Heritage

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Jane Rigby cannot believe that the Doors Open Kincardine heritage event, which she and her committee built up over six years, is being cancelled due to a lack of volunteers.

The former chairperson heard of a press release, sent out Friday from Kincardine community services co-ordinator Steve Murray, announcing the cancellation.

In that notice, Murray said, "Kincardine Tourism regrets to announce that due to a lack of volunteers, we have to cancel Kincardine Doors Open, scheduled for Oct. 15-16. We'd like to thank all the site owners who were willing to open their homes to the public, both past and present."

He stated that Doors Open had become a very important and popular shoulder-season event that attracted thousands of visitors since its inception, but like any community event, it relies on the hard work of volunteers.

Murray said municipal staff attended various events in the summer in an attempt to recruit volunteers, advertised in the local papers, approached local groups, had two months of radio advertising, 1,200 people on Facebook, high school announcements, and so on.

"We even made a plea to municipal staff to see if they would volunteer, so it wasn't for a lack of trying," he said.

Rigby said the business about trying to recruit volunteers is a joke because nothing was done until it was too late.

"I watched in horror and great disappointment as he (Murray) managed to kill what took us six years to build," she said. "I told him that it was a full-year job. We started working on it right after the previous event in October. It was a horrendous amount of work for our committee."

She said they had 250 volunteers during the Doors Open weekend, going in all different directions. 

"It's not something you can do in a couple of weeks," she said. "Every new site takes one week of solid work. You have to go out and seek the sites, choose them and then talk to the owners. You have to explain to them how it works and then you have to do all the historical research on each site."

Last year's Doors Open included three cemeteries for the first time - Kincardine, Tiverton and Port Bruce - plus the Bervie United Church and Bervie Women's Institute Hall. The event drew 4,500 people, many from out of town.

Rigby said when her husband, Paul, delivered all the material to Murray, he said that he and Kelly McDonald of Kincardine Tourism would take it over, no problem.

"But they're paid employees and are allowed no overtime," she said. "Our committee worked our butts off, and even had our budget cut back last year. We did the entire event on $10,000 per year."

Rigby said she never saw any advertising for volunteers for this year's Doors Open. "I watched for ads saying the event was coming up or for volunteers."

She noted that Murray has not been to a site visit that she is aware of, and over the six years of the event, only three to four councillors ever attended, plus a few municipal staff.

"They basically didn't support it - not even the mayor went to all the sites," she said. "I find that pretty sad. The only one who volunteered to help was (former deputy mayor) Laura Haight. She supported heritage and our event."

Murray said Wednesday (Oct. 12) that his department did everything it could to recruit volunteers over the past four months.

"We had 17-18 sites ready, and the booklets printed, but we needed 30 volunteers and we had only five," he said. "We made one final plea and nobody responded. We even had announcements at Kincardine District Secondary School and heard nothing."

He noted that McDonald spent a lot of time and effort organizing the Doors Open event.

"It's frustrating to have people pointing their fingers at staff when this is a community-wide problem," said Murray. "Look at other events that have almost folded due to a lack of volunteers, such as the Terry Fox Run, the Fish Kincardine Derby, the Legion and now Kincardine Scouting."

He said five years ago, there were plenty of volunteers, helping out with everything from gardens to events. "I heard that possibly the loss of the committee structure in the municipality could have caused the problem, but we don't know for sure.

Ward Cox showed people through the Masonic Lodge in Tiverton during last year's Doors Open Kincardine



Bervie United Church was on the tour



Historian Eldon Roppel showed people around the Tiverton Cemetery last year

"In the past couple of years, the number of volunteers has dwindled. We need to poll our past and current volunteers and find out the reason. Is it volunteer burn-out, or are people busy doing other things? Without volunteers, not only does local tourism suffer, the local economy suffers as a result, and the community as a whole."

Murray stressed that the decision to cancel Doors Open was not made lightly. "It's a good shoulder-season event and we had everything printed and ready to go."

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Thursday, October 13, 2011