Sacred Heart Cathedral Receives 2014 Heritage Award
Prince George Heritage Commission member Ranjit Gill, Most Reverend Bishop Stephen Jensen, architect Trelle Morrow, former commission member Dr. Valerie Giles 250News photo
Prince George, BC – First consecrated 90-years ago, Sacred Heart Cathedral has been recognized for its local significance with the 2014 Heritage Citation Historic Places Award.
In presenting the award at The Exploration Place this afternoon, Dr Valerie Giles told those gathered that the City of Prince George is relatively young – just celebrating its centennial next year – but the parish of Sacred Heart has been at the corner of Ingledew Street and Patricia Boulevard for nine decades.
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The Bishop of the Prince George Diocese, Stephen Jensen, commended the City's Heritage Commission for the annual award. "This is a wonderful initiative and we need it now more than ever," said Jensen. "If we don't know our history, if we don't know our story, then we really don't know who we are – where we've come from. We have no bearing for our future."
"It's ironic in our day and age that we have the means to record history electronically with pictures, sound, and everything else. And yet, I think we would agree, that we probably know less about our story in the general public know – in the historic sense, it's not as strong as it used to be."
Bishop Jensen pointed out he was just in Smithers last weekend, where the hospital was started by an order of religious women. He said the same holds true in Fort St. John. "So this plaque is really a recognition of people of faith, who acted on that faith – who were inspired and motivated – to make their community a better place."
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Now, if only at least those buildings which have received these awards could also go on the City’s Heritage Registry.
Kamloops has over 20 buildings on its registry.
http://www.city.kamloops.bc.ca/planning/heritage-register.shtml
Most other cities our size have more. This is Vernon’s
http://www.vernon.ca/services/pde/documents/heritage_register.pdfâ
For some reason or another the last link above points back to this page.
Hopefully this one will work.
http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=1&cad=rja&ved=0CCMQFjAA&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.vernon.ca%2Fservices%2Fpde%2Fdocuments%2Fheritage_register.pdf&ei=tUQJU4HaIYLmoATH9YLgAQ&usg=AFQjCNH2yYPCNvBLB1a7q40u5FVHxw_UWw&bvm=bv.61725948,d.cGU
The City’s Heritage Commission prepared a 5 year strategic plan many more years ago than that. The objectives were never accomplished.
The Heritage Commission is an entity which reports to City Council, not to City Administration. It still does under the rearranging of the deck chairs.
The people of this City never really hear the conclusion of such plans, such as an assessment of what was accomplished and what was not yet accomplished and what the new strategic plan might be.
To me, that means that there is really no one in charge on Council of such committees. They seem to exist without any real interest on the part of Council. In other words, people meet, people talk, people eat on occasion, but really it is just a social club more than anything else.
In the meantime, buildings get destroyed through neglect and torn down if they become derelict. Sort of like the City’s roads and snow clearing equipment …… :-(
I thought I would see how the City is doing with putting minutes of committees/commissions of Council on the web page.
http://princegeorge.ca/cityhall/committees/heritage/Pages/Default.aspx#members
The last one is dated September 2013 for the Heritage Commission.
There are meetings scheduled once a month which means that based on the previous year, there would have been meetings in October, November and January.
The Heritage group is not all that exceptional in how long it takes to get minutes onto the web page. At least the last two meeting in 2013 should have been on by now since the January 2014 meeting would have provided the occasion to review the minutes and approve them or approve them with amendments.
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