By Richard Bell
Memory Lane Heritage Village in Lake Charlotte will be going all out this summer with a series of events starting in late May to celebrate its 25th anniversary as one of the province’s most outstanding community museums.
The Cooperator spoke with one of the founders, Gordon Hammond, who walked us through some of the high points of the organization’s history, starting with Ned Webber, the founder and owner of the Webbers General Store on the corner of Highway 7 and Clam Harbour Road in Lake Charlotte.
“Ned always felt something should be done to preserve the history of the area,” Hammond said, “and he started collecting odds and ends of artifacts. His son Ford took up this vision when he was running the community incinerator. He looked at what people were throwing away, and he started putting aside things he thought might be important.”
The catalyst for creating museum happened in 1995, when the proposed demolition of the Hosking General Store behind the fire station in Oyster Pond galvanised the community to set up the Lake Charlotte Area Heritage Society. “It was an iconic landmark that the community felt could not be lost,” Hammond said. The group carefully took the store apart and stored it under a tarp on a piece of land donated by the Webber family.
Heritage Village officially opened on July 1, 2000, in the reconstituted general store. Getting on solid financial ground took a while. “The first year, we lost $45,000,” Hammond said. “Two of three board members lend the society the money to cover that deficit. The second year, we only lost $23,000, and then next year only $1,000. Since then we’ve operated in the black and paid back the loan.”
In the years since, Heritage Village has grown, adding one historic building after another from along the Eastern Shore. Hammond was in charge during the early years. Hammond’s daughter, Thea Wilson-Hammond, ended up succeeding him. He pointed out that she had come in 2nd after a search, and it was only when the first choice suddenly backed out that Wilson-Hammond took over. Hammond said he was especially pleased that “three of my four grandchildren have volunteered at Memory Lane since they were able to walk. They volunteered right on through their teenage years, and still come back to volunteer.”
Over the years, Heritage Village has created a season-long array of festivals, from the Cold Waters Seafood Festival in June to the Nova Scotia Forest Festival in the fall.
One of the most successful ventures began early on when they started getting three kittens at the beginning of each season. The kittens had free range around the site, and at the end of the summer, Heritage Village gave the kittens away. “If you only had a few hundred dollars to spend on marketing and creating a memorable visitor experience, the best thing you could do would be to get a few kittens,” Hammond said. “Now they’re highly sought after because by the end of the summer, they come completely happy and comfortable being with people.”
While preserving the past, Heritage Village has also kept up with the future. In 2018, they added two electric vehicle charging stations. And in 2019, they became the first museum in Nova Scotia, and possibly in Canada, to be 100% solar powered.
One of Heritage Village’s less well known achievements is the Eastern Shore Archives that opened in 2003. “It’s the only formally recognized institutional archives on the Eastern Shore,” Hammond said. The Archives houses 400 linear meters of text records, over 300 oral history recordings, and 5,243 high-res scans of local heritage photos.
Hammond attributed the organization’s success to two factors. “The number one support is the uncounted number of volunteers who’ve donated their time and expertise,” Hammond said. “That’s number one. The second is people who are not necessarily volunteers who’ve made financial contributions to the endowment fund.” Heritage Village is running a special campaign this summer to raise $25,000 to add to this fund.
On July 1, they will be staging a recreation of the ribbon-cutting ceremony in 2000. Staff and volunteers have been working hard to invite as many people as possible who were present on that opening day. For more information on the other 25th anniversary events, go to the website at https://visitmemorylane.ca.
