Councillor Cunningham wants to get Heritage Society back to work

Rhoda Witherly, the Chair of the
Prince Rupert Heritage Society
announced the Board's resignation
earlier this year.

With eight months having now gone by since the mass resignation of the City's Heritage Advisory Society, Councillor Barry Cunningham is anxious to see the City try and rebuild that group. The Society which outlined at the time that "everything has a shelf life" delivered their notice to the city in early February, with the positions still remaining vacant heading into the fall.

Making note of the efforts of the previous society and how with change and growth anticipated for the community, the need to have someone in place on heritage issues is something that the city needs to return to.

City Manager provided a short overview of how the Heritage Society works, noting that as they are an independent society there's not a lot of control that the city has to over their decisions, including the mass departure of last year.

Mayor Brain also observed that while the city doesn't appoint members to the Heritage Society, the city could issue a call for volunteers and approach past members to lend a hand in mentoring those that may be willing to step up. He also took advantage of the topic to note how it indicates a shift in the volunteer base of the community of late, with the city needing to engage more young people to become involved in such groups as the Heritage Society.

"That doesn't mean that we can't help ... I don't believe that we appoint on that society it's its own Society and I think what they've said is that they want someone to take leadership over this group and we haven't done that yet, that's all, so, it's as easy as calling out for more volunteers" -- Mayor Brain on the status of the Heritage Society in Prince Rupert

Councillor Cunningham would
like to see the City take the lead
in helping to fill vacancies at the
Prince Rupert Heritage Society

As the conversation on the current standing of the society came to an end, Councillor Cunningham reinforced his desire to see the City take the lead on bringing the organization back to prominence.

"They need some guidance and they need some leadership and that group that came in here that day were looking to us to sort of carry the ball and  it's been ten months and we haven't done anything so I think we should look into it and put out an ad for volunteers and see what happens" 
   
Further background on the topic can be found on our Council timeline feature

The Councillors thoughts on the issues and some of the observations on theme from the Mayor can be found on the City's Video Archive, starting at the 47 minute mark.



For more items related to City Council Discussions see our archive page here.