Historical Societies and Archive Centres
Local archivist highlights funding challenges for historical societies and archive centres
Pictured is the BCHS' archive centre. It is located in the old court house in Knowlton. Photo by Taylor McClure.
By Taylor McClure
Townships’ Daily News Bits
CIDI 99.1 FM
The Magog Historical Society announced on its social media platform at the beginning of January that it was temporarily suspending its activities due to a lack of funding and ongoing negotiations with the City of Magog to receive financial support. According to a message on its website, negotiations are still in progress.
Following the announcement, an article appeared in The Record that highlighted the situation at the Magog Historical Society and the concerns it raised for other historical societies and archive centres in the the Eastern Townships.
Anne-Marie Charuest is the archivist for the Brome County Historical Society (BCHS). She has a Masters degree in Archives and Science from the Université de Laval and she has been involved in historical societies since 1993. From 2012 to 2020, Charuest also served on the board of directors for the Fédération Histoire Québec, a non-profit organization that helps all non-profit organizations that have "History" in their mission.
As someone with extensive experience in the field, Charuest spoke with CIDI 99.1 FM about the challenges that historical societies and archive centres face when it comes to finding financial support and the importance of preserving history and heritage.
“The historical societies were created by volunteers and it has since always been working with volunteers. The problem, if we can call it a problem, is that the archivist world and the museum world is more professional now. The museums and archive centres want to have professional employees and they want to have a salary,” explained Charuest. “The main problem of historical societies is they don’t have the money to pay someone to do the job.”
Charuest continued to explain that the government created a program in the 1980s with the help of Bibliothèque et Archives nationales du Québec that allowed historical societies with archives to be accredited and to have recurring funding to pay the salary of an archivist.
“It was a good intention at first, but...there’s a but. When the national archives asked the government ‘okay, we’re going to give accreditation to historical societies?,’ the government said we don’t have much money to put into that. So, we’re going to create one accredited archive centre per administrative region,” she said. “At that time, we had 16 regions. (…) It was accepted, but they quickly realized that there was more than one archive centre per region.”
Other historical societies with archives started to be accredited, but the budget did not change.
“They had to split the budget between all of the historical societies that were accredited or that wanted to to be accredited. Finally, it came to giving accreditation to four, five, or six archive centres for some regions, but each archive centre received around $20,000 a year. It wasn’t enough to pay the salary of a professional archivist,” noted Charuest.
As a result, Charuest said that historical societies had to find other sources of income to operate.
“They asked the municipalities and some accepted and some did not. (…) Historical societies that weren’t accredited, well they didn’t have any money. That’s what created the challenge and it created this situation where there are historical societies that are professional and some that are not professional, but that’s not the reality,” she emphasized. “I worked for seven years as a volunteer archivist. I have my diploma and I worked there for free. (…) Some historical societies decided to put up a little museum that would give them income.”
Charuest added that some museums did so well, they decided to split from the historical society to create two separate entities.
“In order to have grants they needed to be alone and not under the historical society. What happened is that the income that went to the historical society that had a museum, well the money was transferred to the museum and the historical society was left with no budget. I think that’s what happened in Magog,” she expressed to CIDI.
Charuest highlighted the fact that it’s difficult to have a museum if there is no historical society there to preserve historical information.
“That’s what create exhibits, publications, all of the information that is in the archives can be used for different projects,” she said.
During the 90s, municipalities were provided with the opportunity to set programs in place to highlight the history of a region, but historical societies were presented with another roadblock.
“You had to prove that people would come to look at exhibits or archives, but people have no use of looking at archives. You have to be able to have an exhibit or an activity based on the archives, but people don’t come to look at the old documents,” explained Charuest. “Municipalities decided to give money for specific projects, they gave grants for exhibits, but the museum is not a part of the historical society anymore. When the historical society asked municipalities, can we have money too? They said no you’re not the museum, we want to give money to the museum.”
Charuest added that it “almost created a battle between museums and historical societies.”
“That was a bad situation, but now governments, either municipal, provincial, or federal, are figuring out this situation. That’s why here, at the BCHS, we have two accreditations. We have one for the museum and one for the archives, but we are still two entities under the historical society,” she said. “What’s happening now is that historical societies have difficulty and don’t have people that want to go work there. Finally, what happens is that they close down. But the documents that were kept by the historical society aren’t put in the trash.”
According to Charuest, every incorporated historical society that decides to shut down its operations is responsible for ensuring that its archives are transferred to another historical society or an accredited archive centre under Quebec law.
“As historical societies are not under an association, they don’t know how to work on those matters, but the Fédération Histoire Québec is there to help them. When I was on the board of directors in 2012, it was to have an archivist in order to make things happen in terms of this matter,” mentioned Charuest.
Charuest spoke about the importance of preserving the history and heritage of a region and the role in plays in learning from the past.
“We learn from the people that were here before us and we have to transmit what we have learned during our lifetime. (…) We can look up to the people here before us, look up to what they did, and at that same time we should look up to people that were here that did some bad things and not repeat the same mistakes as the people before,” she said. “Humanity, we think that we are long living people. No, we are just a second on the earth’s lifetime, but we have to understand that we have a responsibility.”
For more information on the “archives world” and the BCHS archives listen to the full interview below: