Nova Scotia museums developing plans to protect the past from present-day disasters

On a patch of green next to Sackville Drive, a small white house marks the spot where 19th-century stagecoaches from Halifax once dropped the mail as they passed along the main roads through the province.

In the 1970s, the Department of Transportation was poised to tear down the house to build a highway. Six community groups successfully fought to halt the demolition, and opened Fultz House as a museum dedicated to the late 19th- and early 20th-century history of the area, which is a short drive north of Halifax. 

But on July 21, 2023, Fultz House faced a new threat as record-breaking rain fell across the province. 

That evening, the museum's security system warned there was flooding in its storage building. On social media, Fultz Corner Restoration Society president Joanne Boudreau watched with alarm as posts showed the nearby Sackville River had flooded the area. Cars on Highway 102, which runs beside the museum, were submerged in water up to their roofs. 

"It was awful," said Boudreau. "We had a plan for a flood … but it was more if the sprinkler went off, or we had a roof leak — nothing to that extent."

When Boudreau was finally able to make it to the museum, she found 1.5 metres of water in the basement, though there was no damage to artifacts. The main building and its contents were also spared.

Nonetheless, volunteers at the museum are still developing plans to protect the museum and its contents from climate-related disasters, and they're not alone; as the effects of climate change intensify, institutions around the province are considering how to preserve the province's past from the effects of the increasingly chaotic present.

Museum threatened by fires, floods

The floods weren't the first time in 2023 Boudreau had worried about extreme weather threatening the museum; earlier in the spring, evacuations for the wildfire in Upper Tantallon, N.S., had extended as far as Sackville Drive.

"We didn't have [fire] in our disaster plan … so we very quickly came together as a group to identify what we would save," she said.

But in July, there was little warning of potential flooding. What Boudreau was expecting to be a regular heavy rain turned out to be a record-breaking downpour. 

Drawing lessons from that experience, volunteers at the museum are updating its disaster plan to include severe flooding, and digitizing objects from the museum's archives, including photographs, to safeguard them for the future.

"If something did happen, we could recreate what we had," Boudreau said.

Museums elsewhere in the province have also had to contend with increasing threats from severe weather. 

In Shelburne County, Andrea Davis, executive director of the Black Loyalist Heritage Centre, says last year's wildfires were a pivotal point for the museum, which is located in Birchtown.

As flames approached the edges of the centre's property, Davis sent staff home and began working with Nova Scotia Museum staff and volunteers to move artifacts and documents out of harm's way.

'It brought back that trauma'

But artifacts housed under the centre's glass floor were left where they were because of the difficulty accessing them.

For Davis, who is an eighth-generation descendent of the Black Loyalists who moved to the area, the anxiety over the fate of those objects elicited painful memories. In 2006, an arson attack destroyed a previous building belonging to the Black Loyalist Heritage Society, along with 20 years of artifacts and archives.

"It brought back that trauma," Davis said. "There was healing that was starting and then that trauma happened."

But the unprecedented fires around Barrington Lake also prompted a new awareness of the centre's vulnerability to climate change.

"It did take that wildfire for us to wake up and realize that any disaster could happen in Shelburne or in the community at any time."

To protect valuable genealogical records, Davis said the centre is working to digitize that material. They're also looking at acquiring fireproof safes to store artifacts, though the centre still needs to develop a plan for how to get artifacts out from under the glass floor. 

"Preserving, protecting, safeguarding that material is extremely important," said Davis. "If we were to lose any component of it, our history would be somewhat diminished."

Fire isn't the only climate-related threat the centre is facing, Davis said. It's also seeing more erosion on its property.

Archaeological sector strategy

Erosion is also a threat for historical objects that aren't yet in museums. 

Along the entirety of Nova Scotia's coastline, accelerating coastal erosion has archaeologists weighing how to mitigate the effects of erosion on archaeological sites.

Andrea Richardson, who works as a climate adaptation co-ordinator in the province's archaeology sector, says while coastal erosion has been a concern for archaeologists for a long time, the growing severity of the problem has prompted the sector to develop and implement a strategy.

"​​There are records going back to the 19th century with people … saying that storms are taking away sites, but it's definitely become more intense recently," she said. 

In Nova Scotia, increasing erosion can cause Mi'kmaw artifacts, including objects like ceramics, burnt bone or arrowheads, to erode out of coastal sites that date back millennia. It can also mean the loss of post-contact artifacts like glass bottles or aboiteau. 

"The important part of archaeology is looking at the relationship between various artifacts and where they are within a site. And so, once they start eroding out of the side of a bank, we lose that context and we lose that ability to tell those specific stories," Richardson said.

The climate-change strategy includes a vulnerability model, to determine where past traces of human activity are most at risk, and a citizen science program that will help archaeologists keep track of what's happening on the coastline.

"The archaeological community in Nova Scotia is fairly small" and archaeologists can't monitor every place that's being affected, Richardson said. 

A citizen science program would help archaeologists keep track of a wider area. Richardson said the hope is for it to launch this summer. 

The plan also includes working to identify significant sites that could warrant temporary coastal protection, or where salvage excavation is needed to prevent objects from washing away. 

A new role for museums

In Lower Sackville, Joanne Boudreau said the ways in which museums are struggling with climate change are also an opportunity to engage the public in a discussion about the issues. 

Fultz House's storage building, for example, which was acquired from the province in 2005, was built on a floodplain. The museum's work to safeguard against future floods could involve moving the building or putting up a new one on higher ground, Boudreau said — but it's also an opportunity to remind the public of the importance of conserving wetlands and not building in vulnerable areas.

"I think we need to help make the community understand what the risks are," she said. "It's not only for us."