Susan Letson is on the committee organizing the Medway Head Lighthouse Art and Craft Show and Sale, beginning Friday (Aug. 16) in Port Medway. (Rick Conrad)
Kim Jackson, president of the Nova Scotia Native Council Zone 9, organized the National Indigenous Peoples Day event in Liverpool on Friday. (Rick Conrad)
People from indigenous communities across Canada celebrated National Indigenous Peoples Day on Friday.
In Liverpool, the Nova Scotia Native Council Zone 9 organized an event at Great Oak Park near the Hank Snow Home Town Museum on Friday afternoon and evening.
People from around Queens County turned out for the cultural celebration featuring dancing, drumming, a vendors market with Mi’kmaw artisans and some traditional foods.
QCCR spoke to Kim Jackson of Milton, president of the Nova Scotia Native Council Zone 9, and other people at the event.
Scot Slessor at his stained glass studio SAS Glass, just off Main Street in Liverpool. Slessor is one of the organizers of the Queens Coast Art Tour on June 22 and 23. (Rick Conrad)
Liverpool stained glass artist Scot Slessor wants the Queens Coast Art Tour to be memorable.
But he also wants the map for the tour to be just as unforgettable, and useful. Last year, he recruited Region of Queens Mayor Darlene Norman to help him with a video explaining how to make a paper airplane out of the map.
Obviously making a paper airplane isn’t the map’s most important function. In fact, Slessor wants people to unfold it to reveal the many Queens County artisans listed there and pay them a visit during the Queens Coast Art Tour.
The map plots all participating artisans and businesses, with QR codes that link to their websites or social media accounts.
Slessor owns SAS Glass in downtown Liverpool. He and some other local artisans got together last year to form the Queens County Arts and Crafts Society, taking over from the Queens Arts Council.
One of their first projects was to create an art map and studio tour. That happened last October, and it included almost 25 artisans from Liverpool to Western Head to Port Medway.
This year, it’s expanded to more than 40 artists, shops and popups all over Queens County. And there will be two chances to participate, in June and October.
The first one is coming up on June 22 and 23. The tour runs 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. each day.
Slessor says it’s all about promoting Queens County as an arts destination, and about artisans opening up their studios or demonstrating their craft to local residents and visitors.
“I’ve been on a ton of these studio tours,” Slessor said in a recent interview.
“What I’ve told everybody, you’re just not another sale. Just don’t put stuff on a table. If you’re painting, paint. I’m glass, I’ll be doing something with glass those days. People can come in, I can show them what I do, what the materials are, how I play with them. That has to be there, because people do find that interesting. … We need to be different. Everybody does craft sales up and down the shore. So what’s the difference? I think the difference should be come on down, we’re throwing some pottery, we’re making some jewelry, you can see what we’re doing.”
Slessor says last October’s art tour was a success for many of the artists, some of whom were surprised by how many people dropped by to see them in action.
“I had 30 people each day in here. All I did was gab all day to people. And then I talked to other people who never really opened their studio and they said, ‘I can’t believe all these people showed up to my studio.’ So, it was kind of cool.
“You might show one person your studio and have a cup of coffee, but when you have 20 people rolling through in a day, it is kind of neat.”
In addition to visiting artisans at their studios or work spaces, art lovers can also meet them at three popup locations: the Astor Theatre, White Point Beach Resort and Coastal Queens Place in Port Mouton.
“Some artists are very quiet and unassuming. And suddenly you find there’s a guy on the street here who’s a fantastic portrait painter. You didn’t even know he was there. And locally, I think it’s important. Last October, when we did this, a lot of folks who came around were local.
“One of the wider goals of something like this is you feel like you have a sense of community and that you’re not working totally in isolation. Doing art can be a very isolating thing. To let them know that they have a community to be part of.”
Aside from the obvious goal of giving artisans more chances to sell their work, another objective of the tour is to bring art lovers to the area from all over the province and beyond.
“In the perfect world, I’d love to see artisans selling stuff and making some money,” Slessor says.
“I think if we bring people to the county, whether they buy from one of us or just spend some time in a restaurant or going to the Astor or doing whatever, that’s all positive. So we (hope to) increase the number of people coming into the county.”
Slessor says the Queens County Arts and Crafts Society has also applied for provincial funding to help them work on their online marketing and promotion.
And he says he’d like to see international artists come to Liverpool for four-week residencies.
The former diplomat has reached out to some of his contacts overseas.
“It would be great to have, I don’t know, a Taiwanese artist here for four or five weeks. They’d be at the Astor. We would introduce them to other artisans. It would be fun and informative and something totally different.”
People can pick up a Queens Coast art tour map in Liverpool at the Visitor Information Centre, the Astor Theatre, Main and Mersey coffee bar, Shore Thing Studio and Emporium or at SAS Glass just across from the Astor.
Cathie Pincombe and Ray Leger of the Medway Head Lighthouse Society. The group is looking for volunteers to help preserve the iconic light near the end of Long Cove Road in Port Medway. (Rick Conrad)
A local community group is hoping to recruit more people to help preserve a historic lighthouse in what some refer to as the Peggys Cove of Queens County.
The Medway Head Lighthouse Society took possession of the lighthouse in 2014.
Near the end of the picturesque Long Cove Road in Port Medway, the current light has been standing since 1983. But there has been a lighthouse of some kind at the site since 1851, when I.K. Perry was the inaugural keeper.
Cathie Pincombe is secretary of the Medway Head Lighthouse Society and is an organizer of the Medway Head Lighthouse Art and Craft Show. Both are run entirely by volunteers. She says they need more to make sure this piece of Nova Scotia’s heritage survives.
“We are a dedicated hard-working group of people that want to save our iconic Medway Head Lighthouse just like all the other iconic lighthouses in this province. And if not for societies like ours, we would not have lighthouses in this province.”
Like all Nova Scotia lighthouses, the Medway Head Lighthouse was automated in 1983. But it still opens in the summer to tourists, who can learn about the vital part these structures and their hardy, brave keepers and their families played in seaside communities like Port Medway.
The society maintains the lighthouse, doing necessary repairs and upkeep.
Some of the art from last year’s Medway Head Lighthouse Art and Craft Show in Port Medway. (Medway Head Lighthouse Society Facebook page)
To do that, they hold a major fundraiser every summer in the village of Port Medway. The society will hold its 11th annual art and craft Show in August.
“We are the largest art show on the South Shore. And it’s a pretty impressive show. We have anywhere between 70 and 80 artists that are part of the show every year.”
To run the lighthouse and the art show, however, Pincombe says they need more volunteers. The lighthouse is open three days a week from late June to early September. And the art show goes from Aug. 17 to 25.
The show alone requires eight volunteers daily for nine days. And the lighthouse needs enough volunteers to cover 36 shifts through the summer.
Sales at the art show are vital to pay for lighthouse repairs and maintenance. Last September’s Hurricane Lee blew much of the siding from one side of the structure.
“It still is going to require some specialized equipment and we’re hopeful we can get it done in the $10,000 range. So it’s not inexpensive to maintain a lighthouse.”
Pincombe says it’s getting more difficult to find volunteers, even as it becomes more important to replenish their ranks.
The society hopes to hire a student for the summer to help with tours and administration. And she says they’re also on the lookout for a treasurer.
“I think it’s getting tougher because even though there are a lot of people moving into the area, and we try to get to know our new community members and hope that they will get involved, it doesn’t seem to be quite as easy to get volunteers as it has been. And we’ve expanded the locations (of the art show) and the number of days. So we’re giving ourselves a bigger number of shifts to cover. So it’s not as easy.
“We volunteers are getting older, so we need younger people to get involved.”
Pincombe says the lighthouse and the art show draw people from across Canada and around the world. Her partner Ray Leger looks after the building and its volunteers and leads many of the tours at the lighthouse in the summer.
“I think we had something like 800 visitors to the lighthouse last year. And Ray … tracks where everybody comes from. And it’s a wide range of people from all over the place. And you’d be amazed how many local people like to come out to the lighthouse.
“So it’s a great cause. The art show is a fun thing to volunteer with, because it’s busy. You meet lots of people. And the lighthouse is a fabulous place to volunteer because you meet people from all over the world with stories and why they came here. It’s really an exciting thing to do.”
