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They are charming, informative and important
July 11, 2009
I attended Heritage Day at the Dorset Heritage Museum; it is a charming place, built is a modernist structure that for years was the Ministry of Natural Resources.
Dorset was once a lumbering centre with an extraordinary bit of engineering, a long tramway that hauled logs from Lake of Bays up to Raven Lake in Haliburton, from where they would run the rivers down to Trenton.
Or were supposed to; it took too long and was too expensive, and the Gilmour company was competing against the new Booth Railway through Algonquin Park. The tramway eventually collapsed, and would be forgotten if not for the work of Gary Long and Randy Whiteman, with their book When Giants Fall and Long's book on the tramway.
Today celebrated the unveiling of stunning scale model of the tramway, built by Bev Easton Design of Huntsville.
The ACO fights to save heritage in situ, but heritage museums do a wonderful job of displaying things that might otherwise be lost, and in a case like the Dorset Heritage Museum, revealing history that even the locals didn't know that much about.
Congratulations to the volunteers at the museum, and everyone who helped make this little gem happen.
Lloyd Alter, President, ACO
http://www.dorsetheritagemuseum.ca/
Type of News Item: News
