to stop people from poking around ancient campsites and filling up their packs with whatever they found. Some of these items found their way into the Gananoque Museum Collections. People should never disturb an archaeological site. It’s much like a crime scene with clues scattered all about. Seemingly random placement of items can tell a trained archaeologist a great deal of information. Often times, digging something up and throwing it in a box can destroy an entire site. So, if you do find things out there, don’t touch them.

Luckily, we can tell where some of the items in the collections came from, as an amateur historian, Frank Eames, attached labels to the various sherds of pottery he found. Most of them state that they came from Hay Island and were dug up in the late 1920s. Pottery, stone hatchets, spear and arrow points make up the collection, along with a few deer bone awls and other items. The problem of actually identifying them is made more difficult, however, in that the Hay Island items are mixed in with items from other sites as well as native crafts from the late 19th and early 20th centuries. In 2005, Dr. Beverly Smith from the University of Michigan, visited the Arthur Child Heritage Museum and identified a number of the objects that are on display there. The collection contains objects that date from just before the arrival of Europeans in North America to spear points that were made somewhere around 8000 BC – just a short time after the last ice age!

As you can see from these pictures we have many small artefacts that not only need to be researched and properly identified, but they also need to be stored so they don’t get lost. We are requesting the public to help out. You can adopt the entire collection for the price of a large, shallow drawer tool chest (approx. $189 – 300) to store them in or some generous person could adopt the collection by donating a used tool chest or map case. In return, your name or your business name will be clearly marked as a sponsor and supporter of our local heritage when the items are displayed. You will also receive a CD containing images of the artefacts.

To adopt this collection of artefacts or for more information contact me at tcompeau@gmail.com

Or

Gananoque Museum Collections
c/o The Arthur Child Heritage Museum
125 Water Street
Gananoque, Ontario

Joel Stone Comic Book

Although I still haven’t managed to come up with a satisfying title yet, Westley Cote has done some great work bringing Gananoque’s founder to life. Here is a little sneak peak at how the comic will look when it is finished in August. Working from the oil portrait of Colonel Stone, Wes has created the young Joel Stone that will be the main character in the story. Stay tuned for more.

Thoughts on "Gananoque in the Gilded Age"

2007-05-07T12:45:00.000-07:00

The exhibit, Gananoque in the Gilded Age, is now up at the Arthur Child Heritage Museum, at 125 Water St. in Gananoque. Also on display this summer is a very nice exhibit from the Clayton Antique Boat Museum which showcases a selection of Canadian made canoes from the early 20th century.

One of the most exciting parts of the Gananoque Museum Collections Project was exhibition, and it was actually a very difficult task to choose what to display. I felt it was important to show off both the collections’ potential and to simply display some of the items hidden away for so long. I could have chosen to exhibit Gananoque’s history in the World Wars or any aspect of military history that touched on our little town; I could have looked at schools, the electric company, angling and hunting, agriculture, sports and leisure from any period; there were enough artefacts to do a very thorough history of photography, woodworking, shoemaking or local native peoples; I could have high-lighted different industries and their products. By far the most interesting set of artefacts I came across were the photographs from the late 1800s – of factories, mansions, workers and streetscapes – and this is what I decided to build the exhibit around, and it didn’t take much to locate enough physical artefacts to fill five display cases. In fact, there were too many, and it was a tough chore to pare them down.

It's one thing to display the artefacts and photographs and let them tell their own story, but to really understand them one must have a sense of their historical context. What was going when someone made this Cowan and Britton lock? Who used this wrench or drank from this cup, and why should I care? In the attempt to flesh out a little history, you have to not only think about how you’re going make something concise yet complete, honest yet attractive; you also have to think about what perspective you will take. I chose to try and articulate the disparity between rich and poor, worker and owner during this period. This division in society was quite stark, and was something the people noticed and remarked upon themselves. So now, showing off an antique clock owned by the Britton family takes on two levels - showcasing an interesting, ornate clock on the one hand, and highlighting the wealth of one segment of the society.

Last year, when I was still working on my MA at Western, there was an ongoing debate regarding nostalgia and whether or not we as historians had any business stoking that emotion. Nostalgia shouldn't play a role in the study of history, but it often comes into play with exhibits and popular social memory. Most of the time nostalgia is harmless. But does nostalgia not have the potential to breed resentment at the present world and hamper the forward movement and change that is necessary for healthy growth – of a person or a town? It’s a common thing for people to be nostalgic and to long for simpler times when things seemed better, safer, and more secure. Nostalgia was once considered a medical condition for which doctors had a variety of remedies, but it is simply part of the human condition. Who in their later years has not thought back with longing to a time when they were young? Comparing our own times to the past is nearly unavoidable. I have heard people (usually while their computer is crashing or their cellphone is dying) run on about how great it must have been to live in the simpler times of horse and buggy. It’s easy to forget, however, that even though life certainly moved a bit slower, one also had to contend with the anguish of now easily treated infections running out of control, or the horror of smallpox or typhoid fever decimating the population of a neighbourhood. I, for one, believe that the era we live in now, for all its imperfections, is far preferable to any in the past. As the first line of the exhibit reads “few ages are golden, yet time has a way of obscuring the problems of the past, leaving an idyllic memory that bears little resemblance to history.”

As a class, the Public History MAs at Western in 05/06 worked on a similar subject with Museum London: the industrial zone known as the “Old East”. A reviewer described the exhibit, with no ill-meaning, as “nostalgia rich.” It was intended to be a celebration of the industries that thrived in London in the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Some of the most interesting aspects of the story, however, were not told, (this likely having to do with the fact that museums sometimes need to be family oriented). When compiling a dossier for a local industry, it was clear to me that the rosy picture the museum sought was not the whole story. Strikes, crime, poverty, brothels, racial strife – these were the realities in the town. Of course, it does no good to dwell on or to sensationalize these stories, but this was an area that was an industrial and railway hub, with no standing police force and no fire brigade – crime and danger were going to be factors of everyday life in London East. To ignore these stories is likely as bad as solely dwelling on them.

Finding that balance between being accurate and truthful without being overly dour, and highlighting the impressive aspects without being celebratory or nostalgic, were the main problems I found as I sat down to begin an exhibit on Gananoque’s industrial past. Gananoque’s manufacturing base has severely contracted over the last twenty years, and just over the last two years Gananoque lost two factories, Mahle and the auto-parts maker Collins and Aikman, and with them scores of jobs. With only four factories left in town (although between them they employ almost 600 people) the one thing I didn’t want to get caught in was making a wistful and nostalgic portrait of the good ol’ days when everyone had jobs and the world was a much happier place – because no such time existed. Even with 72 factories or small-shop enterprises buzzing away in town in the 1880s and 90s, life was not easy, money was not plentiful, and the workers then certainly did not feel they were living in a golden age.

When reading through George De Zwaan’s 1987 PhD thesis about Gananoque’s industrial history, the conflict between the factory owners and the local workers organized under the Knights of Labour struck me as the most interesting episode of the period. It was an event that really highlighted the growing discontent amongst people with the way things were and connected Gananoque with a wider national, or more exactly, North American story. While there are no artefacts from the Knights of Labour in the collections, the local newspaper recorded the events in letters to the editor which provide a voice for the workers of the period in the displays. I tried to make an exhibit that portrays the period without being nostalgic, that lets the visitor learn and experience a period as it was, instead of something idealized. If it stirs nostalgia in some, that’s fine, but it is not meant to. I wanted to show the growth of the town from the 1860s through to the 1890s, but I also wanted to highlight how far we’ve come and how much there is still left to do. Spending our time lamenting the passing of time and the inevitable consequences of change gets us nowhere. Gananoque has loads of potential for future growth and prosperity, and while we should remember the past and learn from it, we shouldn’t live in it.

Adopt an Artefact: Photographs

2007-04-25T08:22:00.000-07:00

This week we launch the Adopt an Artefact campaign. Each month from now until August, the Gananoque Reporter will run an advertisement highlighting a particular artefact or collection of artefacts that people can adopt. Adopters will receive a little package describing their artefact and its importance. When the items are displayed, the adopters will have their names presented alongside in recognition of their valuable contributions and assistance in preserving these objects for future generations. All adopters will be recognized here at Collection Resurrection. Our main groups of objects to be adopted will be the massive photograph collection, the archival collection (which includes the Loyalist era papers, Police court records and war diaries of the local artillery unit in World War II), the Link Trainer and Military Collection, as well as a wide variety of unique artefacts pertaining to local history.

Every object has unique needs. This week we begin with the Photograph Collection. As I have shown over the last few months, the Gananoque Museum Collections contain over 1000 photographs of all shapes and sizes, beginning with the early daguerreotypes and continuing through to the late 20th century. Photographs from the 19th century are often very robust and very well made. Keeping them in a cool, dark place free of acidic coverings or backings and also keeping them free of pests is often enough to preserve them. So far, we have managed to catalogue the majority of photos and are busy scanning the originals to make digital copies for display. Money generated from the Adopt an Artefact campaign will go towards digitization, purchasing acid-free containers and acquiring a cabinet to store the large framed pictures in.

Because of the sheer amount of photographs, adopting individual pictures wouldn’t work. Concerned residents or visitors can adopt a group of pictures, either 10 for 25.00 or 20 for 40.00. As an additional gift, adopters will receive a selection of photographs for personal use on CD.

Cheques can be made payable to: Gananoque Museum Collections
c/o The Arthur Child Heritage Museum
125 Water St.
Gananoque, Ontario
K7G 3E3

Feel free to contact me with any questions or to request specific artefacts to adopt from any previous post at tcompeau@gmail.com

Exhibit Preparations

With the opening of the Arthur Child Heritage Museum fast approaching, we are busy setting up a variety of new exhibits. As you can see in these pictures, the space is slowly transforming. Books could, and have, been written on the industrial expansion of Gananoque in the 19th Century, so it is extremely hard to try and narrow down what to say. At Western, we learned to trim everything we want to say down to one statement, or one idea. For the this exhibit I have tried to present the period of booming industry without any nostalgia or pining for good old days. “The Gilded Age in Gananoque created the town we know today, yet it was a time of great inequality and hardship for many. The working class, influenced by labour movements in the United States, tried to stand up to the powerful elites and demanded fairness in the workplace.” So, in a nutshell, that’s the main idea of the exhibit. Rather than focus on the great mansions that still line some of Gananoque’s streets, I intended the exhibit to show both sides. Yet, it cannot be doubted that many people in the village deeply resented the small group of men who held absolute control over the money and politics in the town. It’s clear that many people felt there were serious abuses of power and the poor were tired of working to make others rich. One angry worker wrote a sarcastic prayer to the Reporter in January of 1885. He wrote:

“Let thy countenance shine upon them [the factory owners] that they may build fine houses and live sumptuously, even though it be necessary to reduce the wages of the working man that they be enabled to foot the bill”

Photographs, artefacts and maps from the period flesh-out the story and help describe the period from 1863-1890, when Gananoque grew to become a town.

The other rooms on the main floor of the Museum are filling up as well. The Clayton Antique Boat Museum is bringing in a collection of antique canoes from across the river to tell the story of this popular pastime and once vital form of transportation.

The room linking the Gilded Age exhibit and the canoes will make the transition from the Thousand Islands to Gananoque, displaying both our popular 3D model of the islands, a small vignette on the Loyalist founder Joel Stone, and displaying a set of “curiosities” from the Gananoque Museum Collections such as an antique dentist’s drill, a 3 foot sawfish snout and other interesting and unique artefacts.

Chris French, of Chris’ Creations has also built some great nature scenes to compliment the exhibits as you can see here. So, lots to do, back to work. Next time I'll share a little of what goes into creating the exhibit panels that tell the story.

Gananoque in the Gilded Age

2007-04-05T10:21:00.000-07:00

Opening May 18th, the Arthur Child Heritage Museum along with the Gananoque Museum Collections are pleased to present: “Gananoque in the Gilded Age: 1863-1890.”

Making use of the many artefacts and archival photos from the collections, the exhibit will tell the story of the period when Gananoque grew from an industrial village into a town.

It is not a rosy tale of simpler times or a golden age; it is the period of history which Mark Twain called “The Gilded Age.” This was a term meant to signify that for all the rapid economic expansion and radical growth of technology and industry, the majority of people struggled to make ends meet and to make sense of a new and changing world. It was a gilded age – appearing like gold, but it was really just a thin layer covering a dark and heavy base.

This was the era of the robber barons and the captains of industry, who amassed immense wealth while the average workers toiled to eke out a living. Although Twain was referring to the United States, Gananoque in this period was a microcosm of the wider trends in North America. The National Policy of the Sir John A. Macdonald government, which slapped tariffs on American manufactured goods, ensured that factories could operate and produce goods in Gananoque, using the cheap water power of the river.

Did this benefit the factory owners or the factory workers?

There was something wrong with the system and in the late 1880s as nearly every worker in Gananoque, be they skilled or unskilled, joined the Knights of Labour: a pan-American, pan-industrial labour union. They fought for better working conditions, better wages and to be treated with dignity. The workers challenged the captains of industry for control of the Village council and for a say in their own destinies. But, the power of the owners was not easily challenged…

This is the display area in the main gallery of the Arthur Child Heritage Museum. Each week until the launch, I’ll be showing the little changes that take place as the exhibit takes shape.

Opens May 18th.

Many thanks to Lisa and Pam who assisted in the research for this project, and sincere thanks to Providence Continuing Care for the donation (and transportation) of some second-hand display cases.

HBC Local History Grants

In other news, the Hudson Bay Company’s Local History Grants programme along with Canada’s National History Society (Producers of The Beaver Magazine), have announced that they will provide funds to help produce a new resource for people to learn about the history of the town founder, Joel Stone. Together with Graphic Artist Wesley Cote, we will be producing a comic book based on the adventures of the Loyalist in the American Revolution. Most sincere thanks to the HBC and the National History Society for making this possible. The final product will be available in August. Check back here regularly for some snippets of the art work and story.

"From Your Soldier Patients..."

2007-03-16T10:23:00.000-07:00

This week’s topic is a perfect example of why it’s important to restore meaning to the collections, and how people from all over North America are helping to do it. Every now and then I get an e-mail or phone call from someone with a particular connection to an artefact or event in Gananoque or the 1000 Islands. These little contacts do wonders for returning the stories to objects and photographs.

Back in November I posted a small piece about the military hospital on Leek Island in WWI and included this group photo of soldiers and nurses. Leek Island was a privately owned island volunteered to the Canadian government to be used as a convalescent hospital during the war. I was delighted to receive an e-mail from Pam Robertson, living in the United States near Detroit, who informed me that she was the great-granddaughter of Katherine Runyon, owner of Leek Island. Ms. Robertson's grandmother, Katherine Kip Brenneman, was a nurse at the hospital and this group photo was in fact her wedding picture. You can see Mrs. Brenneman in towards the centre in the white veil, with her new husband lying down in front.

Leek Island must have been a very special hospital and was certainly appreciated by the soldiers who recovered there. After being injured in one of the worst conflicts in human history, the Canadian soldiers surely thought themselves lucky to have been sent to Leek Island.

After Ms. Robertson’s e-mail, I took another look through a file of old and curled photographs marked “Leek Island” and I have included a few that show the wounded soldiers recovering amidst the splendour of the Thousand Islands in the summer. In one picture men clean freshly caught fish, in another, an amputee and others arrive at Leek Island. Perhaps they are arriving for the first time, perhaps they are returning from a simple boat ride – either way it would certainly have been therapeutic. In another shot, a contented looking soldier poses for the picture against a tree - happy, I’m sure, to be away from the carnage of the First World War. There are dozens more photographs which document the many soldiers recovering in the 1000 Islands.

One of the most poignant artefacts I have come across to date is this collection of pins. At the bottom is inscribed “From Your Soldier Patients, Leek Island, October 1st, 1917” Much as we would sign a card, the soldiers attached their regimental pins. Not all the pins explicitly state their units, but the ones represented are: The Royal Canadian Dragoons, The Kootenay Overseas Battalion, 1st Western Ontario, 2nd Eastern Ontario, Royal Canadian Artillery, Royal Montreal Regiment, Victoria Rifles, CMR Overseas, 8th Stationary Hospital Saskatchewan, Grenadiers (unsure which specific unit), 50th Cavalry, 10th Canadians, 4th Central Ontario, 20th Canadians, 3rd Toronto Regiment, 70th Canadian Battalion, 16th – perhaps Nova Scotia, a very impressive pin from the Black Watch – Royal Highlanders, Another Artillery, 18th Canadian, 28th North West, 75th, Canadian Engineers, Princess Patricia’s Light Infantry, 27th Battalion Winnipeg, 5th Mounted Rifles, 38th Ottawa, Canadian Medical Corps, 21st Canadian, 73rd Royal Highlanders, 60th, 70th, The French Canadians, 5th Western Cavalry, 91st Elgin. Again there are a few others I cannot make out, but this certainly shows the number of men from all over Canada that called the Thousand Islands home for a brief time. This must have been a very touching gift to the nurses at Leek Island.

My thanks, again, to Pam Robertson for sending the information on the wedding picture.

Updates

With a software package on its way and a few other ducks in a row, we have begun work on this summer’s exhibit. “Gananoque in the Gilded Age” is the tentative title. The exhibit, which will be in the main gallery at the Arthur Child Heritage Museum beginning in May, will explore the period 1860-1890, when Gananoque’s industrial economy grew rapidly and transformed the sleepy village into a booming industrial town. Over the next few weeks I’ll share some of the behind the scenes work that goes into creating this exhibit.

Also, coming soon, we’re launching an “adopt an artefact campaign.” The various artefacts and collections of artefacts will be displayed in the Gananoque Reporter and here at this site. My thanks to Anne Craig and the staff at the Reporter.

Returning Meaning to the Collections

2007-02-23T10:21:00.000-08:00

This week I’ll be a little long-winded, but I figure it’s about time to really sum up what I am trying to do here, and why it’s a little more complicated, and much more important, than some people think. My title suggests a goal, but the first step to achieving it is not necessarily calling in Antiques Road Show or writing a history of Gananoque (although both are good ideas). The first step is getting down the basics of a solid, accessible, usable catalogue and a functional storage system.

I am sure that at one point there was someone in charge of the Gananoque Museum who when asked where some item was, knew immediately where to look, what its historical significance was, who donated it, and could bore anyone to tears remarking on its relationship to other objects in the collection. Once people like that move on or pass away, so much goes with them. The problems with the Gananoque Museum may stem from that quirk of local history. After so many years, the collections have been left in a state which does not allow them to tell their own story. Going through the collections over the past six months has been as much of an archaeological dig into the history of the museum itself and the people that ran it, as it was into the history of the artefacts it houses.

At one point, say 15 – 20 years ago, all three floors were filled with items on display. While most museums have 80-90% of their collections tucked safely away and rotate them out for visitors to see, the Gananoque Museum basically showed off everything at once. I don’t recall too many specifics of going through the museum as a child, but it must have been a bewildering hodgepodge of disjointed artefacts and stories. When I worked at the museum during its last open season in 2000 there was only one floor left open, but I remember that there was no stream or storyline to the exhibits. Rather, it was merely a venue for fine china and war trophies – the front parlours for the fancy dresses and furniture, the back rooms for the military items.

Since I began working through the collections it has become evident that perhaps the main problem with creating exhibits in the past was that the museum staff simply didn’t know what they had. Storage and cataloguing are vital to maintaining a museum. A museum must be able to live on and function after its creators or guardians have moved or passed away, otherwise the entire purpose of the museum is defeated. It simply isn’t enough to take an inventory, put it in a binder somewhere and say that it is done.

You can see here the card catalogue used by the museum from 1978 to 1995. (Now, before I go on I am not knocking card catalogues. I have used some, like at the Litchfield Historical Society, which were very well put together and cross-referenced. Small museums must do the best they can with what they have.) While sections of the Gananoque Museum’s catalogue were done well, after 1978 it was only added to in trickles, while there was a torrent of artefacts actually coming in. What stories people shared of this or that object as they donated their possessions for the greater good of the community were lost because they simply weren’t written down by staff, or if they were, the files were not kept.

The museum works on a basic trinomial numbering system. A set of three numbers is supposed to be attached somehow to every artefact. For example: 964.1.1 (ie. donated in 1964, from donor 1, item 1). Prior to 1978 it appears there was a different numbering system altogether, and the artefacts were then renumbered in the 1970s. This explains why some artefacts have a mysterious mark on them such as A-12, and then have a date of June 1978 on the card. But, while the card catalogue was added to until 1995, it is actually short nearly 2 000 artefacts that were never accessioned until 1999. These artefacts are recorded in a handwritten binder which uses a completely different method of classification. Then there are the mistakes: items with two numbers, items whose numbers have worn off, items such as dustpans and sheets which were accessioned, items that were just loaned but were accessioned into the permanent collections, items that were destroyed and thrown out during several moves, lost cards or even lost drawers of cards. (Remember you can click on pictures for a larger image).

Our digital age provides us with the means to correct or at least prevent anymore messy problems like these if proper safeguards are put in place. I am currently working on tracking down the best cataloguing system that will allow key-word searches and keep everything straight. No matter how good a system we have for recording WHAT we have, it is just as important to record WHERE we keep it. The most basic and fundamental need of a museum is to keep these things straight. Without that, we just have a pile of old stuff, and that’s exactly what happened to the Gananoque Museum Collections. For example, we knew that there was supposed to be a set of spurs from Dr. Hale in there somewhere, but it took 2 months to find them, and they were found by accident. The other artefacts pertaining to Dr. Hale, his moustache comb, his medals etc. are scattered all over. We had no idea what the full collection of Hale artefacts looked like, and to try and discern this from a card catalogue was a horribly inefficient task as many of the cards were missing.

This conundrum is easily remedied as soon as we apply a computer. Since January, I and the trusty band of volunteers have been going through the collections room by room, and recording the numbers and photographing each item we find. After recording the catalogue numbers and renaming the file names of each picture with the number, all of a sudden, a whole whack of 990.36.1a, b, c, q etc. from all around the museum line up neatly, and we can see all the artefacts pertaining to Dr. Hale. The next step of keeping these relations straight on a database is easy. Of course now we have to store everything in an orderly fashion so, when this is all done, someone can look up “spurs” on the computer database, go to the proper shelf, and find them there. In addition, and perhaps just as vital, the computer will show (ideally) that these are the spurs of Dr. Hale, tell us why he was important (see Lest We Forget Post from November) and point out the locations and significance of the rest of his kit and equipment. So, simple enough and we just need to do this 4500 more times.

What has also become clear to me is the value different administrations placed on artefacts of various sorts. When I worked at the Gananoque Museum in the summer of 2000,(I was a teenager then), one of the main problems I had, aside from not having washrooms for the public, was the fact that everyone who entered immediately thought they had come into an antique store. Hutches and Whatnots, Victrola’s and China greeted the visitors to the Thousand Islands. Slowly over the years, the range and variety of the museum collection seems to have been neglected for the sake of these artefacts which really do not tell much of a story, and what they do tell is only of a tiny minority of the people of Gananoque. What made the wealthy owners of these objects so wealthy were industries and the men and women who laboured in the factories.

Over the past couple of weeks, myself, John, Eileen, Marica, Kathy and Aidan, have uncovered a vast array of objects from Gananoque’s industrial past. While the shelves full of Victorian china and the other fancy possessions of the wealthy elite were proudly displayed, the remnants of the industries which made Gananoque were stored away in the tiny space in the attic. The often small, rusty bits of cast-iron embossed with a logo or patent date, (wrenches, machine parts, stamps, riveters etc.) are not much to look at, but tell us reams more than any fancy teacup or porcelain doll could ever say about the growth of this town. These were all carefully catalogued and accessioned at one point, their uses clearly marked on little tags which hang from them. Really, the section of rusty old tools was the only area that had any semblance of order when I found it, simply because it had never been touched. Fancy top hats were strewn everywhere, but the spoke shavers and cobbler’s moulds sat quietly undisturbed as they had for 20 years. Of course, a rusted clamp or seized-up threading machine needs to be interpreted, just as any artefact does; they need to be understood in relation to a bigger picture and to other objects. For example, I wrote the posting on the Gananoque Citizens Bands a few weeks back, and just the other day, found the very trophies they won in the 1930s, tucked away with a bunch of high school trophies from the 70s. Or these files, logo stamp, and shovels in various stages of production from the Jones Shovel Company, stored separately for good reason, but there is nothing to link them unless one takes the time (and it’s a lot of time) to carefully look through thousands of cards or thousands of objects. In other words these items may as well have been lost. In so many ways, these artefacts are valuable as a group of items that tell a story - they have much less value separated.

Of course we can’t actually store these items together, that wouldn’t work, but a computerized system would at least remind us that these associated objects exist and where we can find them. Again, this is something that could be easily accomplished by someone who knows these items and their significance - but we don’t have someone like that, and neither should we rely solely on someone like that if we did. This fact only makes it clearer that the whole point of a museum is not just to preserve artefacts - it is to preserve memory, to preserve knowledge and meaning after people are gone. Sadly, this is something that was not done properly. I think part of what compelled me to take on this task, to try and fix things before they got worse, is summed up in what a professor of mine, Dr. Alan MacEachern of the University of Western Ontario, once told us (albeit in a slightly different context). History, he wrote, “…holds a promise — and a threat — to people of today, that they won’t be forgotten either.” I think it’s an idea people should remember. [1]

[1]Quoted from Jan. 31, 2006 – “Old East London Blog” http://digitalhistory.uwo.ca/ma0506/index.php/2006/01/

Things are Coming Together!

2007-02-16T10:25:00.000-08:00

Remember this?

We’ve come a long way since a few months ago when things were scattered all over and one could barely move in the “storage areas” of the former Gananoque Museum. Over the past two weeks we have pushed way ahead, and now the results of a finished project, although still far off, are becoming more and more easy to picture.

What has been most encouraging over the last little while is the strong support the project has received from a number of sources. Most importantly, the Town Council of Gananoque has pledged the needed funds to ensure that this valuable project can be completed. This will not only benefit residents and visitors now, but for generations to come. It is a real privilege to live in a town where those in power really appreciate and understand why our history is important and worth preserving. I cannot thank town staff enough for all their help in everything from providing workspace, to clearing away debris and of course, in financing the project, including the shelving (2/3 built) you see here.

I also had the pleasure last week to sit in on the first meeting of the Gananoque Heritage Committee. The committee is made up of some very enthusiastic and concerned citizens, who have brought a wide range of experience and expertise to the table. Many thanks to Councillor Frank O’Hearn and Town Planning Coordinator Brenda Guy for facilitating the meeting. I look forward to seeing all the great initiatives to preserve the historic structures and landmarks of our community.

Another important thank you I must send out is to Queen’s University Archives. Some time ago I was approached by archivist Paul Banfield, and happily loaned him our collection of Joel Stone papers and account books to be inspected and finally copied, so as to make these previously unknown 18th and early 19th century documents available. Last week, Heather, Deidre, and Jeremy, archivists at Queen’s, came to have a look at our collections here and provided the project, at long last, with a computer that will finally allow us to get a working, modern computerized catalogue system up and running. I cannot thank Queen’s Archives enough for the equipment, nor Heather, Deirdre and Jeremy for all their kind words and support. They are welcome here anytime!

Finally, the Arthur Child Heritage Museum was abuzz this week as we hosted the Ontario Senior Winter Games. The museum’s main gallery was transformed twice, first as the registration centre for the games, and then for an evening of dining and nostalgic entertainment, “Puttin’ on the Ritz.” The event was a huge success. Director Linda Mainse would like to thank Linda Davis, of Metro-Management Solutions, for organizing the event, and the staff of the Arthur Child Heritage Museum for all their assistance. MC Doug Revell, Paul Harding, Michelle Kazaboski and Dreams in Motion provided wonderful entertainment for the evening. And finally, many thanks to the Gananoque Secondary School’s Hospitality Students and the Canadian Academy of Travel and Tourism for all their hard work and excellent service.

A Mirror with a Memory

2007-01-26T10:39:00.000-08:00

Before I jump into this week’s subject, I thought I would share a scene, especially with readers not from around the Gananoque area. We’ve finally gotten our cold snap, and while walking into work this morning I noticed that the waterfalls had become very quiet. The reason, as you can see from these pictures, is that they are frozen. This dam continues to control the flow of the Gananoque River, and regulated the water that powered the many industries that lined the riverbanks in the past. Today, the waterpower that built Gananoque is still important, as it generates electricity for the town.

My title is taken out of the Canadian Conservation Institute’s exhaustive “Notes,” and refers to the first photographs ever produced: the ghostly Daguerreotypes. The Daguerreotype was invented in France in 1839 by L.J.M Daguerre, who agreed not to patent the invention in exchange for a pension from the French Government, allowing the technology to easily spread in the following years. These early photographs were made with “silver amalgam” a mix of silver and mercury on a copper plate. The result is a very reflective, mirrored surface with a negative image on it. Much like a hockey card hologram, you have to turn the daguerreotype and have the light hit it at an angle in order to see the actual image. When revealed the image is exceptionally clear, if somewhat spooky. They really do seem like “mirrors with a memory.” The daguerreotype you see here, to the right, is only visible because it is reflecting the outside of a black binder. The left picture is actually reflecting the knit of my sweater, and the half-dozen previous shots revealed only a reflection of my camera in the frame.

Just like today, with our own emerging competition between Blue Ray and HDDVD, different forms of similar technology competed for the mid-nineteenth century consumer market. Daguerreotypes were considered too expensive and too time consuming, and fell out of use by the American Civil War in the 1860s. Yet, their ethereal quality has ensured their continued use to this day, as some artists still produce them on a small scale. Paper photographs obviously won out in the end, but for a time, two other varieties competed: the tintype and the ambrotype. [1]

We don’t have any examples of the ambrotype, which was a negative image made on a sheet of glass with a dark backing of paint or cloth to give it the appearance of a positive. The ambrotype was invented in the 1850s, but by the late 1860s or early 70s they had more or less gone out of fashion.

The tintype is perhaps the most widely known and was the most common of these early forms of photography. “Tintype” is actually a misnomer, since the pictures are actually made on very thin pieces of iron, and are therefore sometimes more properly referred to as “ferrotypes.” These tintypes or ferrotypes were likely in an album or a fancy frame at some point but were taken out long ago. They are all somewhat irregularly shaped, with few straight edges. They are tiny, only a few inches square, yet they are very detailed. Unfortunately, as with so much in the collection, the catalogue cannot identify the people in the pictures. Clothing and the technology can give us some inexact clue to the dates, but for the most part the identities of these people are lost to time. They are important, however, as the process for making tintypes and daguerreotypes resulted in only one copy being possible. There can be no other original copies of these particular early photographs.

Finally, there is a little mystery with this one. It appears to be made of copper, it is certainly a negative and is affixed to a small wooden block. I have no idea what kind of early photograph it is. If anyone has an idea, please let me know. [Jeremy from Queen's University Archives has since informed me that this would have been used in printing, making copies of this image. That fact only increases the mystery of who this woman is!]

Volunteers

At long last, we have begun moving our volunteers over to the main collection area and have started the long process of photographing the entire collection. Things are moving very quickly with so many helpful and enthusiastic people hard at work. We have also begun thinking about setting up an exhibit for the summer. Our subject will be: Gananoque Industries, Labour and Lifestyle, 1860-1890. Many thanks to Pam and Lisa for getting in on the early stages of research.

I am currently setting up small exhibit on winter sports for the upcoming Senior Winter Games being held in Gananoque, and thought I would include a couple of the pictures found by volunteers John McDonald and Eileen Truesdell. So, for this week’s splash o’ nostalgia here is the all-star line up of the 1930, trophy-winning, Gananoque High School Hockey Team. Luckily, the names are listed and we have, in the back row: Ray Hawke, Arnold Bates, Harold White, Gerard Gardener, Henry Littlejohn, Oliver Wing and Archie Sequin. Front Row: Bill Valentine, Bernard O’Hearn, Bernard Shine, Merrill “Smiley” Cummings.

Next week I’ll hopefully be able to show a little on the storage plan for the artefacts and a show off some of the many thousands of artefacts in the Gananoque Museum Collections.

[1]Canadian Conservation Institute, Notes. 16/1 "Care of Encased Photographic Images" also see http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/daghtml/daghome.html for an excellent link to more information on Daguerreotypes, Tintypes and Ambrotypes.

The Gananoque Citizens' Band

2007-01-12T10:07:00.000-08:00

Just after Christmas in 1920, Gananoque ratepayers received a letter from the Gananoque Citizens’ Band. It implored the town’s people to support a special bylaw that would see the band receive a small stipend for the appointment of a permanent band leader and to pay for instrument repairs. The letter argued that this would ensure the continued existence of the venerable institution. It seems the band had fallen on hard times as radio and movie theatres had cut into their market. The letter, signed by band manager W.J. Kelly, asked:

“Does the band not help to increase tourist traffic annually? Does it not give 52 weeks free advertising to your town? Does it not brighten your recreation hours at the park in summer at the open airs, or soothe you when you enjoy the placid bosom of the St. Lawrence by moonlight? When you bury your illustrious dead these funeral are ours. When you do honour to the living, these occasions are also ours” [1]. (Left is a picture of the Gananoque Citizens’ Band Music Chest in the Museum Collections)

I wasn’t able to find whether or not the bylaw passed, but the Gananoque Citizens Band did continue to play for over 50 years after this letter was sent. In spite of the dramatic appeal of 1920, the Gananoque Band had been thriving during the first decades of the 20th Century.

Originally, the militia organized the first band in Gananoque in 1854 and they practiced in Auchinvole’s Tannery, a large red brick factory that once stood, aptly, on Tanner St. A military officer, Captain Murdock, was the instructor and a local man, J.B. McMurchy, was the leader. Two years later, the Gananoque Carriage Works formed the Silver Cornet Band which was manned with the remaining members of the militia band and eventually evolved into the Gananoque Citizens’ Band. Like so much else in Gananoque, industry was the real starting point. In fact, industrialization was the root of many such local bands throughout North America, just like the English band movement a few decades earlier. The brass band was a symbol of pride and prosperity, and formed one of the only outlets for the arts in a rural or industrial community [2].

This photograph, taken in 1860, shows the Gananoque Brass Band. According to the names scribbled on the back Captain Murdock and J.B. McMurchy are shown, but it’s unclear which ones they are. The man in the white striped pants is likely one of them. The military influence in the band is clearly seen in the kepis and uniforms.

In the decades that followed, the band became a central part of the community. With the onset of the “Golden Age” of tourism in the Thousand Islands, music was in demand. Entertaining the wealthy captains of industry and Victorian elites who retreated to their castles and hotels in the islands was certainly lucrative. It was during that time that a young composer and baritone player named William E. Rees moved to Gananoque from Cincinnati, Ohio and took over as band leader. It is possible that Rees is in this photograph, taken in Oshawa in 1900, standing fourth from the right. If you look very closely you can make out “LEADER” on his cap. According to one source, “Bill Rees was a distinctive character, a rugged individualist who called a spade a spade, and his superb musicianship was unquestioned.” Working as general superintendent and engineer with Parmenter & Bullock manufacturing and then Ontario Steel Products, both in Gananoque, Rees also served as orchestra leader for the upscale Thousand Islands Club on Wellesley Island and the famed Frontenac Hotel on Round Island. Rees’ most lasting contribution to Gananoque was in designing the bandstand which stands today in the town park and continues to be used [3].

Interesting enough, William Rees formed his own band, The Rees Orchestra, and the two bands amalgamated sometime in the first decade of the 20th Century. Ever conscious of changing times, the new Citizens Band and Rees Orchestra attempted to branch out into new forms of entertainment. In 1908, they leased the Grand Opera House where they opened a “Five Cent Theatre.” Great care was taken to advertise the fact that “our machine in the first place is strict FIRE PROOF and will thereby insure our patrons’ absolute safety which they could not expect in almost any 5¢ theatre in Canada…” Furthermore, “Murder scenes, Prize Fights and all objectionable pictures will positively not be shown…” [4]

I haven’t been able to determine how long the band/theatre operation lasted, but by 1920, it had obviously closed up.

The band continued on until the 1970s under a number of different directors. A junior band was also formed to train the next generations of band members. This small town band went on to compete and win in several competitions including the Perth Courier Cup, 1931, 1932, The Canadian National Exhibition in 1932, and the Dominion Championship in 1933, and certainly helped lift spirits around Gananoque during the Great Depression.

All things must come to an end, of course, and the Gananoque Citizens’ Band is no longer with us. Their training house became a daycare, and bands were brought in from elsewhere to play in the town park. It was common across North America for community bands to fold up in the 1970s. Economic recession and changing interests were the main culprits. Brass instruments fell out of style with young people, and new forms of entertainment – television, records, rock music and cheap car rides to the city – spelled the end for this, and many other, small town citizens’ bands [5].

Volunteers

Many thanks to our volunteers, Eileen, John, Marcia, Kathy and Aidan for finishing off some big chores this week. We have nearly all the photographs present in the Gananoque Museum Collections inventoried and we’ll now set about getting them copied. The extensive coin collection has also been documented by Aidan and Kathy who have made some more interesting finds. In the coming weeks, we’ll begin to show off some of the interesting items we find as we take stock of the large archival holdings and a few other interesting odds and ends.

[1] General letter to Gananoque Ratepayers from W.J.Kelly, Gananoque Citizens’ Band, Dec. 28, 1920
[2] Pages from unnamed published book found in non-accessioned dossier, Gananoque Museum Collections. For a general discussion on the roots of the band movement see: Michael J. Lomas, “Secular Civilian Amateur Wind Bands in Southern England in the Late Eighteenth and Early Nineteenth Centuries,” The Galpin Society Journal, Vol.45, (Mar., 1992) pp.78-98
[3] Same unmarked dossier as above
[4] Open letter from The Citizens’ Band, April 24, 1908
[5] See: Jay Zorn, “The Changing Role of Instrumental Music” Music Educators Journal, Vol. 76, No. 3, (Nov., 1989), pp.21-24

The Changing Meaning of Symbols

2007-01-03T08:38:00.000-08:00

One of the many problems with small town museums is that the collections are often so similar to others that they become redundant, with nothing to separate one museum from another for visitors. Every museum, of course, has something unique, but every North American museum seems to have a spinning wheel, a butter churn, wool cards and a plethora of military uniforms. Narrowing the local museum’s mandate has become the norm since the early days of every community having a museum that collected everything. While I have written about my amazement at finding sawfish snouts and 500 year old English oak, there are some interesting things that can emerge from the hodgepodge. Disparate and dissociated artefacts can begin to have some relationship between them, and Gananoque's museum collection can quietly speak about larger things.

Take for example this quilt and this serving dish. Many North Americans and Europeans would be shocked to find a swastika quilt under their tree at Christmas, and the serving dish, if manufactured today, would likely be used as proof the makers were some sort of potter-neo-Nazis. In fact these scattered and unrelated objects tell us a great deal about the changing meaning of symbols in the west. Before the Nazis came to power and killed countless millions under the banner of the swastika, it was a sign of good luck. To this day billions of people in Eastern cultures continue to revere it. Although we in the west associate violence and evil with the swastika, it is also one the most revered icons of the Jain religion, one built on ultra-pacifism and respect for life. It is one of the oldest symbols of the world, one found from India to England, Africa to Japan; a common religious or folkloric icon at home in hundreds of cultures and thousands of places, often used to ward off evil or bring good fortune. The savage events of the 20th century changed that benign symbol into one immediately identifiable with the worst of human nature, at least to westerners. So these once treasured belongings now appear to us as oddities from, perhaps, a more innocent past.

In other news, work has begun again after the holiday break. To date we have surpassed 1000 artefacts inventoried, or getting close to 25% complete. Queen’s University Archives has taken an interest, and has kindly offered to take in our collection of Joel Stone papers and account books on loan to be copied and professionally treated. My thanks to Paul Banfield and the staff of the Archives for doing such a great service for our town and museum collection.

Finally, having received a number of inquiries and comments on the Gananoque Citizen’s Band, next week I will discuss that proud and venerable institution that entertained Gananoqueans for over a hundred years. A point of nostalgia for many, the Citizens Band was part of a tight-knit and proud community. It was more than just a band; it was a major part of any town event and added a richness to small town life. It died out with the advent of Television and the changing tastes in leisure. People were drawn away from the town park bandstand and regular communal entertainment into the solitary comfort of their living rooms.

For Further reading on the changing meaning of the swastika see: W. G. V. Balchin "The Swastika" Folklore, Vol. 55, No. 4. (Dec., 1944), pp. 167-168

Streetscapes and Coins

2006-12-15T12:35:00.000-08:00

With the volunteers busily working, the project continues to make some great headway. Last week town staff arranged the removal of some of the large, antique, display cases to off-site storage. Now the old factory floor of the Jones Shovel Factory has space to bring in shelving and will hopefully provide a lasting storage space for Gananoque’s historical collections. There are many challenges to the space: the ceiling is a bit high and it will be a struggle to keep the humidity under control, but it is the best option we have found so far. The large windows have been covered so we have successfully resolved the light issue.

We had five volunteers working in our space at the former Textron plant this past week. To date we have inventoried some 720 artefacts (approximately 17%), and have removed hundreds of photographs from damaging frames and self-adhesive albums. Some damage has been quite severe, but we have reached other photos just in time. When this phase of the project is complete we will have the whole collection scanned and it will be available for the town’s people. Luckily, we have Eileen Truesdell and John McDonald working on the photos, and their knowledge of the town has provided some great information for what would have remained anonymous pictures.

Aidan Baker and his mother Cathy are among our most enthusiastic volunteers and have been working with intern Erin Findlay on cleaning and cataloguing a collection of 200 or more coins from all periods and places. Much of the time has been spent on the delicate and careful removal of tape and old rubber foam used in former displays. The adhesives have almost permanently grafted (or cross-linked as we say) to the metal and removing it is a time consuming and frustrating chore. In ideal conditions, chemicals and a fume hood would speed things along, but our workers do their best with Q-Tips and distilled water. Aidan has found some very interesting coins in his work. This Upper Canadian coin from 1816 (on the left) commemorates Brock’s death at the Battle of Queenston Heights in 1812. You can see how the tape and glue has obscured and damaged the face. The collection also includes a number of coins relating specifically to Gananoque such as a silver dollar depicting the Gananoque Town Hall and the curious wooden nickel which was a favourite souvenir in Gananoque in the mid-Twentieth Century.

While working with volunteer David Wells at the Chamber of Commerce we came across our first real experience with some active mould. As you can see, the artwork, (a presentation to Charles S. McDonald for all his service to the community), is nearly destroyed and the mould is still working at eating away the rest of the paper. We have isolated this artefact so it does not contaminate others until we determine how best to treat it.

To end off this week, I have included four pictures of Gananoque landscapes. The first is a postcard from the 1960s and shows how different the streetscape looked. The clock tower is where the Toronto Dominion Bank now sits and across the street the Bank of Montreal. I have tossed in a present image of the street for comparison. I am sure many will agree that the push for a modern look doesn’t always have the best results.

This drawing dated May 28th, 1870 is a “Wilmott Print” and depicts the falls on the Gananoque River that powered the various mills. You can see the logs collecting at the base of the rapids below the bridge. Finally, the photograph on the right, as you can see in the writing, is of the same mills depicted in the print. The picture is from the 1880s and the caption tells us that the man driving the horse is Frank Latimer, a family name still very much alive in Gananoque.

As we move through the collection it is becoming more and more evident just how important and representative the artefacts and photographs are to the history of Gananoque. The educational potential for young and old alike is unlimited. I would like to thank the Town staff for all their help this past couple of weeks in removing heaps of rubbish and the display cases. Many thanks also the Eileen, John, Cathy, Aidan, David and Kathy as well as intern Erin for all their hard work.

Discoveries of Early "Cadanoghqua"

2006-12-01T11:37:00.000-08:00

This morning, while searching about for that great artefact to display online, I stumbled across an old file case marked “Deeds, Mortgages and Legal Documents.” I popped it open to find yet another trove of forgotten items – land grants from every era of the Nineteenth Century, files from factories and receipts to and from local businesses. The most important items, bar none, were two tattered account books. The first dated 1818 belonged to a merchant in Gananoque – perhaps Ephraim Webster whose shop appears on the military sketch in 1815. The other immediately caught my eye, as the hand writing was very familiar. There is no doubt that this is the town founder, Joel Stone’s account book from 1795-1796. I have done a considerable amount of work on Stone and his times, and this find was astonishing to me. To my knowledge this piece is more or less unknown, and contains a vast amount of information on the day to day workings of a frontier outpost. The settlement, “Cadanoghqua” as it is spelled in the account book, had barely begun, and was little more than a cluster of shacks and two mills. Lady Elizabeth Simcoe, the wife of Upper Canada’s first Lt. Gov., John Graves Simcoe, stopped at the settlement the year before and recorded her impressions.

“A very wet morning after a night of incessant rain; the Canadians would not stir, so I waited to breakfast. Mr. Stone, who is building a mill opposite Fairfield’s came, and was extremely civil; brought butter and milk. About nine the rain ceased. I walked to look at the mill and embarked. Gave a dollar to the people. Mr. McGill said Stone was too much of a gentleman to offer anything to. The mill he is building is to have 15 saws. He says there is a portage of only half a mile from the Gananoqui to the Rideau.”

Curiously she also reported the same day: “Our Canadians are old and do not sing; however, I made them sing “Trois Filles d’un Prince,” tho [sic] indifferently.” [1]

Of course here we also see Lady Simcoe’s painting of the settlement only 4 years before Stone began keeping his records in this account book, (Image Courtesy of Archives of Ontario). The settlement was transforming rapidly as Stone and his many workmen cleared the wilderness and built their new lives.
The account book contains information on what he was buying and selling in the local area and the tiny number of names listed is a clear indication of how small the population was. This book is not only a reflection of early Upper Canadian commerce, but also how New England merchants did business. It is sometimes easy to forget that Stone spoke with a New England accent and carried on in the ways of a “Yankee” merchant. Stone’s new little Kingdom was in many ways a new New England, and it would be decades before English-speaking people would refer to themselves as “Canadians.” The entries range from his own records of paying for passage to Kingston and paying to feed his men en route (the men are never named), to agreements to cut and deliver planks and boards, to buying “Dear skins” from Silas Judson and other woodsmen. It also lists the many luxuries that Stone imported into the area – linens, buttons, silk handkerchiefs, and calico.

What is wonderful about the account book is that it not only tells us who was living in the settlement and who was buying what, but it also has other very interesting entries. For example, on Weds, 2nd March 1796 “Benjamin Butterfield began work______at the rate of 8 dollars per month to take his pay from the store.” There was little actual cash on the frontier. He also recorded the weather on the back of the book: “…this is the 20th day of January 1796 and is the first time I have seen the Cadanoghqua river shut with Ice this Season so as to prevent Boats passing up to the Mills.” Fascinating stuff, and there will be more to come as I use my spare time to transcribe this and other fantastic finds.

Volunteers

This week we also began our volunteer program, and it is off to a great start. Our present task is removing hundreds of old pictures from their decaying and damaging frames and encapsulating them in acid-free plastic. In addition, we are filing the pictures and taking a detailed inventory. It is a huge task, and with so much else going on, with the help of our dedicated volunteers it can finally be accomplished. In the New Year we will begin to scan the pictures and make them available for the community. My sincere thanks to John, Eileen, and Dianne who participated this week, and the many others who have offered their time. There is so much to do that all offers are very much appreciated.

These pictures are just two examples of the photos the volunteers are working with. The first on the left was probably taken from the old water tower looking down towards King Street. In the background you can see the McDonald House (now Town Hall) and the Victoria Hotel at the far left, indicating the picture is probably from the opening years of the 20th century prior to the Shovel Company taking over the hotel. The telephone polls are interesting and I am sure could provide a more exact date for the picture. The second picture on the left shows the Gananoque waterfront long before it was a tourist destination. Where the Arthur Child Heritage Museum now stands was a Train Station and the Gananoque Inn, across the mouth of the river, was a Carriage Factory. Yet, the geography is immediately recognizable to residents and visitors.

Thanks again to Erin Findlay of Algonquin College and Kathy Karkut and all the Volunteers for their valuable assistance this week. Without their help the project would be nowhere near where it is today.

-Tim

[1] J Ross Robertson, ed. The Diary of Mrs. John Graves Simcoe (Toronto, The Ontario Publishing Co. Limited, 1934), pp.106-110, 249-253 quoted from my website, www.colonelstone.ca

Firsts and Origins

2006-11-24T11:14:00.000-08:00

Things are beginning to move at a much faster pace around the Gananoque Collections. This week the project welcomed Erin Findlay from Algonquin College’s Museum Studies programme. She has brought a great deal of knowledge, ideas and enthusiasm into the project, which is much appreciated. We’re also finally putting our many volunteers to work, managing and organizing our large collections of photographs, postcards and coins.

As you can see we still have a long way to go, but little by little we are moving or dismantling old display cases that are taking up space, and tossing out a decade’s worth of accumulated debris. Our head volunteer, Kathy Karkut, has been indispensable over the last little while as rooms, once cluttered and unmanageable, have been tidied up to the point where proper work can be carried out.

Last week I had the pleasure to attend and speak at a Symposium in Litchfield, Connecticut, entitled “Inventing Our Past: What, How and Why We Remember.” It was an illuminating day where speakers explored the ideas and importance of Museums, Archives and History in not only ensuring we accurately remember those who came before, but also ensuring accountability for future generations of governments. As Dr. Randall Jimmerson said, a properly run archive and trained archivist, with a mandate to seek out and preserve documents from all facets of society, can serve as the collective memory of a group or community, and can act as a check on the potential abuses and invented histories of governments.

I spoke on the invention of the Loyalist Myth, a “tradition” that little resembled the majority of refugee experiences, and I talked about how that influenced the politics of Upper Canada for a century after the Loyalist settlement. Of course, Joel Stone, the founder of Gananoque, was a Loyalist from Litchfield, so it was an interesting experience to share his story in his former home town. My thanks to Archivist Linda Hocking, Curator Julie Frey, and Executive Director Catherine Fields for their warm hospitality. While there I had the added pleasure of being lodged in the Tapping Reeve House and Law School shown here. Built in 1773-74 and opening just after the Revolution, this was America’s first law school and educated such men as Aaron Burr, John Calhoun and hundreds of other prominent Americans. The Litchfield Historical Society, (which encompasses the Museum and Archives, and Tapping Reeve house) is an outstanding institution, and one I felt very privileged to explore. I have added a link to their site on the left.

The symposium got me thinking of how firsts and origins are always important to any community or nation, but they are often so celebrated and revered that there are some heavy politics surrounding them. History that puts doubt on the traditional stories has been shunned in the past or deliberately covered-up as it explodes what people believe in. The reason, of course, is that our origins, to a large degree, help provide us with identity - we “own” that history and it is a part of us. To prove certain things wrong or inaccurate can sometimes be devastating. That, however, is a reality of history. As Bernard Bailyn wrote, history is a series of “delicate contrivances” where a very small amount of information can upset a whole way of thinking about a person or an event. At I talk I gave on Monday to the Leeds and Thousand Islands Historical Society, for example, it came as a surprise to some that Joel Stone did not in fact sit stranded and alone on the river bank, but already had workmen from Litchfield building his mill when he arrived at the Gananoque River. The image of the self-made frontier man is by no means destroyed, but it does cause one to question the stories we are told. Another example of this resistance to myth busting was in the 1850s, when the young historian Jedidiah Merritt presented his findings from his investigation into the Loyalist era. The Upper Canadian government at the time was horrified by the unpatriotic and often simple people of the period and asked that the grant they provided be returned. Archival memory and popular myth rarely agree. [1]

Yet, origins and firsts are important in their own right. Humans are linear creatures, and having a beginning places us in a timeline. The Gananoque Museum Collections contain many examples of origins and firsts. This picture is of Gananoque’s first town council in 1890 (prior to that it had been considered a village even though the population was probably large enough for it to be considered a town.) The little tag that was found with the picture lists the names as: “Back row, left to right: D.J. Reed, George Toner, J.B. McMurchy, D.J. Lloyd, E.J. Seale, John Kee, W.B. Carroll. Front Row: W.N. Rogers, Robert Taylor (Deputy Mayor), William Byers (Mayor), David Darling (Reeve), J.J. Storey." (After working with these pictures some of the faces are becomming very familiar - mainly from the mustaches...the wonderful thing about the nineteenth century are the many styles of facial hair that can often be of great assistance when identifying people).

Stepping further back, I had the good fortune of finding this medal in the bottom of a box containing dolls and doilies. Dated from 1870, this is likely the first medal inscribed with and issued by the Dominion of Canada. The Fenian Brotherhood attempted to invade Canada at numerous times and places between 1866 and 1871. Battle hardened from experiences in the American Civil War, the Irish immigrants of the Fenian Brotherhood made several violent, yet unsuccessful attempts at attacking Canada. Their plan was to somehow use the new Dominion as a bargaining chip in order to free Ireland from the British Empire. No longer a dependent colony, this was Canada’s first military conflict as a Dominion. The Fenian threat was also one of the factors which helped increase support for Confederation in 1867, as a united front would provide for better defence for the various British colonies against the Fenians or other invaders from the South.

Finally, we have a document from 1828, that more or less established Dr. William Potter as Gananoque’s first physician. The undersigned, including the McDonald brothers, Joel Stone and other men of means, agreed to pay to have Dr. Potter in town, for at least 8 months. The term became permanent, of course, and the good doctor’s home still stands on Stone Street across from the Clock Tower. The document is in poor shape, yet is of great historical significance to Gananoque, as it marks a step in the growth from frontier outpost to town. Former museum staff made some very damaging repairs, including scotch tape and using black marker to affix the accession number. Both are extremely damaging to 200 year old paper. Although of great importance to the town, money is short to conserve and repair these items, and as always, I continue to implore the people of Gananoque to help and save their history – the history they own.

[1] See: Norman Knowles, Inventing the Loyalists: The Ontario Loyalist Tradition and the Creation of Usable Pasts, (Toronto, University of Toronto Press, 1997)

Lest We Forget

2006-11-10T10:57:00.000-08:00

In honour of Remembrance Day, and continuing with the running theme of exploring the military artefacts of the Gananoque Museum Collection, we begin with a pair of tattered postcards from the First World War Dated August 1914. They show the parade of young men from Gananoque’s 3rd Battery - the “Gananoque Battery” as it was known - preparing to leave for the war in France. For some they were sharing their last good-byes with friends and loved-ones.

The postcard on the right includes the caption “March to the Front. 3rd Battery, 1st Brigade. Gananoque, Ont.” The second one, on the left, reads “Good-bye boys…Aug. 1914.” In total 86 men from Gananoque gave their lives in the two world wars, 58 of them in the drowning mud of the trenches in the First World War. Every year their names are read in the Remembrance Day ceremonies at the Town Park. Their stories can be found in an excellent local resource, Gananoque Remembers, by Bill Beswetherick and Geraldine Chase.

In the important efforts to remember and honour the fallen soldiers, often times the valuable services of other groups are overlooked. Last week I mentioned the industrial workers in Gananoque and the valuable items they produced, such as the Link Trainer. Another group is the Nurses. In 1908, Georgina Fane Pope became the first director of the Canadian Army Nurses Corps, a section of the military that became vital to saving lives and comforting the dying in all wars since. This nurse’s dress uniform from the First World War was worn by Nina Meggs of Gananoque when she served overseas.

The Thousand Islands also played host to many wounded Canadian soldiers. The picture shown on the left is of patients and staff of the military convalescent hospital on Leek Island. The island originally served as the summer home of Mr. Ira and Mrs. Katherine Kip (later Runyon). They donated the island and home to the Canadian Government in 1917 to serve as a hospital until the war’s end. The museum collection contains letters of thanks from the Minister of Defence to Mrs. Runyon for her selfless donation. It must have been extremely therapeutic for the returning soldiers, shot up amongst the death and barbed wire of the Western Front, to recover surrounded by the nature and quiet of the Thousand Islands.

Another medical practitioner from Gananoque who saw action in World War I was Dr. William Hale shown here. Dr. Hale served with distinction in the conflict, and was even censured for following his fellow soldiers into battle on Vimy Ridge, something a valuable doctor was not supposed to do. One of the most interesting pieces in the collections is a telegram exchange that reveals the frustrating, heart-wrenching, and needless sorrow of war. On June 17th (no year recorded on the telegram), a simple and cold line passed the news that “William died eight June fractured skull accidental.” The family lived with that reality for over a month, sending a letter to the director of records to learn more. A telegram reply dated two weeks later, related the news that “Captain Wm Hale well serving with his unit Error made owing to officer same name being reported killed.” This sort of terrible mix-up must have occurred countless times, only adding to the awful stress of war.

Finally, as we celebrate and honour the memory of our fallen soldiers from the last century and our present conflict in Afghanistan, I believe it is important not to forget others from our past that fell serving the country and Empire. As the space of time increases between ourselves and those who came before, the sacrifices of those who served and fought in the 18th and 19th centuries seem to become less significant, less important. This jacket, for example, was worn by an artillery Colonel in the late 19th Century and was tucked away, forgotten in the attic. What of the Canadians that fought in the Boer War, the Fenian Raids, the Rebellions and the War of 1812? I was encouraged when I visited the local branch of the Royal Canadian Legion and saw that along with the medals from the 20th Century there were some from those conflicts I just mentioned. Through the efforts of veterans and museums, the memory of those that fought and served Canada in all the wars will remain strong.

Progress!

2006-11-02T12:34:00.000-08:00

I will begin this week by thanking everyone who came out to the information meeting held at the Arthur Child Museum Monday night. It was very encouraging to meet and greet so many people eager to give their time to help the cause of preserving our history.

After 6 weeks of work, myself and a small band of trusty volunteers and town workmen have made some progress in what’s left of the former display room. You can see in this picture on the above left how things used to be, and in the next one on the right, how things are now. We are not finished by any means, but it’s a good start. Many thanks to the town staff for removing the mysterious boat and storing it off-site.

As we moved through the ancient display cases and clouds of dust, an eclectic mix of history was there to greet us. Artillery shells, powder horns, kitchen items, bayonets, school books from the 1840s, Nazi helmets in near-pristine shape, manufactured products from Gananoque, radios, photographs, WWI flak jackets, and the list just keeps going. Once things get under control, we’ll begin to highlight individual artefacts and give more of an in-depth background to them, but for now a couple pictures will have to suffice.

The WWI Flak Jacket has a name stenciled on it, and one of the volunteers for this project, Eileen Truesdell, did some sleuthing for us. This is what she sent me:

"Roy Stanley Foley was the s/o William H. Foley & Emily Jane Webster
born March 17, 1887, He was 5ft 8 1/2 Inches, Girth 36 ins, Range of expension 4 ins
Medium complexion, Brown eyes and brown hair. Religion Methodist.
Small scar unnder chin, small birthmark right calf, mole waist line back.
Residence 38 Gloucester Toronto, ON. Born Lansdowne, Trade School Teacher, Single
Belongs to a Militia Force Served with C. O. T. C."

Many thanks to Eileen for providing us with this.

I also received a very interesting call from a man in Port Dover who is busy restoring a Link Trainer and is looking for more information. The Link Trainer was manufactured in Binghamton, New York and Gananoque, Ontario, and from there it was sent to the American, Canadian, British and other allied air forces and navies for training. (It is also rumoured that the Japanese Imperial Navy was a major customer in the 1930s, but that is for another time and debate). The Link Trainer is the largest and most conspicuous of the artefacts in the Gananoque Museum Collection, and I was sure I had seen a number of old manuals for the trainer. Sure enough, I was able to find about 5 or 6 catalogues, manuals, and schematics that should prove helpful to the restorer. I’ll try and keep up with that project and report back when I can. Along with the manuals, I found this little patriotic ad. In many ways the Link Trainer used by allied forces everywhere is a testament to Gananoque’s contributions to the war effort and it is fortunate that our trainer is still in good shape.

Finally, rummaging through old things is always fun for me, but being able to undertake the task in my home town is doubly rewarding. Often times the history I am uncovering is easily recognizable, and I cannot resist a tiny bit of nostalgia this week. This is a picture of the citizens band from 1933, celebrating yet another regional championship. I grew up on hearing stories of the band’s success from my Grandfather, Joe Cote, who is pictured here (fourth from right, back row) at the young age of 18. There is a handy list of other names written below the picture. If anyone in the town would like a digital copy of this or any other photograph in the collection, contact me at tcompeau@gmail.com. (This pic is blurry when enlarged due to an old fashioned glossy finish and prevents a clean scan.)

Work, Work, Work...

2006-10-27T12:14:00.000-07:00

This week was a busy one, but an interesting one. I’ll begin, though, with something that happened last week.

The foundations of any museum collection are its records. Without good records, items can be lost, stories forgotten, and it can create endless headaches for the people left to deal with the situation. As I have shown, the Gananoque Museum, like so many other small museums, is packed full of military artefacts, such as this Mark 1 grenade that I mentioned a couple weeks back. I was leery of the grenade from the beginning, as others I have seen had the been drilled out so all could see that they were no longer full of explosives. This grenade had the bottom screwed on tightly, and I was not about to pop it open and see if there was anything left. I checked the records, and sure enough, the description read: “1 Mk 1 Grenade, WWII” and then gave its dimensions. There was nothing in the catalogue, or the files, to say that the item had ever been deactivated. Even though I suspected it was probably ok, I knew that it would be a costly mistake if I were wrong. So, I called the ammo specialist at CFBK, and he told me to alert the GFPD, who needed to call LFAC for an EUD. What does all that mean? We no longer have a grenade, which is likely for the best.

On Tuesday I had the great pleasure of being given a tour of the Brockville Museum. I have never seen a small town museum, with only a couple of paid staff, run so well. The collection storage was immaculate, the records were all in order, the volunteers trained and operating as well as full-time, paid professionals. It was truly heartening to see what can be done with trained, dedicated staff and volunteers. The Brockville Museum should serve as a model for all community museums. www.brockvillemuseum.com

Bonnie Burke, the Curator/Director gave me a lot of wonderful advice. Many thanks to her, Brenda Foss, the Collections Manager, and Ruth MacFarlane, the Education Programmer, for all their time and interest in what we’re doing here in town. I am encouraged already by the many people in Gananoque who have come forward to volunteer their time to help preserve our town’s history. I am sure that in time Gananoque, too, can have a museum collection to be proud of.

The staff in Brockville also passed me a very interesting note from an Archival Curator in El Paso, Texas. It seems the land grant of one of our earliest Loyalist settlers, Oliver Landon, of Landon Bay fame, has ended up in Texas. Oliver Landon was one of many Loyalists who came to Leeds County from Litchfield, Connecticut, and how it ended up in Texas is a mystery. Luckily, the 200 year-old document will now find its way back home. More on this as information comes in.

One final note, that has to do with the problems of poor record keeping, is this item here: The Victrola Talking Machine. I remember this phonograph when I worked in the museum as a teenager. Time has taken its toll since then: the mechanism no longer seems to work, and the finish has seen better days. I was alerted to the item by a Gananoque resident who was eager to finally have it back – being that it was loaned to the museum decades ago. Never properly recorded, memory of it being loaned was lost, and the Victrola and all its individual record albums and parts were improperly accessioned into the permanent collections in 1999. This has now caused some interesting cataloguing issues. Luckily, the loaner retained her paperwork, and it can now be returned to its rightful owner.

In a fantastic coincidence, flipping through a pile of pre-WWI magazines, I came across this add from January, 1913. At $200.00 this phonograph would have been a treasured family possession, and I am very glad I was able to return it. This little instance shows the need to get these records in order, and the serious, yet unrealized potential for the collections.

For anyone who has offered to volunteer or would like to volunteer, there will be a meeting at the Arthur Child Museum at 7pm Monday October 30th. If you would like information and cannot attend please e-mail me at tcompeau@gmail.com.

Story-less Artefacts

2006-10-16T16:26:00.000-07:00

I officially graduate from Western this week, and with a public meeting with the Gananoque Town Council Tuesday night I thought it best to get my post up early this week. Although off my running theme of exploring the military relics, I thought I’d talk about something that has been bothering me about the collection.

Around me everyday are thousands of little pieces of history. They speak with a language all their own; there are clues to their former use and value, sometimes obvious, other times quite obscure. The problem is that an artefact’s value is often not in their original functions, it’s in their stories. Good record keeping is the key to preserving the stories, and that is where I think part of the Gananoque Museum’s problems began.

When any object is donated, there is always a story to go with it. Yet, we have so many trinkets, so many photo albums for which the records merely state a donor and a lacklustre entry such as “one locket with photos, black.” Whoever those people were in that locket, and whatever value someone ascribed to the item is gone forever. What we have left is a soulless prop, and the tragedy of a story untold and lost to time. A museum should be a repository for our history, our story, not lifeless things. Those inanimate objects are meant merely to articulate part of the story, and act as a tangible proof that an event did occur or a person lived. An item shown for its monetary worth or rarity should be left to an antique dealer. The story-less artefact defeats the purpose of a museum. Yet, it is not a hopeless cause, much can be salvaged through research, but it takes time, and very often it takes considerable money. In the field of Public History, both are often in short supply.

I’d like to extend an invitation to anyone who knows of anything they or a relative donated to the Gananoque Museum to please write down or tell me the story of the item. There is a cost to storing every piece, and unfortunately those pieces without a story may be the first to find new homes. Stories can be e-mailed to me at tcompeau@gmail.com. If you can, please try and remember roughly what year you think the objects were donated. Also, I'm extremely encouraged by the large number of offers to volunteer. I’m attempting to get to each in turn, so if you’ve sent me an offer, I will be in touch soon.

A Forgotten Knight of the Air...

2006-10-13T12:45:00.000-07:00

This week’s business did not allow for much time in the storage area. I did, however, manage to accomplish one goal I have had since beginning this work. When I was a little kid, one of the things that caught my eye when the museum was open, was a brown, leather flight suit. This was the sort of gear worn in World War I by the “Knights of the Air” or the “Flyboys”; the very first men to take war to the air; the men that left us such legends as Billy Bishop and the Red Baron.

When I first started a few weeks ago, I spotted the suit, still on its display stand after all these years, trapped in between a number of display cases. On the one day I had free for working in the storage area this week, I spent most of the morning carefully slinking my way through the crevices to reach the trapped relic. I couldn’t leave it there any longer. Sunlight poured in from the large windows, and dust had collected on every part of artefact. As I neared it, I realized to my horror that it had been stuffed with newspaper. Of all the things to use, why newspaper? Everyone knows how quickly newspaper yellows and decays. My heart sunk as I envisioned the damage caused to the leather by the acidic paper on the inside and the sunlight on the exterior.

Just touching the leather jacket and helmet produced clouds of orange dust, and the decaying material coated everything in a rusty stain. Searching around, I found some clean, white linen and prepared to wrap the once proud flight-suit. What astonished me, as I slowly began to remove the suit from its stand, was the sheer amount of newspaper used. In every space it was packed tight. The date on the newspaper was 1994. Now, I have gotten used to being disappointed by how things have been stored, but this was too much. Someone broke every convention and basic tenet of museology with this artefact. The stand it was on was poor quality wood, splintered and stained, and then painted. I couldn’t guess at the monetary worth, but the historical value of this flight jacket and helmet are immense.

Finally, I was able to remove the pieces to my work area for further inspection. I have dedicated one room for photographs and have covered the windows to prevent any light getting in. This room will be the flight suit’s home until I can figure out what to do with it.

Closer inspection revealed more problems. Pins inserted have rusted, and at some point, someone used scotch tape on it. One piece of desiccated tape flaked off as I moved it, taking another chunk of leather with it. That part of the jacket not exposed to the sun revealed the full extent of the damage on this piece. The faded sickly tan-orange was once deep, rich, chocolate brown. On organic material such as leather, damage from sunlight is usually irreversible.

Different pieces of the flight-suit were originally donated by two separate Gananoque residents, Mrs. J. Acton and Maj. Col. E. Warwick, both, coincidentally, in 1978. We do not know who wore the suit. The original entries state the condition of both, and remark that the jacket was in bad shape even then, yet nothing was ever done. I would think that this piece will likely end up in Ottawa where it can be properly cared for. This whole issue is the perfect example of the problems that arise when small institutions take in things they have no capacity to properly care for.

In other news, I had the chance to attend a two day work shop put on by the Canadian Conservation Institute and hosted by the Mill of Kintail, part of the Lanark County Museum Association, in Almonte, Ontario. The information presented in the seminars (Storage Planning and preservation in seasonal museums) facilitated by Siegfried Rempel and Deborah Stewart will be vital in the coming months. Many thanks to all involved.

Next week, I am away once again, but I will try to get something online. I meant this week also to connect some of the military pieces with actually stories, but will have to get to that another time. Stay tuned.

The Faces of War...

2006-10-06T11:17:00.000-07:00

These are two World War II gasmasks. The adult version is quite common, but the child’s mask is much rarer. Called a “Mickey Mouse” gas mask in the old catalogue, it was meant for children 5 and under. The accompanying box has a strap which would have been worn around the child’s neck, making the mask readily at hand in case of a Nazi gas attack.

This week, among many other things, I have been focussing on the extensive collection of military artefacts from the Gananoque Museum Collection. The local Legion branch is planning their annual Remembrance Day Ceremonies, and I hope some of these items may prove useful to them and their displays. I have only scratched the surface of what is actually there, focusing on the smaller things, hats, medals etc. before moving on to the many uniforms and larger pieces. Keeping track of all these small items will be one of the first considerations.

Being that the collection is housed in the back room and attic of the Gananoque Chamber of Commerce, I’ve had to take great care while removing theses pieces. Gananoque is very much reliant on our visitors having a pleasant stay, and emerging, dust coated from a back room carrying a Mark 1 hand grenade or an artillery sabre may give people the wrong idea. My exits usually coincide with a lull in traffic; timing is everything.

Other finds included this F-5 Wilkinson Sword fighting knife used by Canadian Forces in World War II, a trench periscope, an assortment of bayonets from both wars and an unorganized mess of medals, pins and ribbons of everything from Freemason lodges and fire departments to Canadian forces. There is an impressive variety of military medals, from both World Wars, and one from 1902, and although there is no inscription of the action or service it is rewarding, it would likely be in recognition of service in the Boer War (1899-1902) in South Africa.

One of the spaces in the collection area that has remained a mystery is a row of wooden cabinets in one of the attic rooms. Small glass windows provided tantalizing peaks, but with so much delicate material and a large display case piled in front, it was nearly inaccessible. Carefully moving a collection of antique typewriters, and a number of file boxes, allowed me to do some shuffling and move the display case only a couple of feet, giving me access to the hidden collection. The cupboards were filled with hundreds of items, from local ledgers and letter books of businesses, to 150 year old bibles, and all manner of knick-knacks.

One of the finds in this hidden cupboard that fit this week’s theme was a collection of paper money from France, Belgium, Holland and Germany, dating from 1923 to 1945. The money seems to follow the progression of Canadian troops in World War II, yet there is no record of where the money actually came from. It appears it was part of a collection, gifted to the museum, but the records fail to state by whom. At any rate it is fascinating, and a little history lesson unto itself. The 50 Million Mark bill is a clear testament to the horrible inflation that occurred in Germany after the First World War, and helped create a festering resentment amongst the German people at the perceived harshness of the peace terms. The German bills from the 1940s display the hallmarks of the Nazi regime, replete with swastikas and images of the Aryan ideal, even a young blonde girl with a sprig of edelweiss.

Finally, the issue of records has been somewhat troubling. The card catalogue is incomplete, and in 1998 a firm was hired to inventory the collection. The final report has proved quite valuable to me, finally giving me some quantifiable notion of the task ahead of me. In total, the firm counted 4358 artefacts, half of which were not accessioned. The amount of 998 and 999 accession numbers indicates that an attempt was made to fix that problem. Although the workers tried very hard to be consistent in their practices, there seem to be different cataloguing systems at work. The entire catalogue was redone in 1978, as well, marking a break with yet another numbering system employed from 1964. So, between the gaps in the records and the hit and miss nature of the procedures in the past, this will be a very large project indeed. In a year, I’ll hopefully have everything streamlined and consistent, and on a computer.

Next week will be a short one, as I’m away at a preservation workshop and with Thanksgiving holiday, my time in the storage area will be limited. Hopefully I’ll have some more items from Gananoque’s military past and also some personal stories of the men and women that fought overseas.

The Basement...and a Brush with Celebrity

2006-09-29T08:22:00.000-07:00

My job sends me in a cross-town triangle everyday. I usually start in my offices in the old rivet factory, then on to the Museum to check how things are going, and most fun of all, over to the Chamber of Commerce building to sift through the collections. This week while at the Chamber, I was reminded that there was a basement I had yet to explore. I remembered going down there when I was 19 and not staying too long in the ancient, creepy old room. This time was no different, but I was on a mission. You can see in these pictures the gravel floor and wooden supports of the 160 year-old building.

Amongst the rubble and spider-webs there was a wash basin and ringer, a plough and an antique copy press. Buried under grit, dust and a variety of other odds and ends sat an old chest, closed for decades. Now, this museum and old cases have been good to me, and I have come across some amazing stuff, and this one gave me that same excitement of a new find. Slowly and carefully I cleared it off, and braced myself to gaze upon what human eyes had not seen in a quarter century. There was a pathetic creek before the hinges broke and revealed... an empty, filthy old box…they can’t all be treasure chests.

Some of the most interesting discoveries this week were recoveries. Scores of military artefacts that I had thought lost, turned up in the piles, and most are still in alright shape. I’m amazed at how well many of these artefacts have stood up to the neglect and harsh conditions. I have seen no signs of mould and, to my astonishment, no signs of pests. In such an old building this is quite a surprise, although it is still early in the process.

This week I also had the chance to speak with Bill Beswetherick, the Public Relations coordinator at the Local Legion Branch, and we discussed their plans for the Remembrance Day celebrations and a scheduled, rare visit by the Victoria Cross (the equivalent of the Congressional Medal of Honour to my American friends) won by Gananoque’s Harry Brown in 1917. The military artefacts will thus become a priority over the next few weeks. The Legion has a tremendous collection of medals, not only from the World Wars but going back through Canada’s military past to the Boer War, the British Imperial Wars in Afghanistan, and the Fenian Raids. Searching through the town’s Museum collection of medals, I came across a number of interesting pieces, including a rare service star marking the period of August to November, 1914, and engraved with the name Pte. W. Hine. I’m going to investigate this name and figure out what relationship he has to Gananoque. Thanks to Bill at the Legion for letting me know this was in there.

On a different note, searching through the collections has revealed a trove of nineteenth and early twentieth century images. Many depict the rough factory workers that once made up the bulk of Gananoque’s population. These I appreciate far more than the formal, professionally choreographed images that make up so much of the collection: people in their Sunday best, sitting or standing in front of a drop cloth. DH Akenson, in his classic The Irish in Ontario, spoke of the “law of disappearing evidence” – the fact that mundane, everyday objects are usually not considered worth saving, and therefore our remnants of the past tend to be exceptional things – we have top-hats and gowns, but no work boots. These candid images of working people help provide that missing piece of the puzzle. Photographs are very often the backbone of a collection.

One image, which I at first skimmed over, turned out to be one of the most fascinating finds so far. The image is of a couple dozen men from around the area, including Charles Stone McDonald, (the old, weary looking man in the centre with white pants who was grandson of the town’s founder, Joel Stone), and other prominent men such as C.E. Britton and Senator Taylor (more on them later). If you look closely towards the left of the picture, you’ll see a white haired, satisfied looking man, posing confidently for the camera. He was the reason for this picture, as it wasn’t everyday that one of the premiere celebrities of the nineteenth century paid a visit to the Thousand Islands.

Mr. Samuel Clemens himself, Mark Twain, visited our area numerous times, giving a lecture in Ogdensburg in the winter of 1870 and another in Brockville in 1885. This picture, taken at the posh, Thousand Islands Country Club, is likely from the 1890s. Rummaging through an old, forgotten collection, who knows what you’ll find.

In other news, with the grant writing ever on my mind, the announcement of a 50% cut in the Museum Assistance Program by the Conservative government was troubling. With record government surpluses, the Harper government called this “trimming the fat.” I implore the Federal government to take a look at any community museum and they will see only skin and bones. History is worth preserving, and I can only hope the conservatives will reconsider. The funds are in reality a very small amount of money for the country, but they are a vital part of well-run, yet cash-strapped, small museums across Canada.

With that off my chest, I’ll end off by sending my thanks out to the Town, Bonnie and the staff of the Chamber of Commerce and residents who have taken an interest in the project, especially to the Legion and schools I have had a chance to speak with. Next week the focus will be on the Military artefacts of the Gananoque Museum Collection, and the challenges we face in making sure they survive for the next generation.

About the Project

2006-09-22T12:47:00.000-07:00

As far as many Canadian towns go, Gananoque is quite old. The American Loyalist, Joel Stone, founded the settlement in 1791, but the area has been inhabited for ten thousand years, or more. The collection, therefore, contains artefacts dating from pre-history, through the Loyalist-era and up to the World Wars. It is a surprisingly large collection, containing a great deal of archival material, including antique books, local business and town records, perhaps thousands of photographs, as well as part of the correspondence and private papers of some of the original residents; the oldest document dates to 1767. The military collection is certainly worth note, and there are all the nineteenth century artefacts you’d need to furnish a museum. There are presently serious concerns for the collection’s well being, as will be shown.

As you can see in these pictures of former exhibits, The Gananoque Museum was your typical small town institution, replete with spinning wheels, war trophies, and grandma’s tea cups. It first opened its doors in 1964, under the direction of the Gananoque Historical Society, but was later turned over to the town. The building which housed the museum was originally built in the 1840s as the Albion Hotel and later the Victoria Hotel. The property was purchased by the Jones Shovel Factory in 1901 and operated as their front offices until 1960, after which it was bought by the town to serve as the Public Library (which it continues to do).

The museum’s days ended at the close of the 2000 season, when the building became the home of the Gananoque Chamber of Commerce. Why this happened is unclear, but the death of museums is something that has occurred in many communities, large and small. In the coming months I’ll hopefully uncover some more information that may shed light on this event, and help other small museums avoid the same fate.

You can see in these pictures the present and heartbreakingly critical state of the former museum’s collection. Although heated in the winter, there are no other environmental controls, nor is there any organization. The collection has been unceremoniously and roughly moved numerous times. Bathrooms were constructed for the Chamber, and many of the artefacts were left uncovered – the extent of the damage is not fully known. A card catalogue exists, as does a binder containing an accession ledger, but there is no knowing at this point what is actually in the collections as there are significant gaps in the records and there are no locations recorded.

You can make out a few artefacts in these pictures, and the serious task involved in saving this collection is obvious. There are a thousand museological nightmares here, as you can see artefacts haphazardly piled and sunlight blazing through. If you look closely you can make out a Link Trainer, the original flight simulator of the allies in WWII, among many other large artefacts. A brief walk through revealed safe conduct passes of German POWs, military medals, Loyalist pledges, century-old police files, Paleo-Indian spear points, militia papers from the 1820s - and that was in a quick scan without the joyous rummaging and exploring that will now ensue!

The process will have to be meticulous and slow if it is to succeed. Over the past couple of weeks, I have been busy drafting collections policies to determine what we will keep, organizing the scattered museum files into an archival fonds, and setting up a solid and efficient procedure. As there is no room to work in the collection’s present location, the town has generously provided more than ample work space in a nearby facility. The Arthur Child Heritage Museum has also come through with providing temporary office space, some equipment and endless amounts of moral support.

I will begin by going through the collection, item by item, and room by room, re-cataloguing, cross-referencing, photographing, and researching as I go. Following CCI guidelines, I’ll also endeavour to isolate problems such as mould etc. and figure out what actions I can take. Then, at the end of the project, we’ll find a safe and lasting location for it to be properly stored and set about digitizing as much as we can.

Tune in next week as I’ll hopefully have narrowed down a proper computerized catalogue system. I’ll also share some of the joys of grant writing, and best of all, reveal some of the lost treasures dug up in the Gananoque Museum Collection.

-Tim

Welcome to Collection Resurrection!

2006-09-22T12:41:00.000-07:00

Welcome to Collection Resurrection! This journal will follow the restoration and exploration of the Gananoque Museum Collection. The project is sponsored by the town of Gananoque and supported by the Arthur Child Heritage Museum of the Thousand Islands.

My name is Tim Compeau and I will be acting in the role of curator, registrar and when I can, conservator. I recently completed the Public History MA program at the University of Western Ontario, and it is my pleasure to begin this task.

This journal is intended for citizens of Gananoque as well as anyone interested or involved in the field of Public History, Museums and preservation of any sort.

Over the next twelve months I will showcase interesting finds and present some of the problems facing small museums. This will include the headaches of funding and grant writing, methodologies and museum procedures, and like all good Public History blogs, I will be reflecting on the process as a whole and present those events or artefacts that confuse, confound or amuse. In addition, I will also endeavour to present the history of the town and area, and even make the odd, humble plea for public support. This is the real, skin-of-your-teeth, front line of Public History, after all.

I’m hoping to update the journal every Friday.

The next entry will explain the project in more detail.