Yarmouth area reaction positive to province's heritage strategy

By Eric Bourque

THE VANGUARD

NovaNewsNow.com

Like the Voluntary Planning report that preceded it, the Nova Scotia government’s heritage strategy, which was released Feb. 25, bears a title that makes reference both to history and to the future.

Initial local reaction to the strategy’s release was positive, although people said they hadn’t had much time to look at it yet.

The document – A Treasured Past, A Precious Future, A Heritage Strategy for Nova Scotia 2008-2012 – cites three strategic directions: --better coordination of heritage preservation, promotion and the like; --more “sustainable management” of Nova Scotia’s heritage resources; --the need to raise public awareness of the “value and relevance” of heritage.

The government has identified things it wants to do in the strategy’s first year, including discussing the creation of a heritage council, developing an “interpretive master plan” for museums, as well as reviewing the Nova Scotia Museum system and Heritage Property Act.

The strategy, which was developed after a consultation process carried out by Voluntary Planning’s heritage strategy task force, picks up one of the task force’s main themes about heritage being a multifaceted subject that touches or involves virtually everyone in some way.

The task force, which held a public meeting in Yarmouth in the fall of 2005 as part of its efforts to gather input from Nova Scotians, eventually titled its report Our Heritage Future – A Shared Responsibility.

Now, at the government level, an inter-departmental committee has been set up to try to coordinate things better on heritage-related work that may involve other agencies or government offices.

Among those glad to see this approach is Bernice d’Entremont of the Musee acadien in West Pubnico, who also welcomes the definition of heritage as one that includes not just buildings and artifacts but also things like folklore, languages and nature.

She hopes the strategy’s five-year vision will help some of the smaller museums that have been struggling.

She notes the Musee acadien’s heavy reliance on volunteers.

Also reached the day after the strategy’s release, Peter Crowell, the Argyle municipal archivist and historian, said he is pleased with what is happening now with archival facilities.

People can be jaded when it comes to such documents, given how earlier studies and reports didn’t seem to lead to much action, said one local observer.

However, the Nova Scotia government – in the very first sentence of the news release put out in conjunction with the document’s release last week – suggests that this one, billed as the province’s first heritage strategy, is different from what has come before.

The strategy, in a general sense, cites some of the benefits of heritage – and thus good reasons for preserving and promoting it – including how heritage “enhances quality of life…contributes to prosperity…(and to) opportunities for lifelong learning (and) is essential to the preservation, development and sustainability of Nova Scotia’s communities.”

Premier Rodney MacDonald – who was Nova Scotia’s tourism, culture and heritage minister in 2005, when Voluntary Planning’s heritage strategy task force began the consultation process – and Bill Dooks, the present-day minister, each stress (in remarks that are included with the document) the recurring theme that heritage should matter to everybody.

As the strategy itself says, “Responsibility for heritage belongs to us all – to every level of government and to every Nova Scotian.”