Sustaining Butterflies: Methodology and Approach

Key steps in successfully engaging communities and determining their capacity included adopting an informal face-to-face approach at meetings and when interacting fostering trust both at meetings and one-on-one with local heritage stakeholders. The conscious choice to use graduate students rather than government employees was to not only encourage participation by community stakeholders but also to expose the ‘new’ Heritage Professionals to the realities and complexities of rural communities. Knowledge of each individual rural audience proved crucial, as was a sense of humour and willingness to work with multiple members of a community. A week-long team road trip at the beginning of the pilot project and some preliminary research enabled the team to tailor its message to each community and assisted an engagement with community members.

Identifying Community Capacity

An initial first step was to develop a community diagnostic to disentangle present capacity from future potential. In the past, the ecological conservation of the Rideau Canal often overshadowed the importance of conserving the Corridor’s cultural heritage resources. However, the Rideau Heritage Initiative team was able to take advantage of the earlier efforts of the Rideau Heritage Network (RHN) – a group of heritage planners, volunteers and advocates – who had begun to identify specific heritage conservation needs along the Rideau Canal Corridor in early 2006. The diagnostic exercise was essential as it identified stewardship tools already in place (heritage inventories, archives, community engagement processes), as well as determined:

While each community is unique, the Rideau Heritage Initiative found that heritage stewardship in many rural communities was often performed not by municipal staff but rather by volunteers, who were equally passionate, committed and skilled, but often lacked the tools to connect effectively with political structures. It is volunteers that staff the principal building block in the province of Ontario - Municipal Heritage Committees (MHCs) - which provide key local advice on heritage conservation matters, such as the designation of properties, property alterations, and demolition applications.

Previous Section
Next Section
All Resources