GREG NESTEROFF
Rossland News
Rossland will host Heritage BC’s 2015 conference.
Heritage commission chair Jackie Drysdale told city council Monday that while they are only in the early planning stages, she expects around 100 people to attend the event on October 1 and 2.
Heritage BC is a non-profit that supports heritage conservation in the province. The City of Rossland is a corporate member.
Drysdale toured executive director Kathryn Molloy and her husband around Rossland on Monday, visiting heritage sites and looking at facilities for the conference, which will include a series of workshops over the two days.
“Rossland is a really easy community to sell and our heritage is an important part,” Drysdale said. “It creates a sense of pride and identity.”
Drysdale, who will chair the local planning committee, said she will meet with the Columbia Basin Trust to explore sponsorship opportunities, but was confident that with city support they could pull it off. This year’s conference was held in Cloverdale.
Meanwhile, Drysdale said a new Heritage Rossland website is in the works, which will include information presently on the city’s site as well as additions that city staff haven’t had time to post.
That includes a database of the old Columbia cemetery, the text of all heritage plaques, a heritage home inventory, and the heritage registry — although only “bits and pieces” of the latter are on the city’s site. A heritage home booklet was going to be delivered to the city in an electronic format that could be posted online, but “was so unwieldy that it wasn’t much use,” Drysdale said. It is now being reformatted.
Drysdale said with volunteer help she expects the commission can cover the website’s design costs within its existing budget. Once created, she doesn’t expect it to need updating very often.