Return on Holyrood Museum much higher than its costs

Dear Editor,

I read with interest your front-page article “Building could cost Holyrood more than expected” about the Holyrood Museum in your March 24 issue. The Town of Holyrood and its environs have many fine features which commend it to both residents and visitors. They include: its natural harbour, the existing and new Marine Institute facilities on the harbour front, the main and North Arm marinas, its health centre, and many other public buildings and active businesses.

One feature of Holyrood that sets it apart, however, is its museum, both for the facility itself and the staff who run it, particularly Linda Bourgeois-Fraser and Stuart Fraser. The energy, creativity and enthusiasm they, and their active corps of volunteers, have demonstrated is quite extraordinary and evident from the establishment of the museum, the creation of its exhibits, the guidance they provide to visitors, and their management of its other activities.

The work of these volunteers has never cost the Town anything by way of contractual payments, salary or wages. Salaries for summer students come from provincial government grants, not town taxes. Volunteer efforts with the backing of the Town have placed the Holyrood Museum in the first rank of community museums in the province. My wife and I have visited many community museums in Newfoundland and Labrador and elsewhere. The Holyrood Museum is among the finest, and its potential for even greater achievement is tremendous.

While I cannot speak about Holyrood’s town finances, I do know that the efforts of the museum’s volunteers should feature in the calculation as the equivalent of hundreds of thousands of dollars of not only time, but achievement and good will, of which the town is the chief beneficiary.

I am retired now, but have a post-graduate degree and a more than 50-year active interest in Newfoundland and Labrador history, had a 28-year career as a lawyer, 14 years as a provincial court judge almost entirely in Labrador, am currently the President of the Newfoundland and Labrador Historical Society and the co-chair of the S.S. Daisy Legal History Committee of the Newfoundland and Labrador Law Society, and live in the neighbouring community of Harbour Main-Chapel’s Cove-Lakeview. In writing this letter, of course, I speak only for myself, as a neighbour to the Town of Holyrood.

While the costs of the building and the estimates for its maintenance and renovation are rightly on one side of the balance sheet, the value of the facility, its location in the heart of the community, the commitment of the museum’s active group of volunteers, and the good will they generate for the town weigh heavily on the other side of the balance sheet. What the town council says and decides about the museum, of course, has a major effect on the morale of the persons committed to the museum and the community at large.

I wish the town well with its deliberations and ultimately its decision on the future of the museum but hope that the Town can find a way to support its current and future plans.

Regards,

John L. Joy

Harbour Main, Chapel’s Cove-Lakeview