2011 Volunteers

It was great to see so many people at our Christmas celebration (hosted by Volunteer Extra-Ordinaire Lois Foster) held on December 19th to honour the many people who volunteer their time and talents for Society.

Standing left to right: Bruce Bedell , Vera Morton., Sharon White , Bill Kennedy, Mary Jane Throop, Anne Rector, Lindi Pierce, Hazel Lloyst, John Lowry, Katharine Mills, Laurel Bishop, Marilyn Hughes, Adele Dibben, Mary-Lynne Morgan, Bill Hunt, Kay Manderville, Lorna Garbutt, Doug Wilson, Mary Wilson, Sylvia French, Kieran Delaney, Orland French, George Pearce, Bobby-Jo Morris, Jeanne Delaney, Gerry Boyce, Richard Hughes, Al Cleary, Annis Ross, Ruth Boyce.
Seated at front Lois Foster, Donna Fano, Elizabeth Mitchell, Beth Green, Erin Ryan, Breanna Brethour.
Not in the picture: Nick White (taking picture) and volunteers not able to attend Diane Sule, Marney Black and Michael Shaw

Remembering

In Flanders fields the poppies blow
      Between the crosses, row on row,
   That mark our place; and in the sky
   The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.

We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
   Loved and were loved, and now we lie,
         In Flanders fields.

Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
   The torch; be yours to hold it high.
   If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
         In Flanders fields.

Lieutenant Colonel John McCrae, May 1915

Angel Cake

Orland French brought a cake to the Hastings Heritage Centre to recognise and thank the Archive Angel volunteers for their help in making the Society's 2011 Annual Banquet a success.

In the picture below, starting on the left and proceeding clockwise around the table: Elizabeth Mitchell, Katharine Mills, Lorna Garbutt, Donna Fano, Orland French, Mary Jane Throop, Erin Ryan, Marilyn Hughes, Jeanne Delaney, Kieran Delaney and Laurel Bishop (back of head only); Archivist Sharon White is standing on the left, and on the right are Dick Hughes, Adele Dibben, Bill Kennedy, Lois Foster, .

Photos by Nick White

Annual Banquet

The Society’s 2011 annual banquet was a sold-out success!  Keynote speaker Senator Mike Duffy gave a boost to the archives campaign and entertained us with his own unwritten stories about politics and Prime Ministers from Sir Mackenzie Bowell to Jean Chrétien.
 
The political dignitaries of Hastings County were well represented.

City of Belleville Councillor Garnet Thompson, County of Hastings Warden Jo-Anne Albert, and Quinte West Councillor Ron Hamilton all brought greetings from their respective municipalities.

 

Other dignitaries attended, including Prince Edward-Hastings MPP Todd Smith and MP Daryl Kramp.

The exhibit of posters featuring Hasting County's political history and the design drawings of the proposed new community archives attracted considerable interest, but the main draw was the stories and anecdotes from Senator Duffy's long career as a political reporter and broadcaster.

Senator Mike Duffy with the man he calls his mentor – Peter C. Newman, Companion of the Order of Canada and Honorary Chair of the Society's Capital Campaign Committee.

In his talk Senator Duffy encouraged the community to rally behind the Society's push to create an archives where people can learn more about local history and access the wealth of information that is their heritage.

For the article in the Belleville Intelligencer click on this link. Opens in a new window.

For additional pictures of the event click on this album link. Album opens in a new window.

Story and pictures Nick and Sharon White

175 Years of Policing in Belleville

Uniforms from around 1900

To an audience of over seventy members, guests and visitors, John Lowry (assisted by Staff-Sgt. Tony MacKinnon) gave an overview of the history of policing in Belleville and the work that is now being undertaken to preserve that history for future generations


He recounted how Belleville’s police service was officially established in 1836 with the appointment of Henry Avrill as high constable and Hiram Fulford as bailiff. The village had at that time a population of about one thousand souls and encompassed an area of just over six hundred acres at the mouth of the Moira River.
 
Its early beginnings make Belleville's police force one of the oldest police services in Canada, pre-dating the Kingston Police (founded 1843), the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (founded in 1873) and the Ontario Provincial Police (1909).

Belleville moved from village status to that of a town in 1850 and to a city in 1878. By this time the city Police Department had expanded to six members headed by Hugh McKinnon. The population had grown to nearly ten thousand people living in an area covering 1,760 acres.

A little over a half century later during World War II the force consisted of ten members. In 2010 there were 132 members of the police force.

A more complete history of the Police force can be read in the November issue of the Society's newsletter Outlook. 

A copy of that edition can be viewed by clicking this link.  

The link will open in a new window.

John Lowry and Staff-Sgt. Tony MacKinnon display equipment once used by Belleville's Police Force

Pictures Nick White, story based on Outlook article

 

No Tweeters Here!

 

Thank you to everyone who filled in the questionnaire on Internet use that was handed out at the Society's September meeting.  The answers you gave us are helpful in understanding how the Society’s website is used by our members.

Use of Internet by people filling in the survey

Why the questionnaire?  Well we know a lot about our website visitors, how many there are, where they are logged in, how they get to the website and what type of machine they are using.

Based on those people at the meeting who filled in a questionnaire, it seems reasonable to expect almost three-quarters of our members to be regular internet users. That is lower than the Canadian average but the average age of a Society member is probably higher than the Canadian average.  

Not counting non-members who didn't know the Society had a website and people who said they never used the Internet it seems that other members do use the Society's site. The three most mentioned features are shown in the following chart.  People said they used a lot of different Internet tools but nobody admitted to “tweeting”.

Reported Use of the Society's Web Site

Some general statistics - discounting, bots, crawlers, worms and their ilk we currently have about 6,000 “hits” a month. In August 2011 that translated into 329 "different people" (based on IP addresses) visiting the website. And they must find something interesting because many of those people returned.  In August we averaged 1.7 visits per visitor and they looked at an average of 5.7 pages on each visit.

The current website was published in December 2010 and is kept up to date (usually) on a monthly basis. Based on the feedback in the questionnaire we may re-arrange the site to make popular pages easier to find, but, to keep those visitors interested in the history of Hastings County and the Society we need (like any other publication) have fresh interesting material to publish.

Contributions and Ideas are Always Welcome!

Ontario Volunteer Service Awards

Ruth Boyce receives her five-year 

pin from Richard Hughes

Luella Parkhurst receives her ten-year

 pin from Richard Hughes

Volunteers have been a very important part of the Hastings Heritage Centre's operations since it opened.

Pictured here Ruth Boyce and Luella Parkhurst being awarded their five and ten year pins respectively by the Society's acting President Richard Hughes.

In June this year service award pins were presented to Hastings Heritage Centre volunteers Bobbi Jo Morris (five years), Bill Kennedy (five years, and Katharine Mills (ten years) at the Ontario Volunteer Service Awards ceremony held on the 3rd of May at the Banquet Centre in Belleville.