Barkerville Re-Invents Yet Again

By Michelle Cyr-Whiting

An original Barkerville home that now serves as the schoolhouse

Prince George, B.C. - Barkerville is known as a significant heritage site, it's known as a tourist attraction, a regional economic driver, an outdoor recreation destination, and a place where school kids can have a 'hands-on' history lesson...

But the gold rush town from days gone by has found yet another niche market to carve out in continued efforts to secure its long-term sustainability - establishing the Barkerville Conservation and Learning Institute to draw post-secondary students and academics to the area.

When the provincial government began to look for alternative ways to run heritage sites back in 2002, municipal leaders across the region rallied to find a way to keep Barkerville running. The end result was the Barkerville Heritage Trust, a non-profit organization and registered charity that operates the townsite. CEO Judy Campbell admits the change-over was not without a few bumps in the beginning, but feels, overall, it's been a positive move. She says the Trust has more flexibility than if it were being directed by a ministry and the Board of Directors "has been able to take the ball and run with it."

The Conservation and Learning Institutes is one of those 'runs'. So far, Campbell, says it's in its infancy, but some strong partnerships are developing and a number of projects are underway.

One such strong tie is with the College of New Caledonia. CNC's Quesnel campus offers a 'Heritage Conservation Building' certificate. Campbell says it's a one-year carpentry program that trains people to build, with a focus on heritage conservation, while qualifying them for the first year of the four-year journeyman program. "For two years running, we've had this great program at the college to hire displaced forest workers and re-train them in this certificate program and the 'classroom' was Barkerville and Cottonwood House and, actually, Hat Creek House, which is further south."

"So that's a really good example of the type of partnerships that could evolve through the Barkerville Conservation and Learning Institute," says the Trust's CEO.

She met with officials at UNBC earlier this winter and hopes to make a presentation to reps at Thompson Rivers University in the coming months. "We're at the phase of bringing to the attention of post-secondary institutions what we have to offer," says Campbell.

The offerings include three national heritage sites within Barkerville and a collection of more than 200-thousand artifacts, archival material and photographs. "Only a handful of PhD theses, Master's theses, and Honours papers have been done on Barkerville," she says. "And yet it is such an incredible resource for post-secondary education."

"We have not marketed Barkerville in that way before or branded it as a post-secondary learning resource in the same way we've actively marketed it for elementary school tours." (Between 2500 and 3000 students visit Barkerville in five weeks from mid-May to the end of June.)

But Campbell admits there's a bit of a 'chicken and egg' problem in that before the BHT goes too far down the road of attracting post-secondary groups, Barkerville needs a facilty to accomodate them - a place to house the collections and provide lab and classroom space for students.

"So, at this point, it's about forming partnerships and seeing what programs - like the CNC program - that we can set up ans working towards capital fundraising to actually create some facilities that would allow us to move in that direction."

She says the Conservation and Learning Institute is in the process of planning an academic symposium on Barkerville, in partnership with UNBC, for 2012. The event would coincide with the town's 150th Anniversary and would see more than a dozen academics give papers on the historic gold rush community. Campbell says, "I think that's really going to be our launch into the international academic world."

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