A volunteer historical society that\u2019s almost as old as Alberta itself is concerned the province\u2019s past may be forgotten after its funding was eliminated.<\/p>\n
Historical Society of Alberta president Lorien Johansen says the group\u2019s annual funding of $76,000 was left out of the provincial government\u2019s latest budget.<\/p>\n
She said in an interview Monday that she knew the government was facing a $9.4-billion deficit, but questioned why her organization\u2019s funding didn\u2019t make the cut.<\/p>\n
It works out to 0.00081 per cent of the projected deficit,\u201d Johansen said.<\/p>\n
Arts and Culture Minister Tanya Fir\u2019s office wouldn\u2019t offer details on why the funding was eliminated, but called it a \u201ctough budget.\u201d<\/p>\n
In a statement, Fir\u2019s press secretary said the government\u2019s budget commits millions in funding to other historical preservation efforts, such as the provincial archives and museums.<\/p>\n
\u201cAdditionally, Alberta\u2019s Community Initiative Program supports non-profits with funding of up to $75,000, and the Historical Society of Alberta remains eligible to apply,\u201d said Juliana Rodriguez.<\/p>\n
Johansen said the society, which was founded by the province\u2019s first premier Alexander Rutherford in 1907, isn\u2019t at risk of folding, but there\u2019s not much it can do without the funding.<\/p>\n
This means publications the society puts out will be delayed, research it helps fund might not be done, and community events put on by the society\u2019s five regional chapters to celebrate and promote local history won\u2019t take place, she said.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe are the ones that preserve your history as an individual, whether that is the stories your grandparents would tell, the artifacts that end up in museums, the documents and the photos that you end up looking back on,\u201d Johansen said.<\/p>\n
\u201cWithout a historical society collecting all of that information, those things get lost to time, to Mother Nature, to people passing away.\u201d<\/p>\n
Johansen said the loss of funding also means the society might not be able to advocate for preserving certain districts or places as effectively as it has in the past.<\/p>\n
nother concern is that Alberta\u2019s tourism industry, which Premier Danielle Smith\u2019s government wants to see grow substantially, will be harmed, she said.<\/p>\n
\u201cBy removing our ability to support the promotion and publication and restoration of history, you are hurting the tourism industry because those things will start to fall away,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf we lose the ability or have the ability severely diminished to preserve those stories, they will eventually be lost. I don\u2019t know that I can quantify that with a concrete dollar figure.\u201d<\/p>\n
She said the society is entirely volunteer-run, with about 25,000 hours of work each year.<\/p>\n
Opposition NDP arts and culture critic Joe Ceci said he didn\u2019t understand what the government\u2019s goal was.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf we lose this information, if we lose this knowledge, we\u2019re all worse off as a society,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cSeems like it\u2019s a small amount of money for a big impact, and I\u2019m going to be pressing for the reversal of this bad decision.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A volunteer historical society that\u2019s almost as old as Alberta itself is concerned the province\u2019s past may be…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":527926,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[194294],"tags":[49,48,23752],"class_list":{"0":"post-527925","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-edmonton","8":"tag-ca","9":"tag-canada","10":"tag-edmonton"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/527925","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=527925"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/527925\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/527926"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=527925"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=527925"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=527925"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}