New Website Brings Heritage Skills to Life

As part of its National Heritage Day celebrations, Sherbrooke Village today, Feb. 16, unveiled a new website that showcases the traditional trades and skills for which the community continues to be known.

The website, With These Two Hands, the Commerce of Sherbrooke, gives visitors in Canada and around the globe a taste for how things were done some 100 years ago by bringing to life traditional livelihoods such as smithing, printing, weaving and pottery. It also demonstrates the vital contributions rural communities have made, and continue to make, to Nova Scotia's economy.

"Historic Sherbrooke Village preserves the past by keeping those very skills and trades alive," said Craig MacDonald, director of Sherbrooke Village Restoration. "This web project enhances our ability to share the special talents of our staff with the world. We are confident that by putting what we do and how we do it on the Internet, we can encourage more people to visit our museum."

The web project was supported with a $23,400 contribution from Industry Canada, funded through the Government of Canada's Youth Employment Strategy. The Sherbrooke Restoration Commission hired five young interns to put the site together, using historical photos and videos.

This is the second website featuring Sherbrooke Village that has been supported by Industry Canada. The first site, On the Rising Tide: The Fortunes of the Cummingers of Sherbrooke, tells the story of a prominent merchant family whose fortunes were made in gold mining, lumbering and shipbuilding.

The new website can be accessed on the Internet at http://collections.ic.gc.ca/handcrafttrade/ .