Programs

Active work, organised by discipline.

The Initiative conducts three standing programs and maintains a small rotating docket of commissioned projects for partner institutions. All programs operate under the Initiative's public-trust charter and the Hollister Rider on pace.

01 Active · Multi-year

Architectural Survey

The Survey records vernacular structures — barns, meeting houses, mills, smithies, ice-houses, and domestic outbuildings — at three levels of documentation: reconnaissance (a half-day on site, sketch plan, photographic record), intermediate (measured plan, one elevation, brief condition report), and full measured (complete plans, four elevations, sections, framing isometric, and a written structural history). Reports are deposited with the property owner, the municipality of record, and a partner academic library.

Standards: NHI Measured-Drawing Standard, rev. 4 (2022), compatible with regional heritage registry submissions. Dimensional tolerance ±5 mm at principal-member level; ±15 mm at cladding.
Instruments: brass-and-cherry story pole (the Pérec stick), laser distance-meter (verified quarterly against the stick), plumb bob, 30 m chain.
Current intake: Structures are accepted into the queue through referral from member historical societies; unsolicited nominations are declined with regret.
Anticipated 2026 output: Twenty-two full measured surveys, approximately sixty reconnaissance records, and the concluding Ridge Barns volume.

02 Active · Ongoing

Oral History

Recorded interviews are conducted by trained community fieldworkers under the supervision of the Oral History Coordinator. Sessions follow the Vatsaas Consent Framework, developed with partner communities in 2006 and substantially revised in 2020 to address digital access, descendant rights, and posthumous embargo of up to seventy-five years. Interviews are recorded at 96 kHz / 24-bit to broadcast standard on dual-redundant field recorders.

Catalogued to date: 3,412 sessions, indexed by subject, locale, interviewer, and instrument. Transcribed: 2,987.
Deposit model: One copy of the recording and transcript to the originating community (reading copies), one to the central archive (preservation master on LTO-9 in triplicate), one to a partner repository (access copy).
Training: Three fieldworker workshops offered annually to member society members at no cost. The three-day curriculum covers interview ethics, recording technique, release forms, and transcription conventions.
Current subject priorities: Seasonal woods labour (pre-1975), parish musicianship and hymn repertoires, the regional sugar-wood economy, post-1950 co-operative dairy organisation.

03 Active · Rolling intake

Land & Records

Transcription, digitisation, and indexing of documentary materials deposited by families, parishes, townships, and small civic bodies. Materials accepted include parish register books, township minute books, correspondence, survey field notes, agricultural and co-operative ledgers, land-grant patents, and cartographic fragments. Paper is handled in cotton gloves, imaged on a Dietrich cradle rig, and returned to housing within the same working day.

Processing standard: Descriptive cataloguing to regional archival standard (Rules for Archival Description, Canadian practice); preservation imaging at 600 dpi, TIFF master uncompressed; access derivatives at 300 dpi JPEG.
Access terms: Governed per-deposit by the accompanying donor agreement. Embargoes of up to seventy-five years are honoured; the current longest-running embargo runs through 2071.
Returns: Originals are returned to the depositor on request once digitisation and cataloguing are complete, unless the depositor elects permanent deposit. Returned materials are accompanied by a bound reference print of the digital surrogate.
Active transcription projects: The Eastern Townships parish registers (verification pass, est. completion Q3 2026); the Ridge Township minute books, 1849–1922 (first-pass transcription underway).

04 Commissioned · Concluding 2026

The Ridge Barns Survey

A four-year comparative study of ridge-pole barn construction across the upper watershed, undertaken in partnership with three regional historical societies and a university school of architecture. The survey combines full measured documentation of ninety-two surviving structures with oral testimony from forty-one carpenters and former owners regarding construction sequence, timber sourcing, and seasonal use patterns. Seven distinct framing dialects have been identified within a single drainage.

The final catalogue — Plates of the Ridge, 1831–1948, bound and open-access digital — is scheduled for release in autumn 2026 and will be distributed without charge to each participating community library.

Browse the survey catalogue →