Documentary Heritage Communities Program (DHCP) of Library and Archives Canada
Throughout the period during which Library and Archives Canada (LAC) managed the Documentary Heritage Communities Program (DHC), the Brome County Historical Society had the opportunity to submit several projects, which were carried out by our team. Here are the details of these projects.
2018-2019 Project
"Preservation and Digitization of the Great War Collection"
The BCHS was awarded a one-year grant for its project entitled “Preservation and Digitization of the Great War Collection”. The one-year project began in early May 2018 and was completed in mid-March 2019. It had three main objectives:
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Digitizing of a collection of approximately 25 linear meters of textual records covering the time period spanning from the foundation of the early Eastern Townships (ca. 1787) to the start of the First World War in 1914;
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Preservation of these records according to accepted Canadian standards;
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Upload a PDF copy of each textual record onto the Eastern Townships Archives Portal in order to make the collection accessible to a larger public.
Finally, many of the letters written by the soldiers have been transcribed on the Eastern Townships Archives Portal, rather than being uploaded, and are available to the public.
Directed by Abbey Lacroix and Summer students.
2019-2022 Project
“Preservation Project: Textual Records from Brome County (1790–1914)”
The BCHS was awarded a major three-year grant for its project entitled “Preservation Project: Textual Records of Brome County (1790–1914)’. The project began in early May 2019 and was completed at the end of March 2022. It had three main objectives:
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Digitizing a collection of approximately 25 linear metres of textual documents covering the period from the founding of the Eastern Townships (around 1787) to the outbreak of the First World War in 1914;
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Preservation of these records according to accepted Canadian standards;
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Upload a PDF copy of each textual record onto the Eastern Townships Archives Portal in order to make the collection accessible to the public.
Unfortunately, the project was smaller in scale than anticipated, as it had to be put on hold on several occasions during the COVID-19 pandemic. However, the first page of each textual records has been uploaded to the Eastern Townships Archives Portal, and all textual records have been digitized.
Directed by Abbey Lacroix, Christina Ciurlej and Anne-Marie Charuest.
2023-2025 Project
“Preservation of Pioneers and Developers Archives (1783-1957)”
The BCHS was awarded a major three-year grant for its project entitled “Preservation of Pioneers and Developers Archives (1783-1957)”. The project began in April 2023 at the end of April 2025. It had four main objectives:
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Digitization of a collection of approximately 5.0 linear meters of textual records and more than 2700 portraits, in relation with the pioneers and developers that came to live in Brome County and surrounding areas, beginning in 1783;
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Preservation of these records according to accepted Canadian standards;
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Description and uploadind of a (partial) visual copy of each document onto the Eastern Townships Archives Portal, accessible to the public;
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Eventual renewal of our museum's permanent exhibits with new visual and descriptive material.
The project enabled us to organize and describe the archival fonds of several members of the Knowlton and Foster families, as well as the archival fonds of Judges Christopher Dunkin and William Warren Lynch.
We also took the opportunity to make use of the museum’s facilities to take high-resolution photographs of the very large-format portraits, several of which are on display in the Courtroom of the former Brome County Courthouse.
Directed by Anne-Marie Charuest, Marc-André Lussier, Tristan Caron and Elizabeth Osborne O’Donnell.
We would like to thank Library and Archives Canada for its financial support in carrying out these projects to highlight and give a new life to our archives.