About the Bonnechere Arts and Historical Society

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Activities

The Bonnechere Arts and Historical Society is a community-based, volunteer organization. It is an incorporated, non-profit, registered charity, which has three functions:

to operate Bonnechere Museum,
to search for, collect, and encourage the writing of historical materials; and
to showcase artistic and cultural events.

Museum Mandate

Bonnechere Museum presents life as it developed along the Bonnechere River: its environs, its landscape, exploration, settlement and development.

To fulfill its mandate, the Museum pursues the following objectives:

to collect, preserve, research and interpret artifacts for the enjoyment and education of residents and visitors now and in the future,
to present or display interpretive, artistic, educational, scientific, and historical projects that express the identity of the community,
to interpret natural heritage and diverse cultures,
to form strategic partnerships with various groups that help it fulfill its goals
to foster cultural tourism by offering enrichment or educational experiences that attract visitors whose stay in the community would benefit businesses.

The Bonnechere Arts and Historical Society is licensed to use the names Bonnechere Museum and Ordovician Fossil Capital of Canada.

A Live Museum

Learn by doing. Fossil hunters of all ages assemble at the museum but extend their hunt to village walkabouts and quarry searches for real Ordovician fossils. The Bonnechere natural landscape is a fossil hunter’s paradise: the Ordovician Fossil Capital of Canada.

Quilting exhibits attract artisans from across Canada, and the workshops showcase skills and inspire creativity.

Dancers and painters, writers and musicians – all weave the fabric of life along the Bonnechere.

Community Connections

As part of a larger economic community, Bonnechere Museum promotes tourism. Tourism has three dimensions that seem easy to understand but are difficult to turn into reality: heritage tourism, cultural tourism and cultural landscape..

Heritage tourism

Heritage tourism means a whole community agrees to capitalize on the traditional aspects of its area under the broad umbrella of businesses, professional groups and residents, all of whom support one another in actions and marketing strategies to attract visitors whose spending will boost the local economy.

Cultural tourism

Within the idea of a whole community being involved in, and supportive of, heritage tourism, there is a particular approach called cultural tourism. Cultural tourism attracts visitors or travellers by ensuring that they have an opportunity to learn and understand the history, use, influence and context of objects and landscapes, or presentations and displays.

A Lou Harris Poll for Travel & Leisure Magazine, 1993, identified this important trend in why people travel. The poll found that 88% indicated a desire for enrichment; they wanted to understand a culture: they wanted to learn something, not just look at objects or landscapes, but to understand how both objects and landscapes made the people and their community what they are.

Cultural landscape

John Weiler defines cultural landscape this way:

"The use and physical appearance of the land as we see it now as a result of man's activities over time in modifying pristine landscapes for his own purposes."

Weiler puts his focus on how people have changed the landscape. However, Bonnechere Museum's plan will focus on the two way interaction between people and the landscape. The human activities, the languages, the arts and crafts of an area reveal its culture. Adding the natural environment to culture creates cultural landscape. This double approach – culture and landscape – is the basis for Bonnechere Museum's plan that will be called "Cultural Landscapes". This plan will offer education and enrichment to residents and visitors, a goal which is supportive of cultural tourism, as well.

Website funding

Support for the website was made possible through the Eastern Ontario Development Program which is administered by the Renfrew County Community Futures Development Corporation and FedNor.