Goulbourn Museum is seeking volunteers to help with gardening, painting, and general cleaning and tidying this summer. High school students are welcome! Staff will happily sign your forms for volunteer hours.

Gardening:

We have a vegetable garden, a native plant garden, and various flower beds. Would you like to learn about how to garden and grow your own vegetables and native plants? This is a great hands-on opportunity to receive guidance and information.

Already experienced at gardening? We would love your contribution and expertise!

After initial meet-and-greets and instruction, you are free to drop by as your schedule allows. We have all the tools you need and can teach you how to use them.

Painting:

We have several outdoor painting projects that don’t require any skill! Help us spruce up our railings, panels, and doors. We provide all the equipment you need.

General Cleaning and Tidying:

After several years of being closed due to the pandemic, the Museum grounds could use a good summer cleaning. Raking, sweeping, pruning, washing windows, or picking up branches, there’s lots to do! No real skills needed. Just enthusiasm and the joy of seeing immediate results.

How to Get Started:

Fill out this form and we’ll get back to you soon: https://forms.gle/K6af1yjWmMugPuKo8

After two-and-a-half long years, the Museum is finally open to the public again! Visitors are welcome Friday to Sunday from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. throughout the summer.

The History Centre is open by appointment only. Please call 613-831-2393 or email: info@goulbournmuseum.ca for more information or to book a time.

The Museum celebrated its Grand Reopening with a free family event on Saturday, July 9th. It was wonderful to see the building alive with people exploring the exhibitions and children playing in the popular General Store again!

Please join us in welcoming our three summer employees: Kyle Judd Lundt, Stefan Hiratsuka, and Georgian Parkes. We’re excited for you to read all about them and for the adventures we’ll have together as a team this summer!

Kyle Judd Lundt, Collections Assistant

Hi all, my name is Kyle Judd Lunt!

I’m a student at Queen’s University, where I study history and classics. I especially focus on the history of the Atlantic and the whole wild and terrible world of colonization. I’ve had the good fortune to join the Goulbourn Museum for the summer of 2022! I’ll be working as the Collections Assistant — taking part in the gruelling but gratifying process of helping everyone access our collections online. As a local to the Goulbourn area, I’ve grown up with the Museum as a fixture of the community and can’t wait to contribute what I can!

I hope to be able to help expand access to documents and artefacts that are too often hidden from view! I’m also hoping to work with the people of Goulbourn and especially local Indigenous communities to help make the collection accessible and respectful of all.

In my own time, I love to take part in reading and writing fiction, woodworking, sewing, and learning anything else creative!

Fun Fact: My family was among the very first settlers to arrive in Montreal!

Stefan Hiratsuka, Assistant Museum Administrator

Hi there! I’m Stefan Hiratsuka, and some of you may remember me from my previous work as the collections intern here at Goulbourn Museum. It is my absolute pleasure to have been offered the opportunity to continue my time at the Museum in the role of Assistant Museum Administrator where I will be helping share the story of Goulbourn.

My academic background is in history; I hold an Hons BA from the University of Ottawa with a specialization in history and a minor in classical studies, as well as a diploma from the Applied Museum Studies Program offered by Algonquin College. I love any and all things historical so I am very excited to be onboard and sharing that passion with the community.

In my free time I love fishing, gardening, reading, playing Animal Crossing, playing guitar, and hanging out with my doggos.

Fun fact: My favorite type of dog is the Papillon like my rugged and brave friend Kitkat.

Georgian Parkes, Programming Assistant

Hello everyone! My name is Georgian, and I am a student at the University of Ottawa studying history and English literature. As those fields might suggest, I am particularly interested in social and cultural history.

Originally when I went into university I thought I would go on to obtain a teaching degree (actually, I was one of those kids who always thought they would go into teaching). After my first year however, I had the opportunity to work at the Callander Bay Heritage Museum and Gallery, and I have been hooked on museums ever since!

For me, museums are really special because they approach education from a different perspective than a formal classroom. I am really passionate about helping other people learn and making information interesting and engaging. On that note, I’m thrilled to be part of Goulbourn’s educational team as the Programming Assistant – looking forward to a summer of fun events!

Fun Fact: I am distantly related to the famous painter Sir John Everret Millais, and I have sold some of my own artwork as well.

ATTENTION: AGM DATE CHANGE

Goulbourn Museum’s Annual General Meeting will now be held on Tuesday, June 14th, at 6:30 PM via Zoom.

AGM & Election to the Board of Directors 2022

In accordance with the Bylaws of the Goulbourn Museum, notice is hereby given of the Annual General Meeting (AGM) to be held at 6:30 p.m. on Tuesday, June 14th, via Zoom virtual meeting space.

The position of Director at Large is open for nomination:

This is the call for Nominations to the Board of Directors. There are up to 2 seats available on the board this year. The Nomination Form and Application for Directorship is attached for your convenience. Members are encouraged to participate in the election process. The nominations must be seconded by a member of the Museum.

*IMPORTANT MEMBER VOTING INFORMATION*

1) Only current voting members of the Goulbourn Museum are eligible to stand for election or vote for the Board of Directors as determined by the organization’s membership list as of June 1, 2022. Please note all memberships were renewed for free on January 1st 2022. If your membership lapsed prior to 2020 or if you wish to become a new member, please fill out a Membership Form and send it via email to info@goulbournmuseum.ca. (Not sure if your membership is up-to-date? Send an email: info@goulbournmuseum.ca.)

2) Members can exercise their voting privilege at the Annual General Meeting over  Zoom on June 14th, 2022 or by proxy in advance of the meeting. 

3) Deadline for nominations is 11:59 p.m. Monday, May 30th, 2022. Please use the following link to complete the Application for Directorship. Nominations from the floor will not be accepted and nominations received after the deadline will not be accepted for presentation to the general membership. The nominations must be seconded by a member of the Museum.

Program Coordinator Assistant – Internship (UNPAID)

The Program Coordinator Assistant Intern will support the preparation and delivery of Growing Goulbourn, a hands-on, experiential outdoor program that educates grade 6 students about gardening, plants, and the environment. Participants in the program will grow native plants and heritage vegetables in the museum’s garden over the course of eight lessons spread out between April and June. Topics will include heritage gardening, the global environmental impact of industrial agriculture, the importance of local ecology and the threat of invasive species, land use over time, inter-organism relationships, and other topics part of the Ontario biology and social science curricula.

The intern will gain experience in the discovery-education methodology within a museum; the Ontario curriculum; inter-departmental collaboration; how to develop and deliver programming; how to fulfill a museum’s mandate via education programming; and how to provide information for specific audience demographics.

A complete job description and application details can be found HERE.  Submissions are due April 25, 2022.

In an effort to make the collection more accessible, Goulbourn Museum is participating in the Handy Heritage pilot which pairs automated vending machines with cultural institutions. 

The state-of-the-art machines are temperature, humidity and light controlled to keep artefacts safe. To handle objects, insert a credit card and put on the gloves that dispense automatically. Enter the number that corresponds with the artefact you’re interested in touching and it will be lowered to the drawer below. 

After a long two-year closure, we are very excited to be part of this endeavor. It aligns with the Museum’s recent Strategic Plan in which making the collection accessible to the public was identified as a top priority.

The Handy Heritage pilot launches on April Fools day.

By Stefan Hiratsuka

If you’ve ever driven by the Goulbourn Museum, you may have noticed this unusual object (above) in the adjacent cemetery. This elegant metal ornament, known as a finial, is not just a memorial marker; it once adorned the steeple of a church which was situated on that very spot. This post was inspired by a recent donation to the Museum by the Roy McCooeye family that contains photographs of said church taken by Roy from previously unseen angles. In fact, one of them is the only known photograph to date that has both the church and the Museum in the same shot!

As early as 1858, the property beside the modern museum was used as a graveyard. Construction of a church for the area began in 1866 when Thomas McCaffery deeded a quarter acre of land to the Church Wardens James Lewis and Averil C. Lackey for this purpose. According to a former rector, the lumber used in its construction was harvested from a nearby forest by members of the local community. By 1873 construction was completed and the structure, as well as the graveyard, were consecrated by the Right Reverend John Travers Lewis; they would receive the names Saint Thomas Anglican Church and the Saint Thomas Anglican Cemetery.

For almost a century the church and cemetery would expand alongside the township. While the name of the locality would change over time from Rathwell’s Corners to Stanley’s Corners, the 175-seat church remained a constant within the community.

Roy McCooeye, who was a volunteer firefighter at the time, captured this photo which is the only image on record at the Museum to be taken from this angle. The Museum building is visible on the right.

However, on June 24, 1964, tragedy struck. The elegant metal finial which crowned the steeple served as an attractor for a lightning bolt during a severe summer storm. The roof, which was filled with wood shavings to provide insulation, caught fire. Efforts to fight the blaze were hampered by a lack of water, which had to be drawn and brought in from a creek almost a kilometre away. While the firefighters combated the inferno, parishioners rushed into the burning structure in an attempt to save as much as possible from the devouring flames. Thanks to the bravery of the firefighters and parishioners, some objects were rescued; foremost among these were eight out of nine of the stained glass windows which had been custom made for the building. Unfortunately, despite the best efforts of all involved, the roof was damaged so severely the structure had to be abandoned.

The interior of the church before and after the fire.

The gutted remains of the church would stand for another five years, until the ruin was sold in August 1969. The structure was demolished, and a marker was raised in 1973 at the gate entrance; the spire was placed adjacent to it 23 years later in 1996. The cemetery continues to be in use to this day.

This would not however mark the end of the St. Thomas Church. The community would band together and rebuild, as it has done so often in the past. On October 19, 1969 ground was broken for a new church located on Stittsville Main Street. The church was completed by May 1970. Eight years later, in 1978, with all its debts repaid, the service of consecration took place. The church would expand again in 1989 with the construction of an entirely new church building as an addition to the existing structure; the prior brick church became a Sunday school and administrative facility. On December 23, 1990 the new church, now named St. Thomas the Apostle of Stittsville, held its inaugural service. As a token of remembrance, seven of the stained glass windows, the bell, and the altar from the 1866 church were installed where they can still be seen to this day at 1619 Stittsville Main Street.

Click on the thumbnails below to see some of the other photographs taken by Roy McCooeye.

Please note that Goulbourn Museum’s AGM has been moved to Tuesday, June 14, 2022. For more information click HERE.

They say a picture is worth a thousand words but there are some historic photos in the Museum’s collection that aren’t talking.  We have school photos, pictures of sports teams, and other group shots that contain the beautiful, smiling faces of Goulbourn residents but we don’t know who they are. We would love to put some names to those faces! Starting this month, we’re launching a newsletter segment called Photographic Memory in hopes of crowdsourcing information to find out who’s who. We’ll share a photo along with a reference image (below) and if you can positively ID someone send us their name and corresponding number.

This month’s Photographic Memory (below) dates back to 1959 and was taken at a Women’s Institute Public Speaking Contest in Goulbourn Township. We know the names of two of the students: Sharon Hunt (far right) was the winner of the Women’s Institute Shield and Frankie Sample (centre) is holding the Greg Black Trophy. Can you help us identify any of the other students in this photo? Email us at: info@goulbournmuseum.ca

The framed proclamation, seen here with Manager, Tracey Donaldson (left) and Chair Linda Preston (right), will be displayed proudly.

Goulbourn Museum was the recipient of this year’s Heritage Day proclamation.

The theme of the 2022 Heritage Day is We grow from our roots – our heritage and histories. As lockdowns and physical distancing measures have continued to impact our work in the museum sector, we’ve had to dig deeper to connect people with their heritage and histories. Over the past year, the Museum has used genealogical research, artefacts, and settler experiences to develop reflective and engaging programs that encouraged community members to explore how the past has influenced the present day. The idea of growing from our roots is exemplified through initiatives such as our Summer Seekers program, the My Family Is… exhibit contest, and Transcribing Goulbourn.

If you missed the Heritage Day Opening Ceremonies on Tuesday, February 22, 2022, you can watch them HERE and see Mayor Watson recognize the Museum with this year’s proclamation.

Heritage Day is made possible by Capital Heritage Connexion in partnership with the City of Ottawa Cultural and Heritage Programs and Spaces Branch. Explore the amazing virtual programming of the Ottawa heritage community on the Heritage Day webpage.