Jeff Fournier, the vice president of the Dionne Quints Heritage Board says despite all the progress being made towards establishing a permanent home for the museum, his group is dismayed at the local Chamber of Commerce donating artifacts to other museums.
"We are now very, very close to getting the Dionne Home moved to the Community Waterfront Park - in between Discovery North Bay and Marina Point. We certainly have been frustrated by the city’s delay in getting this done, but we are thankful that the move will finally be taking place in early December," says Fournier. "But there are still many roadblocks to overcome.
"At the end of June this year, for example, the North Bay and District Chamber of Commerce decided to donate a slew of artifacts that had formerly been displayed at the Dionne Quints Museum, to the Callander Bay Heritage Museum. Those artifacts, including the original butcher basket the Quints were placed in after they were born along with the small wash basin that was used to cleanse the newborns, is now in the collection of and on display at the Callander Bay Heritage Museum, much to our dismay.
"We have spoken with the City about this, met with the North Bay and District Chamber of Commerce and the Callander Municipality/Callander Museum to convey our belief that all of those artifacts should remain with the Dionne Quints Homestead in the City of North Bay. But we have made little progress to date to change this. We will, however, continue to work on bringing those artifacts back to North Bay to remain with the Dionne Quints homestead."
However, Peter Chirico, President & CEO of the North Bay District Chamber of Commerce disputes those statements.
Chirico told BayToday, "The Chamber had purchased over the years numerous artifacts from numerous persons and they were held on the books of the Chamber because the City of North Bay would not purchase additional artifacts. Our artifacts were donated 100 per cent to the Callander Bay Museum at the direction of the board. Those were our artifacts. The claims that artifacts were deleted from their collection, that is completely false and untrue."
Chirico says the decision to donate to Callander was made long before the Friends of the Dionne Home even existed.
"The decision was made when the city gave us notice to move out of the building as it was sold and unfortunately the Friends of the Dionne were not even created at the time when we made the commitment to the Callander Bay Museum to donate those artifacts," explained Chirico.
Meanwhile, Fournier says the Board is currently working on plans to operate the Dionne Home and opening it to the public once again sometime next year.
"We will be approaching all levels of government for funding to do this including municipal, provincial and federal and will continue to fundraise as well so that our vision can be realized."
