Students in Bancroft will be able to learn more about our history.
That’s why Mary Kavanagh, Chair of the North Hastings Heritage Museum, was so happy to announce that thanks to $73,700 in funding from the Trillium Grant will allow them to write curriculum about Bancroft and North Hastings’ history to teach to students. “As a teacher, I was feeling bad,” Kavanagh said during the announcement about not being able to teach students about the area’s past. Now that the Museum is able to stay open year-round, it became possible to open it up to teach students about North Hastings’ past, Kavanagh added. “Classes of school children can now be invited in to share in the history of the community and understand the way in which their grandparents and their great-grandparents contributed to the town of Bancroft and North Hastings,” Kavanagh says. She went on to say that history classes in school are generic, so being able to teach students about local history will benefit the community.
She says Linda Bast has been hired as a full-time staff member to help with the curriculum. Kavanagh says the curriculum will be:
- Studying the pioneers of North Hastings in grade 3
- Studying minerals in grade 4
- Studying Natives in grade 5
- Kavanagh says there will be a dedicated Algonquin room for it
- Studying Canadian history around the time of confederation in grades 7 and 8
- Studying the World Wars in grade 10
- Full Native studies program in grade 11
- Algonquin and Métis in the area will help with the program
Mayor Paul Jenkins attended along with Councillors Andra Kauffeldt and Valerie Miles. New Warden of Hastings County Rick Phillips attended as well. “You’re making believers out of everybody,” said Jenkins who Kavanagh called a “great friend” of the Museum. Phillips added that it’s great to see the Museum continue to promote local history. Kim Bishop, who attended on behalf of M.P.P. for Hastings-Lennox and Addington Daryl Kramp, said, “you’ve (Kavanagh and the Museum board) really put the Musem on the map.” Kramp was quoted in a press release and said, “I understand how important it is for our young people to have a sense of their heritage and how this great land that they will inherit was transformed by our generations and generations before us.”
When speaking with My Bancroft Now after the announcement, Kavanagh called out to anyone with any old relics relating to the area’s past. She says to not throw it out, but to bring it to the Museum. “We have artifacts that have been here for 50 years,” Kavanagh says about the many artifacts of Bancroft and North Hastings’ past the Museum houses. She said that with the community’s help “we hope to be here for another 50 years.”