If I Had a Million Dollars... Camp X Artifacts Up For Sale

The Camp X Exhibit at the Oshawa Airport is full of neat stuff: a dagger hidden in a lipstick case, a fountain pen that shoots poisonous gas and a revolver concealed in a hollowed out book, to list but a few items. As Toronto Star reporter, Carola Vyhnak, points out in her March 4th article, this is the stuff of fiction. In fact, it's exactly these type of gadgets that you might expect to read about in a James Bond novel.

This comparison between fact and fiction is hardly surprising when you consider that Bond author, Ian Fleming, spent part of WWII in Camp X, a spy training facility on the Oshawa-Whitby border near the shore of Lake Ontario.

The collection, which was compiled and largely owned by history buff Robert Stuart, has spent the past 33 years exhibited to the public, most recently in the Ontario Regiment building at the Oshawa Airport as part of the Robert Stuart Aeronautical Collection. Poorly advertised and rarely open, I only discovered the existence of this collection 3 or 4 years ago. Since then school, work, and a year spent in Korea has kept me from visiting the exhibit. And now, the opportunity may be lost to me forever - a pretty harsh lesson in "(s)he who hesitates" for an historian to learn.

On February 24th, historian Lynn Philip Hodgson (mentioned in my February post on the Battle of Bowmanville at Camp 30) contacted local papers after discovering that the entire collection of Camp X artifacts were poised for an internet auction block. Since then, a flurry of controversy has surrounded this usually obscure collection.

Since Stuart's death nearly seven years ago, the collection has been privately owned by his wife, Lois, and his daughter, Deidre, two women who are about to become responsible for selling off a significant piece of Durham Region's (and Canada's) rich wartime history "for personal reasons."

Like many private collections, the Camp X artifacts came together relatively organically over a period of several decades, with many of the pieces attained through private sales and auctions. Other items were accessioned into the collection through donations or long-term loans from veterans or the families of those that had worked at the Camp. Many of these donations and long-term loans were made in good faith in the form of a "gentleman's agreement" and a handshake between Mr. Stuart and the donor. Little, if any, paperwork was ever completed to outline the terms of these transactions.

Now, with the impending sale of the collection, a number of donors and family members have come forward to demand their family heirlooms back. As far as they were concerned, the items were on loan only so long as they were being displayed locally and in a respectful manner; they never intended for the Stuart family to profit off of their history and memories.

Deirdre Stuart has little sympathy for the people who donated to her father's collection. In an interview with the Toronto Star she was quoted as saying, “[i]f you didn’t put it in writing, you pretty much gave it to us... Like, hello? How stupid are people. We’ve had this museum for 33 years. It’s ours.”

Clearly, Ms. Stuart is no gentleman.

Although the loss of local history that would accompany the sale of this collection is immensely disturbing to me and it saddens me to say this, it is my understanding that the Stuart family is well within their legal rights to sell the artifacts however they see fit (provided that they adhere to all applicable laws concerning the sale of cultural artifacts). Public museums are legally restricted from selling artifacts unless they can provide extensive paper records proving their ownership of the item(s) (e.g. a receipt of purchase or a deed of gift). In instances where items are found in a collection but lack proper paperwork, these museums are legally required to keep and care for the artifacts for several decades before they may deaccession them. Unfortunately, private collections are not bound by the same standards. And, since theirs is a private museum, the Stuarts, in the absence of paperwork, have implicit legal right to items in their possession.

Thankfully, it at least seems as if the Canadian government isn't going to let this collection leave the country without a fight. As of March 20th, the Canadian Department of Heritage has "opened a dossier" on the artifacts and is looking into whether some of these items may be able to be protected from international sale under restrictions outlined in the Cultural Property Export and Import Act. For Canada's sake, let's hope this is so. Better yet, let's hope that a Canadian cultural institution (*cough* Canadian War Museum *cough*) steps up and buys the entire collection so that Ms. Stuart is not allowed to break it up and sell the unprotected items piece by piece.

On a local level, Hodgson and other concerned members of the community (including a number of local veterans from the aptly named Sir William Stephenson Branch of the Royal Canadian Legion) have stepped forward to coordinate fundraising efforts in order to save the collection. The Legion is currently accepting donations that will be used to purchase and house the collection permanently in Durham Region (an outcome that I selfishly find most favourable). If the campaign is successful, not only will the collection remain in Canada, but it will remain in Durham Region and on display to the public.

If you'd like to donate and ensure that the collection stays together and in Canada, you can do so by sending the Legion a cheque with "Save the Collection" in the memo section (see their website for more details). You may also want to follow this issue as it develops via the Save the Collection group on Facebook.


Sources by order of publication:

Whitby This Week - "Camp X artifacts up for sale"
The Toronto Star - "Historian fights to keep WWII spy-school collection in Canada"
--- "Veterans families angry over bid to sell wartime artifacts"
Canwest New Service - "Sale of historic espionage gear draws Ottawa's attention"
National Post - "Selling Secret History"

Where the Ontario Curriculum Meets Local History

I recently read an interesting article by Ian Milligan on the ActiveHistory.ca website entitled “‘Local Effort Brings Our Past to Life’: Halifax Chronicle-Herald.” The article briefly related the efforts of a Nova Scotian historical association to put out a book of local history and donate it to children in grades 4, 5 and 6 in their area (a similar initiative was carried out by my local historical association several years ago). Using this act of charity as a springboard for discussion on the importance of local history, Milligan posed a number of thought-provoking questions in his article, the first of which being “[s]hould local history have a bigger role in history curriculums?”

The truth is, the role of local history in our curriculum (at least at the secondary level in Ontario) is already well-established. Although we currently only have one mandatory history credit in high school (don’t get me started -- that’s a rant for another day!), it does include a strand entitled “Communities: Local, National, and Global” which explicitly includes the study of local history. The larger description for this strand is as follows:

Communities may be viewed from local, regional, national, and world perspectives. Communities interact with one another through commerce, cultural exchanges, colonization, war, and international agreements. These interactions are the basis of today’s globally connected world. Over time, communities and their interactions have changed because of factors such as changing technologies and patterns of human migration. It is through the study of communities that students begin to understand who they are in time and place.

And, while the inclusion of local history is explicitly laid out in the Communities strand above, there are multitudes of opportunities for teachers to include it when covering the expectations in the other strands (Change and Continuity, Citizenship and Heritage, and Social, Economic, and Political Structures) as well.

Since teachers are legally bound to the curriculum as laid out by the Ontario government, it is not a matter of should but of must; it is part of our responsibility as secondary school teachers to include local history in our lesson plans in order to ensure that all curriculum expectations for the province are being met. The problem is that few teachers do and those that do often don’t do so effectively. Usually, as Milligan points out, the inclusion of local history within the majority of history courses is done on a purely superficial level, achieved by tossing a short anecdote or trivial fact into a larger discussion. Rarely is local history given centre stage.

Perhaps the question that we should really be asking is “how do we, as teachers and historians, go about incorporating local history in more meaningful ways within history curricula?”

I believe that one way to do this is for schools and teachers to allot time not only for discussing history on a local level with their students, but also showing it being done. I realize field trips are difficult and time consuming to organize, but as educators we should be exposing students to local archives, historical societies, historical architecture and historic sites and/or monuments. This type of exposure to local sources of history would fit seamlessly (I think) into the Historical Inquiry section of the curriculum and is therefore easily justifiable to administrators.

At the end of his post, Milligan wonders if local histories are only important when tied into the larger narrative of provincial or national history or, if by approaching local history in this way we are undermining its importance in the lives of everyday people. I think this is a valid concern. But, for now, in a time when high school teachers should be including local history in their lesson plans, but often get away with ignoring it altogether, I think we have to take the inclusion of the topic wherever we can, and build on that.

Mapping Whitby's Past

The last few days have been a whirlwind of microfiche, architectural terms and heritage priority ratings as I worked on the heritage designation research project that I am putting together for the London Advisory Committee on Heritage (LACH). As a reward for finishing my Building and Property Evaluation Sheets and my 250-word summary (suitable for use on a historic plaque or in a walking tour pamphlet), I decided to give myself a break from school work.

Of course, 10 minutes into the newest episode of Dexter, my curiosity got the best of me. How many heritage structures had been designated in my own town? How many others had been inventoried as being of historical, architectural or contextual value to my town but had not yet been designated? More importantly, what - if anything - was the Local Architectural Conservation Advisory Committee (LACAC) Heritage Whitby doing with this information?

The short answer to those questions is this: 55. Roughly 350. And not a whole heck of a lot.

Well, okay. Maybe I'm being a little harsh. LACAC Heritage Whitby does seem to be hard at work doing a number of things in the community. Its members help out with Doors Open Whitby, as well as host displays at a number of community events such as the Brooklin Spring Fair, County Town Carnival, Harbour Days, Harvest Festival, and Heritage Day. Right now they are working on a few more designations, monitoring renovations and alterations to houses that have already been designated and are doing their best to make sure that the planned extension of the 407 into Whitby doesn't irreparably destroy anything worth preserving.

What they don't seem to be doing is making a presence for themselves on the internet in a way that is user friendly or interactive.

One thing that the website does provide is a LACAC Self Guided Walking Tour. Unfortunately, while the PDF file provides the reader with a significant amount of information on local movers and shakers and buildings of historical or architectural importance, it's map leaves a lot to be desired. Faded, crowded and generally difficult to read, I found myself looking at it and thinking: there's got to be a better way.

Eager for an opportunity to experiment with Google Maps and Google Street View, I decided to take the information in LACAC's Heritage Structure Inventory on homes that had already been designated, combine that with the background information provided in the walking tour guide and plot all of this information on a Google Map.

As this was my first time working with Google Maps, I took a few minutes to watch the video tutorial and then I was off and running. The following map is the result of my efforts:

View Designated Heritage Structures - Whitby in a larger map

Although the program is so easy a literate toddler could handle it, I encountered some frustration when I realized that I had plotted a point on my map (416 Centre St. S) that was supposed to represent the location of the Centennial Building (c. 1799). Problem was, Google Maps had already integrated this landmark onto the map of my city... and placed it a full inch and a half away from my location marker. It's not a big deal, but I could see how it could be confusing to someone viewing the map. Also, since Google Street View is still in its infancy, it has a number of kinks to work out, especially in terms of accuracy. Oftentimes the program fails to accurately take you to the location of the marker you've clicked on. Other times it takes you to the correct location, but labels the building with an inaccurate address, once again confusing the viewer.

The final result is far from perfect, but I think that it's a pretty decent start. Check it out and tell me what you think.