My name is Charlotte Scott-Frater, and I worked as the intern for Friends of Head Harbour Lightstation this summer. I’m from Ottawa, and in the past I’ve worked at the Bytown Museum, writing and delivering tours and other programming at a unique heritage site. This background is part of why I applied to be the intern at Friends of Head Harbour Lightstation. It also helped form a part of my key areas of study: as a history major and urban systems minor, I generally pursue research in the history of urban development in the 20th century, as wel as architectural history. While Campobello Island, where the lightstation is located, is certainly not an urban area, the architectural history, as well as my background in heritage tourism, made this position one that I was interested in pursuing. My main objective in taking on the internship was not only the extension of my existing research interests and my professional experience, but to see if I would like historical research in an unstructured setting as a career post-graduation.
Friends of Head Harbour Lightstation is a non-profit, volunteer organization that maintains and restores Head Harbour Lightstation to not only preserve the physical structure of the 190-year-old lighthouse, but also to make the history of this beautiful place accessible to the public by running tours and providing information. A big challenge for this organization is that they don’t have a lot of verified facts about the history of lighthouse; record keeping has historically been shoddy, and a lot of the formal records have been either lost or destroyed. A big part of my work was researching the history of the lighthouse through examining the records that do exist, in newspaper and provincial archives, and then presenting that information in formats that were accessible to the general public, to further the FHHL mission. To that end, I produced two articles on the history of Head Harbour Light for Lighthouse Digest magazine and a public presentation at Campobello Island’s annual arts and heritage festival, Fog Fest.
The biggest highlight of the internship was actually getting to live in the community with the lighthouse. Campobello Island is a really unique place, and it was a really unique experience to be fully immersed in the community in which the lighthouse had historically played such a vital part. Being in the community created a unique opportunity to understand the lighthouse in context, which contributed inestimably to the research and the work that I was doing. I also enjoyed being able to give historical tours of the lighthouse and being able to adapt and refine the kind of narratives I would be able to pursue in writing about the lighthouse by testing them on a captive audience, and seeing what people really responded to. That gave me great insight to bring into the rest of my work, as it was all meant to increase public engagement with the lightstation.
I will be receiving credit for this internship. I’ll be doing research with Prof. Donald Nerbas in the history department. While my research question is still very much in the works, it will likely focus on the question of ‘autheticity’ and ‘historical accuracy’ in heritage tourism, and specifically in restored historic sites.
I think this internship is most helpful that it taught me skills about tailoring research to the needs of a specific audience and an employer, which will likely be helpful in any work I pursue post graduation. It was also helpful in helping me realize that I’m most successful producing my work in more structured environments, so something like freelance work would not be for me. I also think that while it was a great experience doing historical research, it did make me realize that doing more practically-applicable research was something I was more interested in going forward.
I would like to thank Mr. John Wasileski for the John Wasileski Faculty of Arts Internship Award.
