A Message From the BAHS President

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.
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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.
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All best wishes,
Doug Sobey
President (on behalf of the Board of the Bedeque Area Historical Society)