The Halton Region of Ontario is closing its Heritage Services Department and will soon begin to try to get rid of around 30,000 historical articles, including photographs, tools, natural history specimens, archaeological findings, art and files of Halton County.
The region expects local municipalities and organizations of lower level, such as the Royal Botanical Gardens, Halton Conservation and the Regional Police Service of Halton, to take the articles to keep them in public hands, but it says that anything that cannot be a public auction, a public auction, a movement of defenders of the Heritage, including a consulting firm, which can be useless and degraded.
The Regional Council of Halton voted on July 9 to “stop providing heritage services” at the end of this year and “desauli” of its collection.
The vote was held in a closed session, after personnel and consultant reports last year indicating that the region staff has supported this idea for some time.
The measure is a sharp turn of the vision in the five -year operational plan in the region backed in 2021, which included $ 8 million for a new “heritage center” for the department that was never built.
“Regional personnel will implement a process to disperse the collection, that is, eliminate these elements of property and responsibility of the region,” said a Confidential personnel memo That came before the Council that day, which was later made public by the region.
“Regional staff will do everything possible to continue public property of the articles and keep the articles located within Halton.”
The collection includes 20 ‘potential indigenous belongings’
The memorandum says that the collection includes “tools and equipment, uniforms and clothing, furniture, personal items, medical tools, tools and communication equipment, natural history specimens, archaeological materials, works of art and other various items.”
It also contains approximately 20 “possible indigenous belongings”, such as “objects with accounts, bark and pen, footwear and gloves.”
The region will try to return those articles to the communities from which they came, according to the Memo.
List potential partners to receive articles from the rest of the collection such as Conservation Halton, the regional police service of Halton, Royal Botanical Gardens, Country Heritage Park, the historical society of Milton, local municipalities and local libraries.
“Transfers to these organizations would be strictly voluntary and will differ depending on the level of interest and how the elements of the collection are aligned with their individual mandate and capacity,” he says.
But, he adds that some articles can go to the auction.
“There are objects in the collection that do not have a clear value or a direct relationship with Halton or its inheritance. In these cases, the public auction can be a valid method for dispersion. When this approach is adopted, anticipated public notice will be provided.
“Given the size of the collection and the complexity of the dispersion and dispersion processes, it is anticipated that this will be a significant company with an extended timeline.”
‘I hope Halton will value these objects’
The communications specialist of the Halton region, Isabel Contin, shared more details with CBC Hamilton about what the collection includes. She said there are:
- Around 18,400 “objects”: tools, uniforms and clothing, furniture, personal and medical items, communication devices, natural history specimens, archaeological findings and works of art.
- Around 3,100 photographs.
- Around 13,000 file materials: maps, documents and other materials.
“Articles cover from the nineteenth century (for example, judicial artifacts and family farm tools), until the 21st century (for example, medical equipment, police service articles and articles related to the Covid-19 pandemic),” he wrote in an email on Thursday. “While some articles in the collection have a clear link to Halton’s local heritage, many do not.”
As for indigenous articles, he said that the Halton region’s indigenous relations team will be involved in their transfer “to ensure that they identify, respect and finally to the appropriate communities or custodians.”
The Halton region is found in the lands of the Mississaugas Treaty of the first credit nation (MCFN), and is the traditional territory of Haudenosaunee, Huron-Wendat and Anishinabek, according to The land recognition of the region.
Darin Wybenga, traditional knowledge coordinator and land use for MCFN, told CBC Hamilton that he was not aware of the objects held by the region, and is anxious to see what they are.
“I hope Halton will value these objects enough to maintain a good history where they obtained these things,” he said Thursday, noting that there was a strong probability that some of them could belong to MCFN.
He was grateful that the region communicates with the first nations before auctioning articles, something that, according to him, shows progress in relations between Canadian institutions and indigenous communities.
“There is some consideration to people who could have something at stake with these objects, so that is a positive step.”
On the same call, the councilor of MCFN, Erma Farrell, said he hopes to organize a meeting to see the articles soon. He also pointed out his disappointment with the closure of the department, noting that it seems that several municipalities in the area are reducing support to patrimonial services.
The defender of the heritage of the worried articles is ‘disperse everywhere’
The report of a consultant on possible options for the collection issued in April included numerous potential scenarios for the collection, with the closure of the division completely the only one for which he found more “cons” than “professionals.”
The study of the administration of the Museum collection, written by the Canadian cultural planning firm Lord Cultural Resources, points out “the region promised to accumulate an object to take care of it in public confidence.
“The public’s reaction can be particularly negative if the matter is not communicated correctly, or if a large part of the objects is not transferred to other institutions and, therefore, are eliminated from the public sphere,” he says.
It gives an example of objects from the collection that have already been transferred to the real botanical garden, but instead of being accessible by the RBG, which means they would have to manage them to perpetuity, they were used as exhibition accessories. That means that they can be accessible to the public in the way they were not before, but the change of state eliminates the “permanent preservation and conservation requirement.
“As accessories, they can be ruled out when deterioration becomes a problem,” says the study.
He also points out that many of the agencies that the region expects to send articles already has its own challenges of personnel, space and financing, as well as mandates of close collections that will limit what they can accept.
London, Ontario, the defender of heritage and public history professor Michelle Hamilton has been seeing how to develop the Halton process, and says that many in their field are surprised by how many articles are of public confidence to private hands through this process.
“The idea that this will not lead to the loss of artifacts is naive,” Hamilton told CBC on Tuesday.
“They would disperse everywhere, they would enter private collections, and they are never seen or heard again. You are taking something that belongs to the public, you are selling it without permission and enters private hands. It is ethically incorrect.”
Hamilton, who teaches at the Western University, says that it is also not very ethical to disagree the collection before consulting the public, pointing out that he is concerned that this movement can begin a trend.
“If it happens on Halton, it will be a ball rolling on a hill and others will continue,” she says.
