An Open Letter
from President Clair Shepherdson
The Little Claybelt Homesteaders Museum is a small heritage and homesteaders museum in Northern Ontario, located in New Liskeard. We are only open for the summer months from mid June to August 31 each year. The museum has NO staff and is operated by volunteers, most of whom are seniors. All of the planning, organizing, and fund raising is done by the volunteers as well as preparing and building the displays.
The museum is a not-for-profit organization with a charitable organization status. We have no funding from the municipality and have been marginally self-sufficient for the past 10 years. We must have fundraisers, such as yard sales and an annual Harvest Supper to survive. Due to the high cost of gasoline, cross border problems, the SARS scare and for other reasons the tourists to the area have been reduced considerably. Our visitors to the museum, in spite of increased advertising, have been reduced from about 1,000 in 2005 to about 500 in 2009. We rely on donations from the visitors, memberships and fundraisers to operate the museum and to keep it open..
Over the past few years the museum has partnered with the "Heritage Advisory Committee" of the City of Temiskaming Shores to help with the heritage inventory of the area. During this period the museum has done 150 interviews with the seniors of the area who have roots to the pioneers who came here between 1880 and 1940. These personal stories and memories are heritage assets in addition to the physical structures. In November 2009, the first volume of five or six volumes of the Claybelt Chronicles was released for sale. Volume 2 is targeted for May 2010.
The volunteers are getting older each year and nearing the burn-out stage. Any financial assistance would help to encourage younger people to pick up the heritage torch and assist with the documenting, recording and photographing the past. Your help and encouragement could help the museum volunteers to continue to do these tasks. Further restrictions in funding programs and new costly regulations could force many of them to simply give up and close the operations of the small museums, galleries and show places in the north.
We need your support. Membership in the Museum, attendance at fund raisers, the purchase our books and items from the Gift Shop all go a long way to help. Donations are gratefully accepted and receipted. And most of all, come and visit us at the Museum. See for yourself how it captures and preserves the homesteading pioneer spirit of the people who knew why it was worth carving out this particular place in the northland to call home.
We look forward to seeing you in 2010.
Thanks for listening.
Clair F. Shepherdson, President
Box 525,
New Liskeard, ON POJ IPO
Tel. 705 647 7200
