{"id":445158,"date":"2026-01-31T12:47:10","date_gmt":"2026-01-31T12:47:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/445158\/"},"modified":"2026-01-31T12:47:10","modified_gmt":"2026-01-31T12:47:10","slug":"parks-canada-planned-to-delete-a-heritage-website-but-one-proud-canadian-hit-save","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/445158\/","title":{"rendered":"Parks Canada planned to delete a heritage website \u2014 but one proud Canadian hit &#8216;Save&#8217;"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.cbc.ca\/a\/assets\/texttospeech.svg\" alt=\"Text to Speech Icon\" width=\"44\" height=\"44\"\/><\/p>\n<p>Listen to this article<\/p>\n<p>Estimated 3 minutes<\/p>\n<p>The audio version of this article is generated by AI-based technology. Mispronunciations can occur. We are working with our partners to continually review and improve the results.<\/p>\n<p>When Stephen Taylor read a CBC Nova Scotia story about the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.cbc.ca\/news\/canada\/nova-scotia\/parks-canada-historic-places-shutting-down-9.7058161\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">imminent closure of Parks Canada&#8217;s Canadian Register of Historic Places website<\/a>, he knew he had to act.<\/p>\n<p>The register is a national searchable database of historic places recognized by federal, provincial, territorial and local governments. <\/p>\n<p>It contains about 13,500 listings and is slated for decommissioning this spring. <\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Reading into it&#8230; I felt it would be a tragedy to lose that resource,&#8221; Taylor said.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;I felt there was a huge urgency to preserve it, ironically preserving our history, even though that was the point of the original website.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>As a partner and chief technical officer at Shift Media Strategies, Toronto-based Taylor knows a thing or two about web technologies.<\/p>\n<p>That weekend, Taylor used artificial intelligence tools to download all of the data on the old Parks Canada site and rebuild it using modern web standards.<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" alt=\"A man in a checked shirt and wearing a blazer.\"   src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/1769863630_144_default.jpg\" style=\"aspect-ratio:1\" data-cy=\"image-img\"\/>Stephen Taylor is a partner and chief technical officer at Shift Media Strategies. (Stephen Taylor\/Shift Media Strategies)<\/p>\n<p> The <a href=\"https:\/\/heritageguide.ca\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">new site, called Heritage Guide Canada<\/a> went live online within 24 hours of the news story being published on the CBC News website.<\/p>\n<p>The  site is not a copy of the original site; it features a cleaner and more modern layout that is designed to be easier to use and navigate. <\/p>\n<p>Taylor said he also added features the old site lacked, including a &#8220;near me&#8221; button for visitors to find heritage locations nearby and dedicated pages for towns and cities.<\/p>\n<p>He said the cost for designing and operating the site is minimal.<\/p>\n<p>The site is hosted on a low-power computer called a Raspberry Pi which is also used for some of his other work. <\/p>\n<p>The bandwidth used to serve the pages to users is also well within the limits of his existing paid  plan, he said. Taylor is operating the site as a free public service. <\/p>\n<p>He said he plans to add additional features including a smart search function that understands questions and not just keywords.<\/p>\n<p>Taylor said preserving history is important at a time when Canadians are grappling with external threats and reaffirming Canada&#8217;s place in the world.<\/p>\n<p>While he&#8217;s content running the website using his own resources, he said he&#8217;s open to other options.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;If the government changes course and decides to rescue the initiative, I&#8217;m happy to even give them the website if they find it&#8217;s a better website than their own,&#8221; he said.<\/p>\n<p>MORE TOP STORIES<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Listen to this article Estimated 3 minutes The audio version of this article is generated by AI-based technology.&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":445159,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[22],"tags":[49,48,295,66],"class_list":{"0":"post-445158","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-environment","8":"tag-ca","9":"tag-canada","10":"tag-environment","11":"tag-science"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/445158","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=445158"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/445158\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/445159"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=445158"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=445158"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=445158"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}