Fleur de Lys woman helping preserve the past, one step at a time

People have all sorts of ways of celebrating a birthday, and a woman from Fleur de Lys, N.L., is taking steps to celebrate her 65th year around the sun by walking 20 kilometres to raise money for her local museum.

Millie Walsh said the Fleur de Lys Dorset Museum is important to her town, drawing in visitors who are interested in the history of the soapstone quarry there, which was mined by the ancient Dorset people as early as AD 435.

"It's the heart of our community," said Walsh.

"Tourism, of course, is to me really the only thing we have left in rural areas to kind of make sure we survive. And I would like to feel like I made a sincere contribution to that."

Making a future from the past

Walsh and her late husband George were among the group of Fleur de Lys residents who first dreamed of a museum for their town, which is located at the end of the road on the tip of the Baie Verte Peninsula.

The existence of the soapstone quarry was known in the community, but no one knew much about it.

The quarry site had received recognition in the 1980s as aNational Historic Site, because it wasan important source of information about the stone technology of early Indigenous peoples.

But it was the efforts of townspeople in the early 1990s after the start of the cod moratorium that helped bring attention to the site, and active archaeological work was done there.

In a 1997 provincial archaeology field report, the soapstone deposits at Fleur de Lys are described as "the largest and most extensively worked Dorset quarry site known of its kind."

With the help of provincial and federal governments, the Fleur de Lys Dorset Museum opened in June 1999 to display artifacts and depict the history of the Dorset people.

Nearly lost to history

But money to keep an interpretation centre going was harder to come by than the funds to establish it were.

Walsh saidvolunteers became preoccupied with family commitments or they burned out from struggling to keep the museum in operation. The pandemic hasn't helped, said Walsh.

By the time Walsh stepped up with her first walkathon fundraiser in 2021, she said things weren't looking good for the museum's future.

"The museum at that time was in dire straits," recalled Walsh. "Afew of us people got together and said, 'We just can't see this Dorset Museum Interpretation Centre go down the tubes.'"

With an injection of funds and renewed vigour on the part of volunteers, interest in the museum has grown since then.

There's a new committee in place, and the group of volunteers has found ways to come up with the more than $20,000 needed every year to operate and maintain the building, including electricity and insurance bills.

People in the town are determined to keep the museum open, and there are plans to revitalize the displays to add interest.

Walsh said people are on board again with a vision for what the museum can mean for the town.

"It almost bottomed out," said Walsh. "We just took the bull by the horns, a few of us, and decided, 'Look, boys, we can't let this go.'"

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