Following Susan’s suggestion that I use National Historic Sites playing cards as subjects for stories for the blog about my personal experiences connected to each Site, I went to the deck and pulled out “Red Bay”. Turns out it is from the “Never been there / Never heard of it” pile. It is surprising, to me, how many there are that I have no knowledge of. I did what everyone does these days – I looked it up on Google. You can do that too but briefly Red Bay is a UNESCO World Heritage site on the Strait of Belle Isle on the east coast of Labrador and is the site of an early Basque fishing and whaling camp.
It is hard to realise how much can happen in the time that has passed by since I retired from my job with Parks Canada. After the interest in our history blossomed with Canada’s Centennial in 1967, I said that Canada might never experience an expansion of Historic Sites like it did then. Seems after looking through those cards I may have been wrong. But also, I may have been part of that reason for growth and quality of handling the sites.
When I started with National Historic Sites in 1952 I was the only employee of the branch west of Quebec and with senior contact in Ottawa. My job, it appeared, was firstly to do my paperwork properly, reporting to Ottawa, secondly, cooperate with local politicians and other people, and thirdly, take custodianship of Fort Battleford and the on-site holdings. My interest was the third part and I felt the central part of my custodianship was to maintain the historical integrity of the site. It surprised me that this would cause so much conflict over the years. The first time this happened was not long after I started at the Fort. It became known to me that the new logs on site to replace the rotted stockade would not be anything like the originals and were to be placed other than where they were originally. It’s a long story better suited for a different blog post but after much give and take the new stockade went up where it had originally been.
Anyway, that is some of the thoughts that come to mind when a National Historic Site I never heard of is presented. Not only new ones have been recognized by the Federal system but much of the policies that I knew should be practiced are now official. Some of the credit must go to J. D. Herbert, who much later, spent time as Head of the National Historic Sites in Ottawa. By that time we had historians to thoroughly research a site; archeologists to do proper study of resources under-ground; conservationists to care for artifacts; restoration architects who could supervise treatment of historic structures (they were hard to find or non-existent); designers to set up meaningful and attractive interpretive displays and oh yes, professional planners. By the time I retired, we had such professionals but the system was not organized so that they could work properly together. My roll had become trying to protect the historical integrity of the resources selected and placed into our hands for protection and presentation for the benefit of the citizens of Canada. I wondered what kind of monster had been created. Looking through the deck of Historic Sites playing card and seeing the size of my pile of “never heard of it” cards indicating sites added since my day maybe it’s really not too bad.
