A New Sign in Belleville

To the sounds of the Town Crier, and short speeches by the Mayor of the City of Belleville, Neil Ellis, the Warden of Hastings County, Jo-Anne Albert and the president of Hastings County Historical Society, Orland French the official sign identifying the sity for the new Community Archives was unveiled on Thursday the 30th of June 2011.



Click on the pictures to see a larger version.




An article in the Belleville Intelligencer by Luke Hendry can be viewed at this link


Other pictures taken at the event may be viewed on this album

After the unveiling, drawings of the proposed renovation were on display inside the building.

Strawberries and a Virtual Tour and a Fund Raising project

A quick quality check
before the start

There was a very special flavour to the Hastings County Historical Society's June 2011 general meeting attended by nearly fifty people, namely strawberry!

Strawberries and and ice cream were served prior to presentations by Hazel Loyst on the progress of the Capital Campaign fund raising and by architect Ray Zaback on the renovations being made at the new location for the Community Archives on Church Street.

Serving!
John Lowery, Mary Jane Throop and Hazel Loyst

The million dollar Capital Campaign includes bronze, silver and gold levels for contributions, a total of approximately $650,000 having been funded at this time. Ray's presentation was a virtual computer tour shown on the big screen of the way the building will look when renovations are complete.



The fresh strawberries were donated by Shelter Valley Farms and the ice cream was provided at a discount by Reid's Dairy. As can been seen in the two photographs below they made for a deliciously enjoyable evening! There were seconds and even thirds for everybody.

Pictured posing with strawberries, left to right, Orland French, Mike Shaw, Gerry Boyce (getting a refill), Bruce Bedell, John Lowry (serving), Laurel Bishop, Elizabeth Mitchell, Sylvia French, Marilyn Hughes and Dianne Sule

Sharon White
outlined the elements
that go into an archives

Sharon White (archivist for the CIty of Belleville, County of Hastings and the Society) outlined the various features that have to be considered in designing an Archives building.

Building project architect Ray Zaback (of Shoalts & Zaback Architects) took people through a virtual tour of the proposed design.

And Ray Zaback took the audience for
a virtual tour of the proposed design

Listening and asking questions

From Pearl Harbour to Hudson's Bay to the Belleville Club

Lee Jourade

One of the founding members of the Hastings County Historical Society, Lee Jourard, was the Master of Ceremonies at an eclectic evening.

Starting with traditional Anglo-Celtic and Mohawk music the evening progressed with the theme of respecting and preserving our heritage and of course...

...the Society's campaign to raise funds to renovate and equip the new Community Archives.

Traditional Anglo-Celtic

Traditional Mohawk

Then, as the Master Crier of the Society loudly cried, proceeded to:

"Peter C. Newman Esquire: Companion of the Order of  Canada!

Discussing Canada from Cabot to Ignatief, with stops for:

The Company of Adventurers trading into Hudson’s Bay!

A Renegade in Power also known as John George Diefenbaker; 

And his current research of the United Empire Loyalists, who have given us Captain John Walden Meyers U.E. who built a dam on the Moira River making Belleville for over 200 years; the friendliest City by a dam site"

Stories and anecdotes spanned the globe

As the author of 24 books and Honorary Chair of the Fund Raising campaign , Peter C. Newman spoke of the importance to preserving the documents that will become tomorrow's history before digressing into many fascinating anecdotes of Canadian history.  At more complete story will appear in the September edition of the Society's newsletter Outlook.

A selection of photographs taken at the event can be viewed on the album here.

There is also a story by James Hurst about the event in the Wellington Times

Pictures and story by Nick White 

HCHS Launches "Unlock the Archives" Capital Campaign

To the ringing tones of the Society's (and Belleville's) town crier the Society launched its "Unlock the Archives" fund-raising drive at its campaign headquarters located at 208 Front Street in Belleville.  Over seventy members, guests and officials were present to hear about the progress and remaining steps required to refurbish and equip the new community archives on Church Street in Belleville.

The Community Archives is a joint project between the County of Hastings, the City of Belleville and the Hastings County Historical Society.  In addition to the Society's collection of pictures, negatives, deeds, letters and other documents (dating back to the early 1800's) the archives will house important collections from the County and City.

In the years since the Society's founding  in 1957, the need for a permanent home for the collected material has grown with the size of the Society's collection which is now believed to include over 10,000 documents, 50,000 pictures and a million photographic negatives.

The Honoury Chair of the fund-raising campaign, the well known author Peter C. Newman, spoke of the importance of archival records in preserving Canada's history for future generations. He congratulated the three parties on their progress in hiring an archivist and securing a building for the collections.

Peter presented symbolic "Unlock the Archives" keys to partners from each of the three organizations and officially launched the campaign to refurbish and equip the Church Street building.

A section of pictures taken at the event may be viewed here.

More information about the capital campaign can be viewed here.

Peter will also be hosting an "evening with Peter C. Newman" at the Belleville Club on Thursday the 9th of June.  Tickets to the event (which starts at 7:30) are available at a cost of $50 from Greenley's Bookstore.

Luke Hendry from the Belleville Intelligencer takes a shot of (from left to right) Neil Ellis (representing the City of Belleville), Peter C. Newman, Orland French (representing the Society) and Rick Phillips (representing the County of Hastings) posing with their keys. Luke's article in the Belleville Intelligencer may be seen here.

An article written by Jennifer Bowman from Loyalist College and published in the Qnetnews can be viewed here.

HCHS Bus Tour Goes to Northumberland County

Story courtesy of Jack Evans, pictures by Jack Evans and Elizabeth Mitchell.

 Susanna Moodie has been dead for more than 100 years, but she still did her bit Saturday for the Hastings County Historical Society’s fund drive toward the new archives project.

The well-known pioneer era writer and her sister, Catherine Parr Trail, another writer, and the years they spent in Northumberland County were the focal point of a day-long bus tour Saturday arranged by the historical society.  The tour drew several dozen society members plus other fans of the Strickland sisters (their maiden name) including some from as far as Toronto.

Belleville author William C. Hunt played a key role in arranging the tour as a fund raising event for the society’s share of the joint Belleville-Hastings County archives project. That included arranging for a specialist guide, Peter Brotherhood of Cobourg, an expert on Cobourg and area history and especially the Strickland sisters.

With a naturally sheltered cove and a lengthy dock built by community effort, Cobourg had become a major port on Lake Ontario in the early 1800s It was here where Susanna Moodie and Catherine Parr Trail landed, following grueling sea voyages of several weeks from their native England in 1833.

As the tour rolled around routes and sites the two women and their husbands would have seen in their day, Brotherhood explained how the two came from a large, genteel family from rural England who sought new wealth as their established family fortunes failed. Thus, from lives of comfort and culture, they entered a new world fraught with hardship, harsh climate, drudgery and isolation.

Susanna, for instance, amused her scornful neighbours when she confessed to being terrified of cattle, even though she was expected to milk them.

In historic St. Peter’s Anglican Church in Cobourg, Brotherhood reviewed the historic setting. The church’s first minister was an Archdeacon Bethune, a player in the notorious “Family Compact” which in essence ran the province in the early 1800s and sparked the William Lyon MacKenzie rebellion in 1837. (And yes, the famous Canadian medical missionary in China, Dr. Norman Bethune, was a great grandson.)

The next stop was the modern concrete dock in Cobourg harbour, which replaced the original wooden dock. The popular sandy beach and the rising hills to the north would have looked the same to the Strickland sisters, said the guide.

Hunt, an expert on the early 20th century rum running years, contributed a talk about hugely successful Cobourg-based rum runners, the Staub brothers and others. The senior Staub used a large, powerful yacht with steel plating and mounting a 50 calibre machine gun, bigger than anything the Coastguard had, he said.

Brotherhood then took the bus along the route Moodie family would have followed on present day McClelland Road, called “Melsetter.” The original owner retained use of the existing house and put the Moodie family in what Susanna described as “more of a stable for cows or pigs.”

A lunch break at the Cobourg Legion Hall was followed by a return to surrounding Hamilton Township and places where Catherine lived including an unusual eight-sided, multi-storey building called “Wolf Tower,” long gone) also the area of a large ice-age boulder and a later Trail home, Mount Ararat overlooking the shores of Rice Lake, where Trail became deeply interested in the unusual variety and types of native wild flowers, and went on to write a book about them.

With selected readings plus volumes of historic information along the way, the tour ended with a stop at the Rice Lake shoreline at Harwood, the site of a washed-out bridge which once carried rail traffic between Cobourg and Peterborough.to view the landscape, it was easy to visualize the homes and people they knew.

 

A final stop was Railway Point in Harwood, where the Cobourg-Peterborough Railroad crossed Rice Lake. Today the only indication of the past is the small rocky spit of land which was the beginning of the railroad causeway.

Archives Awareness Week

Archivist Sharon White made two presentations at the Belleville Public Library to celebrate Archives Awareness Week during the first week of April.  On Tuesday, April 5 she discussed caring for family photographs and papers with an audience of about thirty enthusiastic attendees, and on Saturday, April 9 fifty people came to hear about researching your house in Belleville. Sharon is pictured here with Dick Hughes, Vice President of the Society.  Both presentations included displays of materials; volunteers Donna Fano and Lois Foster assisted. 

The Hastings Country Historical Society has been researching historical buildings since the 1960s.  There are related materials available at the Community Archives, the Belleville Public Library, and other collections.  The sessions included time for the attendees to review the the materials that were on display and discuss their own interests with members of the Historical Society.

The materials on display on April 9 included copies of land grants and deeds from the Society's collections as well as Fire Insurance maps and city directories that are available to researchers in the Library's Canadiana room.

The Society and the Archivist thank staff at the Belleville Public Library for their support and assistance in offering these presentations.

Peter C. Newman visits the Hastings Heritage Centre

Renowned Canadian author and journalist Peter C. Newman paid a visit to the Hastings Heritage Centre in February.  Peter stayed for tea and answered questions from the Archive Angel volunteers, regaling us with tales about the Hudson Bay Company and other subjects.  He brought some of his books for show and tell and modelled his beautiful beaver hat (left).   

Peter offered two tips to his success as a non-fiction writer.  The first is what he calls his “Hey Mabel” rule: every 6-7 pages he offers an entertaining fact or anecdote that would lead a man to say to his spouse, “Hey Mabel, listen to this ... .”  The second is his careful check for factual errors:  having his lawyer and other experts review his work has helped him avoid being sued, despite controversial topics and law suit filings.

Peter has long-term connections with the Quinte area and recently moved to Belleville.  He discussed his current book project, to tell the stories of the United Empire Loyalists and the role they played in developing a Canadian national identity.  After an interesting discussion about Peter’s other publications (24 books so far) and his approach in researching and developing them, the volunteers briefed Peter on materials that the Historical Society has in its archives about the Loyalists and other potential sources of information in the area.

At the end of the afternoon Peter kindly agreed to be part of a group picture (for our archives collection).

Peter C. Newman in his more familiar hat, with Archivist Sharon White (seated) and volunteers (left to right) Lois Foster, George Pearce, Beth Green, Laurel Bishop, Donna Fano, Elizabeth Mitchell, Gerry Boyce, Adele Dibben, Mary Jane Throop, Lorna Garbutt, Katharine Mills, Marney Black, Diane Sule, and Bobby-Jo Morris. Story and photos Nick White