Let’s appreciate ourselves

The vision of Amherst Heritage Trust is to create a community in which heritage structures, sites and areas are recognized, valued, and promoted as positively enhancing Amherst’s quality of life as well as providing both social, economic, and environmental benefits carrying forward into the future.

Amherst Area Heritage Trust (AHT) was incorporated as a society under the Societies Act of Nova Scotia by the Registry of Joint Stock Companies on January 30, 2018.

Our board of directors can now handle monies (ACOA, are you listening?) - although until we gain charitable status we cannot issue income tax receipts for charitable deductions.

As depicted in our logo, designed by our Founder and President, Justin Helm, AHT was established in 2015. Justin has previously been active publishing our newsletter, The Red Stone, and he presented the Royal Bank of Canada on Victoria Street with a beautiful plaque he made in recognition of their restoration of one of our downtown’s signature buildings.

Our vice-president, Leslie Childs, is also on the Board of Heritage Trust Nova Scotia (HTNS). She is credited with bringing to Amherst in 2017 the HTNS Canada 150 display of photographs of 150 Nova Scotia buildings which saw the birth of Confederation in 1867. This inspired her to also mount photographs of many of Amherst Area’s older buildings and to solicit stories from viewers. Go to https://www.facebook.com/AmherstHeritageTrust and check out both pictures and posts. Please contribute information to the various discussions.

Deane Allen, well-known Amherst businessman, is our treasurer. Jen Cameron is our secretary.

Members of AHT have been closely involved in efforts to re-purpose the Armouries. Justin Helm tells me that the committee also includes representatives of the town, county, our MLA  and MP. Re-purposing would include saving the Nova Scotia Highlanders Regimental Museum and maintaining a home for air, sea and army cadet corps.

As you can tell from the possessive way I’m writing about AHT, I am a member. I am also a member of HTNS and Tantramar Heritage Trust based in Sackville, N.B.

If there are new items in the Heritage Biweekly Insider I receive from the National Trust for Canada, I forward it to the membership. Until March 27, anyone can nominate buildings to be put on the Trust’s Top 10 Most Endangered Places list.

On Heritage Day on Feb. 19, dressed in my great-grandmother’s dress, I represented AHT by reading my role play: “Mrs. George Christie Addresses Baptist Men, 1897.”

Ed Colquhoun, who was asked by the Baptist men to assist me when I presented the play to them in November, again helped me read the 1895 newspaper article about the dedication of the Baptist Church when an average of 1,400 people attended special services morning, afternoon and evening. I was delighted with the size of the Heritage Day audience and how enthusiastically they received us.

 Member Walt Jones wrote the play “Our Four Fathers of Confederation” which was well received by numerous audiences in 2017. See it on Tues., Mar. 27 at 11:00 at Holy Family Church.

Dick Beswick’s ”Beaubassin Tavern”, performed for the Tantramar Seniors College, can be seen on Wed., April 18 at 7:00 at the Octagonal House at 29 Queen’s Road in Sackville.   

We welcome new members to our monthly meetings at the Armouries, usually the second Wednesday at 7 p.m. Check Facebook or call me at 902-661-6400.

To buy my publications, including my new Read More About Amherst, a collection of my last forty columns, go to the Artisans’ Gallery, Amherst Centre Mall; Maritime Mosaic, Dayle’s, Victoria Street, Amherst; Flying Colours, Maccan; and Main and Station, Parrsboro.

Coles carries My dear Alice.

For my seven self-published books and booklets, go to the Cumberland County Museum and Archives and to the YMCA Amherst.

Clare Christie is a member of the Amherst News Community Editorial Panel.  She can be reached at [email protected].