Museums update

Project upgrades on target for 2022

With several museum projects in the works for this year, Lisa Lindsay, Director of Recreation and Community Facilities, and Chris Palmer, the new Supervisor of Museums and Cultural Services, provided an update recently on capital planning projects. Museum sites destined for upgrades include Macaulay House Museum, Rose House Museum, Ameliasburgh Heritage Village and Wellington Heritage Museum. “The museum portfolio was extremely successful in this budget season,” said Lindsay. “We are very pleased that the busy activity in Chris’s [Palmer] short time here has created some confidence in our portfolio and where we are moving.”

The rear wing roofing project for Macaulay House Museum, currently budgeted for $150,000, is expected to receive tenders in April or May. Thirty-five thousand dollars will be spent on accessible pathways at Ameliasburgh Heritage Village, where work is expected to start in May. “The Rose House well and rough-in plumbing, a capital project of $22,000, is going to be launched in April,” Lindsay said. Electrical upgrade work at Wellington Heritage Museum will begin in March, with a projected cost of $16,000. Lindsay noted that all capital projects will be completed in 2022. “The municipality has a new procurement bylaw that projects do not carry forward from year to year,” explained Lindsay. “You must re-submit and start from scratch, so we will not be putting ourselves in that situation and I will be working with Chris [Palmer] on our new procedural bylaw to get these projects completed.”

A carry-forward from 2021 is the front porch project for the Wellington Heritage Museum, which Lindsay explained was already underway with architect consultations. It is budgeted for $12,000. “We are just waiting to determine where some of the Wellington Museum on what the layout is,” explained Lindsay. “We do plan to get it completed, but we don’t want to move forward with that front entrance without having a really good accessible plan for the back. We are really hoping that plan will include adequate washroom facilities so we don’t have to re-do the entryway in its entirety which would take away from the authenticity of the space.”

Chris Palmer gave an update of what’s been happening at the museum sites around the County in the past few months, with a hint of what’s coming up. With the Wellington Heritage Museum getting a facelift inside, Palmer said all the floors are now sanded and coated. “They look tremendous and we are waiting on the stage to get done and we will do a big clean-up of the dust,” said Palmer. “We are going to do some inventory upstairs and reset for a Wellington characters exhibit, which had been done to a small degree at the start of Covid. It was well-received, so we are going to grow on that and put the focus on the community there, which is the ideal place; it’s a Quaker hall and that’s what it’s for.”

Palmer also highlighted that last December brought holiday lights with five museums being lit up over the holiday season. “That was met with a fair amount of positive feedback, particularly from our volunteer group who all went around and toured the five locations.” He said the Wellington Christmas market saw a couple of hundred people over that weekend. “It’s normally just a one-day event, but we did two days this year that was met very favourably and that will continue in 2022.”

Amaryllis bulb sales are always a popular purchase at Christmastime and it was no different in 2021 where the pre-ordered bulbs could be picked up at the Christmas market. “The Friends of Wellington Museum did 100 pre-sales and they ended up selling just over 150 bulbs at $25 a pot, so that was a very successful event,” said Palmer. “The Friends do a lot of the planting and things themselves and it’s a lot more work than it looks to plant those bulbs and get everything together.”

He said Christmas at Macaulay was very successful in partnership with Shatterbox Theatre who did two sold-out plays with around 160 people attending. Palmer said lots of folks came through and the 10 vendors at the craft market did very well with over 200 visitors over the two days. A beautifully decorated Ameliasburgh Heritage Village also had a successful Christmas season with a few hundred folks through over December with events happening a few days each week. “Santa was there, a fair few kids came through for crafts and it was really a lot of positive feedback that something was provided where parents didn’t have to spend a lot of money, they could just take children down and enjoy the spaces, there was no ask.”

“In January, with the lockdown, we have not been idle,” said Palmer. “We’ve taken the entire cannery event that was in Wellington that ended up being at Macaulay Church for a time and it is now in Ameliasburgh Heritage Village at the Welcome Building.” He said through January the Welcome Building has been painted to get ready for the exhibit which is expected to open this month. “That’s a great exhibit and there is a lot of interest around it and with Sprague releasing their heritage cans, and it’s just a good time to get that generating some more interest and getting some people down to Ameliasburgh.” A Royal Exhibit installed in January at Macaulay Church to celebrate the Queen’s Platinum Jubilee is expected to run until May. “We have a large collection of royal pieces that have not been on display for some time, so those have all come out,” he said. More information on the County Museums can be found at thecounty.ca/residents/services/museums.