A new temporary exhibit opened at the Wellington Heritage Museum over the weekend.

‘The Peopling of PEC’, an exhibition discussing the history of migration and immigration to Prince Edward County (PEC) in a reversed timeline of arrival from current day through to Indigenous living, and how all of these people come together to create PEC.

“The project is called ‘The Peopling of PEC’ so it’s a history of immigration and migration of Prince Edward County kind of on a surface level but it’s also part of my Masters Thesis at Queen’s University,” said Codie Goodman to The Gazette. “So it’s a little bit of territorial activism trying to seek marginalized voices included within the mainstream historical narrative, trying to kind of challenge the concept of what it means to be local in the county, basically arguing for cohesiveness, community and belonging for all.”

The goal of this exhibition is to discuss the different types of people that create a community and to challenge the general concept of what it means to be local in Prince Edward County.

“The project kind of stemmed from my undergraduate thesis which was a focus on Macaulay Heritage Park and a written paper,” Goodman stated. “And then for my Masters I had the chance to do a research creation project so I kind of took the ideas from my undergrad thesis and turned them into an actual exhibit. Then I kind of saw from my research what worked, what didn’t, what needs more focus, what needs more work so the exhibit kind came together with some help from Jess and Chris from the museums and I’ve been working here for four years now as a sort of summer student so this is kind of my culmination I guess of being a student at the museums and a student at Queen’s University.”

A key part of this project came from conducting interviews with folks who have at one point or another relocated to Prince Edward County, either as immigrants, migrant workers, refugees or from elsewhere in Canada / Ontario.

For more information on the museums and exhibits please visit https://www.thecounty.ca/residents/services/museums/