-by Eileen Coady
Small community museums now dot the landscape across our county during summer months and provide opportunity for residents and visitors to explore spaces that share collections and memories of days gone by. These heritage buildings, many with archival records, support cultural tourism within our communities and allow us to connect with the people, places, and objects that helped define Inverness County in earlier times.
One such museum with a storied past is the Margaree Salmon Museum, now in its 61st season. Nestled on a side road, just off the Cabot Trail at Northeast Margaree, the museum is the oldest in the county, having first opened its doors to the public in August 1965.
From Vision to Reality
As with many such ventures, the Margaree Salmon Museum began with the germ of an idea. At the museum’s 10th anniversary in 1975, staff recalled that the enthusiasm of conversations between a longtime fishing couple, William and Barbara Thomson of Connecticut and a local hotel owner, Isabel Taylor, in the fall of 1963 sparked the vision. From that vision, for a museum “to support a greater interest in the sport of Atlantic salmon fishing and related conservation…” community leaders became engaged and an organization was formed with that intent. It was known as the Margaree Anglers Association and Mrs. Taylor would become its first president.
Similar to other museums throughout the county, the Salmon Museum has been housed since its launch in what was formerly a schoolhouse, this one in an area known as Rossville in Northeast Margaree. The move to school consolidation in the county through the 1950s and 1960s meant that many such buildings were often turned over to community groups by the municipality. The old Rossville School which had closed to students in October 1958 was originally purchased by a ladies’ group in that community. Having found no particular use for it, the group offered it to the fledgling Margaree Anglers Association for their museum space for twenty-five dollars, allowing plans to move forward in 1964.
Now that a building was in place, the effort to set up a museum meant collecting items for display. Community members in this venture included John Hart and his son, Gerald, as well as Ralph and Jane Watts, Ralph MacPherson, Bernard Doyle, and Mary Hart. Their focus was deliberate. A hand-written poster from the mid-’60s, which this writer remembers being on display in a local store, requested artifacts and anything related to salmon fishing for the new museum. The response was significant. From attics and sheds within the Margarees and from anglers, near and far, who had fallen in love with the river and the sport of fishing the elusive salmon hereabouts, there was a collective willingness to share in the story.
With the groundwork laid for a one room display, and with Wayne Carroll as its first curator, the Margaree Salmon Museum opened its doors on August 9th, 1965.
Moving Forward
In 1966, in its second year in operation, the museum opened to coincide with the salmon fishing season – from June 15th to October 15th. Admission for adults was twenty-five cents; for children, it was 10 cents – a charge that remained unchanged for many years.
As Cape Breton tourism surged in the years following 1965, the museum gained popularity. In 1968, the first year that attendance was tracked, the museum recorded over 9,000 visitors. In 1972, attendance was over 20,000, impacted appreciably by large tour buses that regularly stopped at the museum. The following year, the National Museum of Canada selected the Margaree Salmon Museum site as the starting point for a Canada-wide tour of the first mobile museum.
Through those early years, the museum was fortunate to receive significant volunteer support from within the local community. Additionally, anglers who returned each year to fish the Margaree considered the museum a welcome initiative and became enthusiastic benefactors. Countless people attached, in one way or another to the Margaree River, began to leave donations of tackle, photos, flies, books, and other memorabilia to preserve its history.
In 1978 the museum building underwent a crucial expansion through a federally funded Winter Works grant. In this way, there was a significant increase to both the display area on the main floor and more usable space for meetings and storage on the upper level.
Over the years, the museum has been praised by many writers, naturalists, historians, and travel correspondents. International recognition for the Margaree Salmon Museum came in 1983 when the American Association of State and Local History bestowed a special commendation on it for “preserving and interpreting the history of angling on the Margaree River.”
Behind the Desk
Local curators provided stability and growth as the museum gained ground and those in the role were quick to acknowledge the Nova Scotia Museum in Halifax as well as the various branches of the Department of Fisheries for ongoing support. Perhaps no one was more memorable in the role of curator than Frances Hart who began as a volunteer that first year, filling in as curator on occasion. For a considerable time, she and her sister Eunice staffed the museum desk, greeting visitors and managing the operation. Later, she and Bernardine Marple worked the season together. By the time Frances retired at the end of the 2018 season (her 53rd!), she had become the face of the museum.
When interviewed by the Cape Breton Star on the museum’s 50th anniversary in 2015, Frances Hart offered what may be a fitting commentary on the Salmon Museum, and more generally on community museums across our county. “One has to stay optimistic, especially in these times when nothing is guaranteed. The museum has been a part of this valley for many years and I am confident that the museum will continue to be looked after for many years to come, because of the continued interest of the people and the volunteers.” Well said.