About the Initiative
The Initiative was formed in the winter of 1997 by a working group of three retired archivists, a parish historian, and a timber-frame carpenter who had spent the preceding decade documenting barns marked for demolition along a single watershed road. Their concern was practical: no institution in the region was prepared to receive, index, or preserve the materials they were generating, and the communities from which the materials came had no mechanism to assert continuing interest in them.
The founding charter, ratified on 14 March 1998 at the annual meeting of the Beaver Meadow Historical Society, set out two principles that remain in force. First, all materials acquired by the Initiative are held in public trust, not as property. Second, no acquisition is undertaken without the informed participation of the community or family from which the material originates. A third principle — that the Initiative would decline any grant requiring an accelerated timeline incompatible with community pace — was added by unanimous vote in 2003 and is known internally as the Hollister Rider.
Working group convened; first reconnaissance of the Beaver Meadow Road barns (seventeen structures, six lost within three years).
Founding charter ratified. First deposit: the Pérec carpentry notebooks (later NHI-A-041).
Measured-Drawing Standard rev. 1 published in mimeograph. Superseded in 2005, 2013, and 2022.
Hollister–Vatsaas Endowment established by bequest; first stable operating floor.
Community Consent Framework adopted for oral history, developed over two years with seven partner communities.
First executive director appointed. Central reading-room protocol formalised.
Membership crosses ten historical societies. Fieldworker training programme launched.
Consent Framework rev. 2 addresses digital access, descendant rights, and posthumous embargo.
Ridge Barns Survey commissioned; four-year timeline set.
Ridge Barns Survey concludes; Plates of the Ridge catalogue in binding.
The Initiative is overseen by a volunteer board of nine directors, appointed to staggered three-year terms. Board composition is balanced by statute among professional archivists (three seats), working historians and field practitioners (three seats), and representatives of member communities (three seats, rotating among member societies on a six-year cycle). The board meets quarterly; minutes are distributed to member societies within thirty days and published in full at the annual meeting.
Audited financial statements are prepared annually by an independent firm and filed with the appropriate charitable regulator. Copies are available to member communities and to any researcher with standing interest. The Initiative does not accept anonymous gifts in excess of the current-year operating contribution ceiling set by the board.
Executive Director · since 2011
Former head of manuscripts at a regional university library. Oversees acquisitions, grant administration, and institutional partnerships. Chairs the quarterly acquisitions committee and serves ex officio on the board. Granddaughter of the farmstead whose papers form NHI-A-014; recused from any matter concerning that collection.
Director of Field Survey · since 2005
Timber-frame carpenter and architectural historian. Leads structural documentation projects and maintains the Initiative's Measured-Drawing Standard, now in its fourth revision. Lead draftsman on the Ridge Barns Survey. Custodian of the bench-and-trestle kit inherited from the founding working group.
Oral History Coordinator · since 2008
Folklorist and recorded-sound archivist. Trains community fieldworkers, supervises transcription, and manages the Initiative's recorded collections (master files on LTO-9 tape in triplicate, access copies in FLAC). Principal author of the 2020 Consent Framework revision.
Archivist & Records Officer · since 2019
Responsible for cataloguing, finding aids, and digital preservation workflows. Holds a graduate degree in archival studies. Maintains the controlled vocabulary used for subject indexing, including the recent additions for seasonal agricultural terms specific to the watershed.
Processing Assistant · since 2023
Works half-time on imaging and descriptive cataloguing for the Land & Records program. Background in paper conservation. Current focus: the Eastern Townships parish register transcription verification pass.
Field Survey Assistant · since 2021
Works alongside Daniel Pérec on measured surveys; principal on reconnaissance records. Apprentice timber framer, responsible for the photogrammetric rig and for checking principal-rafter dimensions on site before the drafting table receives them.
Three commitments shape the way the Initiative works. We consider these less as aspirations than as conditions of operation.
We work within the upper northern watershed and its adjacent rural regions — a territory defined not by administrative boundary but by a shared pattern of settlement, building practice, and parish organisation that emerged in the nineteenth century and persisted, in recognisable form, into the late twentieth. We do not extend our operations beyond this territory, and we decline inquiries from outside it with the respectful observation that our methods are calibrated to a place we know.