Page 10 - July/August Kwasind

HERITAGE ANNUAL REPORT
Brian Anthony, Heritage Committee Chair
The program year of the Heritage Committee was book-ended by two spectacular Heritage Dinners. The first, in 2017, featured the Commander of the Royal Canadian Navy, Vice-Admiral Ron Lloyd, who wowed a sold-out audience with his presentation and a stimulating question and answer period. So impressive was his contribution to this annual event that the Commodore invited Admiral Lloyd to be a Patron of Honour. Admiral Lloyd was delighted and happily accepted. His framed photo is to be found, along with those of our Royal Patron and our Commodore, to the left of the main staircase in the Club foyer. This year’s Heritage Dinner was advertised as a celebration of sailing at the RCYC, but its real purpose was to honour Commodore David Howard on the occasion of his hundredth birthday. Two hundred members and guests, including special guest Lieutenant Governor of Ontario the Honourable Elizabeth Dowdeswell, filled a beautifully decorated sports hall to pay tribute to this pillar of the RCYC. Both dinners will be a hard act to follow.
While the annual Heritage Dinner is the most public of the Heritage Committee’s faces, and an important augmentation to the funds available for the management, conservation, and display of the Club’s unique collection, the Committee has in recent years devoted increased effort to codifying its activities. Until now, the decisions reached during our monthly meetings and flurries of emails have been guided by tradition and an established sense of common cause. Increasingly, we are transforming our collective sensibility into roadmaps to lend greater certainty and consistency to our decisions. Moreover, our thinking will be open to informed external insight and accountability.
Conscious of its significant responsibilities, the committee, working with the Staff Archivist & Curator, had earlier developed a much-needed comprehensive collections management policy, approved by the Board of Directors and now included in the suite of official Club policies. This important development, based on the policies of significant professional museums and archives, created a robust framework within which to situate decisions as to the acquisition, conservation and presentation of our invaluable collection of art, artifacts and archival records.
This year, the major policy initiative was to develop a mission statement for the committee. This may sound
like an arid and bureaucratic exercise, but it was vitally important to delineate and communicate the role and responsibilities of the Heritage Committee. Thanks to the work of our GM/CEO, the committee now has terms of reference that mirror the structure used for other Club committees, including such matters as committee size, terms of office, and a detailed summary of duties. This brings the Heritage Committee into line with others in the Club family, an important step forward.
Working relations with senior management continued to be highly productive, and our GM/ CEO and Assistant GM regularly attend committee meetings, ensuring a fruitful flow of information and opinion on key policy issues and practical matters. The minutes of Heritage Committee meetings are routinely forwarded to the Board of Directors in order that Club leadership be kept apprised of committee deliberations and given the opportunity to seek clarification or further information.
All in all, then, the Heritage Committee has been drawn closer and closer into the Club administrative mainstream, and for that welcome development, I wish to thank the Board of Directors, Club management and, above all, my colleagues on the Heritage Committee. That the 2017-2018 year has been so productive is due in great measure to their unstinting contribution to the activities of the committee. In that regard, special mention must be made of our Honorary Historian, Louise Cannon, who continued to labour mightily to make our Club annals current. Working with these colleagues has been a pleasure and an honour.
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JULY/AUGUST 2018 • KWASIND
HERITAGE