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On August 9-11, the Museum and local community celebrated the 240th anniversary of the Loyalist landing in Bedeque with the Loyalist Heritage Festival. This three-day festival featured historical activities and attracted a crowd from across the Island and beyond. The festival began with the Loyalist Supper at Bedeque United Church, where Roy Johnstone provided musical accompaniment to the sold-out turkey supper. Saturday's rain forced activities indoors, but a crowd attended all events. The day started with an opening ceremony featuring BAHS President Doug Sobey, Local MP Matt MacFarlane, United Empire Loyalist Association of Canada Abedweit Branch President Kevin Weisner, and Museum Manager Caeley Currie. A craft workshop followed, where participants made 18th-century embroidered pockets. The Heritage Social Dance Group then performed late 18th and 19th-century dances. The day concluded with two historical talks: “Loyalist Women” by Dr. Bonnie Huskins of UNB and “Bedeque Harbour Loyalists” by Doug Sobey. Both talks are available on the Museum’s YouTube channel. Sunday, the final day, was bright and sunny, concluding the festival on a high note. The day featured a repeat of the 18th-century pocket workshop, drawing crafters of all ages. The annual blueberry social then took place, which included ice cream with blueberries, historical children's games, and a musical performance by BluRobin. The festival ended with a fiddle concert by Richard Wood at the Kanata Club in Kinkora. The Loyalist Heritage Fesitval was funded in part by the Innovation PEI’s Community Celebration Fund. The Bedeque Museum extends a sincere thank you to all our sponsors and to everyone who helped to organize and execute the event, as well as to all those who attended. It was a memorable and successful fundraiser! 
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This year we received a Development Grant of $2,492 from the Community Museums Association to go towards the purchase of a new display cabinet and the printing of new posters for this summer’s exhibits. We have also received a grant of $926 from the provincial government’s Community Cultural Partnership Program to go towards this summer’s and next summer’s exhibits, and a grant of $892 from the P.E.I. Rural Growth Initiative’s Community Revitalization Program for the construction of a portable wheelchair ramp for the Lower Bedeque School which is being built by Bernard’s Welding in Fernwood. Below: Bernard's Welding employees testing the new wheelchair ramp for the Lower Bedeque School.  July 8th marked the official opening of the two new exhibits at the Bedeque Historical Museum when Hon. Antoinette Perry, the Lieutenant Governor of Prince Edward Island officially opened the new ‘Wendell Feener Clock Collection: Clocks of the Island 1770 – 1960’ exhibit and the ‘PEI and the Monarchy’ exhibit. It was a successful morning with 73 people attending. Pictured are images of the ribbon cuttings Left Image: Madame Perry cuts the ribbon held by Wendell and Faye Feener officially opening the ‘Wendell Feener Clock Collection’ Exhibit Right Image: Madame Perry cuts the ribbon held by Doug Sobey, President of the Bedeque Area Historical Society, and Valerie Curtis, Vice-President of the Bedeque Area Historical Society, opening the ‘PEI and the Monarchy’ Exhibit.
Members and Friends of the Bedeque Area Historical Society,
We hope you will be able to visit the Museum this summer, especially to see our new exhibits. Our main new exhibit is a display of some 150 clocks spanning the period from the 1770s to about 1960. The clocks have been given to the museum by Wendell Feener of Summerside, an avid collector and restorer of antique clocks, and the exhibit will tell the story of the clocks available to Islanders over a 200-year period. Our other major exhibit has been sparked by the death of Queen Elizabeth last September and the succession of King Charles III, the first change in a Canadian monarch in 70 years. The exhibit takes advantage of a donation to the Museum of a collection of pictures of past sovereigns and it will tell the story of Prince Edward Island’s connection to the Royal Family and the monarchy. All of the Museum’s permanent exhibits and collections continue on display. These include a whole floor of displays relating to the cultural and social history of the wider area, which come from the late Howard Clark’s Red Barn Museum in Chelton. Another exhibit tells the story of Callbeck’s general store, which was the focal point for the Bedeque area for almost one hundred years. Then there are poster and artifact displays telling the stories of the Acadian settlement along the Dunk River estuary from 1750 to 1758 and of the Loyalist settlement around Bedeque Bay from 1784, including the story of the ‘Valley Farm’ in Central Bedeque, which has been in the Schurman family since 1839. Another display tells the story of the settlement of the Freetown area beginning in 1810 with the purchase of 1000 acres by James Burns from Perthshire in Scotland. Other Freetown-related displays are on the Freetown Royals, a champion hockey team of the 1940s and 50s, and on Jacob Gould Schurman, a Freetown boy (born in 1854) who went on to achieve an eminent academic and diplomatic career in the United States. Another display tells the story of the Borden ferry service, in operation from 1917 to 1997, and there is a poster display on the cultural life of the Mi’kmaq on the Island from before the arrival of Europeans to about 1900. Finally, the Museum will again be telling the story of the Mizuno family, a British Columbia family of Japanese origin who were interned during World War II and who after the war lived and farmed in Central Bedeque. Also part of the Museum is the Lucy Maud Montgomery Lower Bedeque Schoolhouse, now located across the road from the Museum; in it we tell the story of the famous author’s year in Bedeque as well as about early education in the area. Our history talks and other public events held by the Museum will again take place this summer. This includes the official opening of the new exhibits, our Monday evening history talks (this year they are part of the ‘P.E.I. – 150’ celebrations marking the Island’s joining Canada in 1873), and our blueberry and ice cream social in August. We hope that these exhibits, as well as the other events announced in this Newsletter, will encourage you to visit the museum this summer. All best wishes, Doug Sobey President (on behalf of the Board of the Bedeque Area Historical Society) Bedeque Area Historical Museum was stirred from its winter slumber this week to welcome a special guest. Jun Saito, Consul-General of Japan in Montreal, stopped by to view an exhibit on the Mizuno family, a Japanese Canadian family who lived in Central Bedeque from 1946 to 1952. He was welcomed by Bedeque resident, Catherine Callbeck, who told the story of how her grandfather, William Callbeck, invited the Mizuno family to come settle in Bedeque, establishing a connection between the two families that has endured decades. George and Kimiyo Mizuno and their four children were among the many Japanese families living in Canada who were forced from their homes and into internment camps during the Second World War. After the war ended, the interned were made to move somewhere in Canada outside British Colombia or return to Japan. Callbeck explained that her aunt Louise Callbeck, who had worked as a missionary and teacher in Japan for 20 years, learned of the Mizuno family through a fellow missionary worker. Louise’s father William agreed to provide a home and farmland for the evacuees. The Mizunos are believed to be the first of these evacuee families to settle on P.E.I. and moved to Central Bedeque in 1946. “It’s good to know of this Japanese family who came here and were placed in the hands of good people,” said Consul-General Saito. “It’s so important that you made this exhibit for the Japanese people and the Mizuno descendants,” he said, expressing his gratitude on behalf of his government and the Japanese people. “You are preserving the footprints of Japanese Canadians here.” The Nov. 28 visit by the Consul-General, whose jurisdiction covers Quebec and the Atlantic Provinces, was his second to P.E.I. since being appointed to this post in October 2021. Saito expressed hope that the exhibit would attract more Japanese visitors and the surviving Mizuno family members. Despite living and farming in Bedeque only six years, the Mizuno family’s involvement in the community, church and school endeared them to area residents. They also formed a connection to the Callbeck family which remains intact 70 years later. Picture: Jun Saito, Consul-General of Japan in Montreal, was presented with a gift from Catherine Callbeck of Bedeque, during his visit to the Bedeque Area Historical Museum on Nov. 28. They are standing in front of the exhibit on the Mizuno family, one of the first Japanese-Canadian settler families in P.E.I. The exhibit opened in July.  Members and Friends of the Bedeque Area Historical Society,
We finally seem to have turned a corner with respect to COVID and are looking forward to a return to an almost normal summer. We thus hope that you will be able to visit the Museum this summer, especially to see our new exhibits which will open shortly. Our new exhibits are on the Mizuno family of Central Bedeque and on the early settlement history of Freetown, and there are expansions to our exhibits on the Acadians of Bedeque, the Freetown Royals hockey team, and Jacob Gould Schurman. There is also a display of paintings and mats by the late Eleanor Wheler of Bedeque and Fernwood. Also for the first time we will be operating the L. M. Montgomery Lower Bedeque Schoolhouse as part of the Museum, which will add a whole new dimension to our work. In the school there will be new displays on L. M. Montgomery’s time in Bedeque and on her romance with Herman Leard; on her Loyalist ancestry and its connection with her writing; and on schooling in Bedeque in the early nineteenth century. Our other exhibits continue from previous years, including the ‘Bedeque Harbour Loyalists’, the Borden Ferry 100 exhibit, the Mi’kmaq Culture exhibit, the Five Objects Interactive Display, and our core displays on Callbeck’s Store and Howard Clark’s Red Barn Collection. We hope that these exhibits, as well as the other events announced in this Newsletter, will encourage you to visit the museum this summer. All best wishes, Doug Sobey, President, (on behalf of the Board of the Bedeque Area Historical Society) David Pope, an Islander who was born in Summerside and now lives in Utah, donated $10,000 USD to the Bedeque Area Historical Museum on behalf of his family. David has long had an interest in Jacob Gould Schurman. In 2015, with the assistance of Paul H. Schurman, a past member of our Board, he lobbied to have the University of Prince Edward Island give special recognition to Schurman, who was a student at Prince of Wales College, a predecessor institution of UPEI. However, the University did not respond to David’s proposal. David also made contact with the Bedeque Museum and later, in the summer of 2019, he visited the Museum during the Pope Family Reunion. Through Paul H. Schurman, he passed on to the Museum information about Schurman. He also donated original press photographs showing Schurman, and original books written by Schurman. This information led to the creation in 2021 of a poster exhibit on Jacob Gould Schurman. In the spring of 2022, Doug Sobey, the President of the BAHS, approached David seeking a contribution towards the purchase of a cabinet to display Schurman items, David responded with his very generous gift, and for this, the Board is very grateful. The J. G. Schurman exhibit has been expanded and now presents his progressive views, evidenced in the many contemporary newspaper clippings which David had collected and which he had passed on to us. Below: David Pope (left) with his brother Jim Pope (right) visiting the museum in 2019. The brothers were on the Island celebrating the Pope Family Reunion which marked the 200th anniversary of the arrival of their ancestor Joseph Pope at Bedeque.  For much of the twentieth century, the loud sound of the steam whistle from the M.F. Schurman Company could be heard all across the town of Summerside and even miles into the surrounding country. It marked the start and end of the workday as well as the midday dinner break. Willard (pictured below) worked many years at Schurmans and saved the whistle when the building on which it stood was demolished in the 1990s. The whistle will fit in well with our clock exhibit, showing how, from the late nineteenth century onwards, ‘clock time’ (as opposed to ‘sun time’, i.e. reading the time of day from the sun) became increasingly important in regulating the daily lives of working men and women in Prince Edward Island and elsewhere. We have been given a custom-made polished steel bracket to hold up the whistle, made by Linkletter Welding in Central Bedeque. We thank Wayne Linkletter and Brian Murphy of Linkletter Welding for organizing this. Below: Willard Burrows of Wilmot Valley holds the steam whistle from the former M. F. Schurman Company of Summerside.  Members and Friends of Bedeque Area Historical Society,
The summer of 2021 for the Bedeque Museum has turned out to be an improvement on the dire summer of 2020. We had a much greater number of visitors and we were able to hold a Blueberry and Ice-cream Social in August. However, as you are already aware from our June Newsletter, because of Covid we were not able to hold our Monday evening history talks nor our annual seafood raffle. We also postponed three of our planned new exhibits to 2022 (the exhibits on Island clocks from about 1770 to 1930, the story of the Mizuno family of Bedeque, and the history of Freetown). We were again very concerned about the effects of Covid on our fund-raising this summer: to remain viable we have to raise about $13,500 each year from sources other than our government grants for student wages and the Community Museums development grant. (This is a rise from last summer’s estimate of $10,500, on account of higher rent and insurance charges.) However, as outlined in the next paragraph, we have again managed to raise sufficient funds to get us through the current year. We extend our thanks to all those who have made donations this past summer: $1,597 has been donated by our members, plus a separate major private donation of $5,798. We raised $1,183 in ticket sales to our Blueberry and Ice-cream Social and received another $1,350 from businesses and individuals sponsoring the Social. Then, we received $2,500 from a provincial Covid-related support grant for museums and have just applied for a Covid-related grant of $5,000 from the federal government’s Museum Emergency Assistance Program. The above private donations plus the additional $7,500 coming from government has enabled us to pay the bills! We especially appreciate all of those individuals who have contributed through membership subscriptions and by making special additional donations. This newsletter is shorter than our pre-Covid newsletters because most of the summer events that we normally report in our fall newsletter did not take place. Let us hope that next year we will get back to our normal summer activities! Best wishes, The Board of the BAHS After site preparations in the Loyalist Monument Park in Central Bedeque and a lot of preparatory work on the building, the Lower Bedeque School was moved to Central Bedeque on July 7 (see the pictures that follow) and it already looks very much at home at its new location. The desks and other school furniture were moved into the school from storage on September 16 and everything, including the new panel displays, will be set up next spring. Our aim is to retain the atmosphere and ambience of the school as it was in Lower Bedeque. We hope to have the school open in 2022 and will have a special opening ceremony in July. Below is a photo of the school after the move.  |
