Transcription of Acadia Centennial #240
Announcer: You are listening to Love Maine Radio, hosted by Dr. Lisa Belisle and recorded at the studios of Maine Magazine in Portland. Dr. Lisa Belisle is a writer and physician who practices family medicine and acupuncture in Brunswick Maine. Show summaries are available at lovemaineradio.com. Here are some highlights from this week’s program.
David: Acadia is unique in the way its boundary weaves in and out of these communities and so there’s no hardline where an issues stops here and picks up here. You’re really in it together.
Cookie: Now it’s just gets in your soul. I used to, I couldn’t sleep for weeks before we would come and I used to cry halfway home when I left. I always knew that I would live in Maine. It’d figure out how to get there and really, especially to Mount Desert Island.
Lisa: This is Dr. Lisa Belisle and you are listening to Love Maine Radio, Show number 240, Acadia centennial, airing for the first time on Sunday April 24th, 2016. This year marks 100 years of Acadia, Maine’s only national park. Born officially on July 8th 1916 Acadia National Park on Mount Desert Island has brought joy to generations of people all over the world. Today we speak with David MacDonald, president and CEO of Friends of Acadia, Cookie Horner co-chair of the Acadia Centennial Task Force, and her husband Bill Horner, president of the MDI Historical society. Thank you for joining us.
Announcer: Love Maine Radio is brought to you by Berlin City Honda, where the car buying experience is all about easy. After all, life is complicated enough and buying a car shouldn’t be. That’s why the Berlin City Honda team goes the extra mile by pre-discounting all their vehicles and focus their efforts on being open, honest and all about getting you on the road. In fact, Berlin City recently won the 2015 Women’s Choice Award, a strong testimony to their ability to deliver a different kind of car buying experience. Berlin City Honda of Portland, easy, it’s how buying a car should be. Go to berlincityhondame.com for more information.
Lisa: For many people in the state Mount Desert Island and Acadia are really probably one of their favorite places. The individual that I’m speaking with today has a great job I think. This is David MacDonald who currently serves as the president and CEO of Friends of Acadia, a not-for-profit organization with more than 4500 members and a 30-year history as a philanthropic and community partner of Acadia National Park in Mount Desert Island.
David joined Friends of Acadia in 2012 after a 20-year career in land conservation at the Maine Coast Heritage Trust. A long time resident of Somesville and a 1982 graduate of Mount Desert Island High School David has been exploring the trails woods and waters of Acadia for most of his life. David loves enjoying the outdoors in the great state of Maine with his wife Caroline, daughter Elisa, and son Jessie. Thanks for coming in.
David: Thanks for having me. It’s a treat to be here.
Lisa: Well it’s really interesting to me that you have so loved the place that you came from, that you are back there again, intensely. Because I grew up in Yarmouth and I have kind of gone out into the world and gotten educated and done very various things, but I still, I’m back in Yarmouth.
David: You feel that pull.
Lisa: Yeah, there’s something that really, and I think that this has specifically been an interesting thing for Mainers.
David: Definitely. Yeah, my parents moved our family up there when I was about 10, so I wasn’t born there but I grew up there, I went to grade school and high school there and wanted to get out for college and lived here in southern Maine for a couple of years, but it really sort of snuck up on me that it’s not the same. The Maine coast is beautiful. I was in Portland and Brunswick and that area, but I really kept feeling myself pulled back to Mount Desert. So to be able to go back there and get a job in the land conservation field I’ve been very lucky.
Lisa: I think that’s … It’s always kind of interesting to read about the brain drain and about people leaving the state and people who are in our generation that have gone elsewhere and then returned, because there is actually more opportunity in Maine than perhaps we realize. There are jobs in things like land conservation, there are jobs in ecological fields and all sorts of areas.
David: Yeah, Maine I think has a growing reputation as a place for those kinds of fields, and I think there’s more opportunity in a way that there was even when I was younger. I mean I was lucky to make it back and get into this field, but I think there’s a lot of promise now, for sure.
Lisa: The Friends of Acadia has been around for 30 years but Acadia itself has been around … It’s celebrating its 100-year anniversary this year.
David: Yeah, the centennial is pretty exciting. The park was founded in 1916. Friends of Acadia has been around about a third of the history of the park. We have been planning a yearlong community based celebration of the park where lots of individuals and businesses and non-profits really can celebrate what’s important about the park to them and also how they relate to the park. One of the things that makes Acadia unique is the relationship with the surrounding community. Importantly, we’re not just celebrating the park. We’re thinking about the next 100 years as well. Our slogan for the centennial is celebrate our past and inspire our future. That’s really been the ethos of what we’ve been doing, planning the centennial, and now jumping in this year sounds really fun.
Lisa: What do you think it is about Acadia and Mount Desert Island that brings people really from all over the world to visit?
David: I think you have to chuck some of it up to the power of a national park, that brand. I mean Maine has a lot of gorgeous places, but Acadia is its one national park. I think that resonates for people. Differently from other land trust preserves or state parks, which are wonderful, but I think a national park is sort of the gold standard in terms of conserved land and recreational opportunities and multiple public value. I think that has a lot to do with it. But I also just think it’s very, very unique island. There’s no place like it really in terms of the concentration of mountains and lakes and oceans and trails and carriage roads. It’s got a lot in a very small package. By national parks standards Acadia is very small compared to the western parks which are millions and millions of acres. Acadia is only about 45,000 acres. It’s a nice compact package.
Lisa: Having spent time up in Acadia I’ve enjoyed learning bits and pieces of its history and the history of the island. It’s really quite fascinating. It’s been drawing intellectuals and summer visitors for generations.
David: Yeah, you’re right. That’s the other part of what makes it my favorite place in the world, it’s not just the natural beauty, but the richness of the community as well. It still has an incredible mix of people. Over 100 years ago people were being drawn for the hiking, they were being drawn as artists to the landscapes, they were being drawn for the science really. A lot of the genesis of Acadian National Park came from some students from Harvard who came up and did botanical studies and camped up there and just trumped around. So you had this convergence of all these different values that really did put the place on the map. Thank goodness a lot of people had the foresight to conserve the place because it could’ve been easily developed and had a very different future.
Lisa: Acadia also was impacted by a fire that took place in Bar Harbor and we had the College of the Atlantic, we had people from the College of the Atlantic come and we talked about the impact on the college. How was the impact on the state park, I mean, on the national park?
David: The fire of 1947, it was a year when there were quite a few forest fires around Maine. In October a fire started on Mount Desert. It burned about half the park at the time as you said mostly in Bar Harbor on the eastern side of the island. It really, it did a couple of things. At the time it was part of what started to forge a closer relationship actually between the park and the community because you go through a trauma like that together and you had park rangers and local firemen fighting side by side, so there was a bonding to it, but it was also devastating to the economy and also to the forest of the park.
Of course that regenerated, it’s come back. If you look at it aerial, if you’re hiking in Acadia you can see the line where the fire burned, which is now all hard wood that has regenerated, and then on the western side of the island it’s more soft wood and spruce and fir. The soils in the park, the biology really of the park has changed irreparably by the fire. Nature does bounce back, but it is a eye opener and it makes us think today about what other natural changes will the park go through in the future.
We’ve grown up there. I who have grown up there have this picture of Acadia which is what it is right now, but it’s going to change, it’s going to keep changing. The fire of 47 is an example of how it already changed dramatically in our past.
Lisa: It also changed dramatically because at one point it was a summer ground of Native Americans. That isn’t something that is much recognized anymore, although there’s a museum in Bar Harbor.
David: Yes, the Abbe Museum is an excellent museum dedicated to Native American culture and the history not just of Mount Desert Island but in that part of Maine. The park is very committed to celebrating certainly that chapter of the history as well. Yeah, I mean the Native Americans took care of the place without having to call it a national park. It was a very sacred place, still is. They were fantastic stewards before the threats and the pressures of colonization and the 19th century came along.
Lisa: You spent 20 years with the Maine Coast Heritage Trust, so you have done land conservation for, well, that amount of time. What have you found are similarities and differences between the job that you left and the job that you have had since 2012?
David: That’s a great question. At Maine Coast Heritage Trust I was mostly working with land owners and families coming up with conservation strategies for their properties and whether it’s a farm or an island or a woodlot. Being a partner with the land owner or a family around the future of their land was very, very satisfying. It was fun, it was fascinating, and it was a real partnership. I miss that in my job now.
But what I really love is that very democratic feel of a national park. You’ve got people from all over who know this place and love it and use it, and it’s theirs. It belongs to the American people. That’s very powerful. I didn’t just realize how much I enjoyed that until I got into this job. It feels like an honor really to be working on behalf of a national park, because it really does inspire people from all walks of life. Whereas the land trust work is fantastic for a long time it’s sort of been a very well-kept secret. That’s changing now. Land trusts are doing great work getting out in the community more, but the jump to working for a national park has been great.
Lisa: You brought up the community that coexists with Acadia. I think that that’s an important thing to discuss because it’s not just, although the down town Bar Harbor area has great shops and has great restaurants, but it’s not just that. I mean there’s a whole community of that continues around the island that working the water fronts, people who are making a living on fishing and lobstering. Tell me what intersections the Friends of Acadia has with these groups?
David: Our mission actually a number of years ago before I came to the organization they changed the mission not just to serve the park, but also to serve the surrounding communities, which is really important and powerful I think, because Acadia is unique in the way its boundary weaves in and out of these communities, and so there’s no hardline where an issue stops here and picks up here. You’re really in it together.
There have been stresses over the years. There’s sort of an inherent distrust of the federal government or suspicion perhaps among a lot of us Mainers, and, well, I think the park has done an outstanding job. They’ve had to tend with some not ill-will but unease at times. There was a concern for many years that the park would just expand and take over the entire island and force people off their land. Well they worked very hard to pass a permanent boundary. Senator Mitchell in the mid-80s worked on that. That put a lot of that to rest. There’s tremendous economic synergy between you mentioned the town of Bar Harbor. There’s 4 other towns on the island as well, 3 other towns and then some off shore island towns, but the park is just the economic generator for many, many people in the community. I think there’s a growing appreciation for that and there’s more of a resolve to work together.
Right after I started on the job at Friends of Acadia we endured one of those horrible government shut downs when Congress couldn’t figure out the budget and so the park, the gates were closed for I think it was 16 or 17 days, the most beautiful October days that you could imagine. That was, I don’t want to say it was a wakeup call, but it really underscored for many in the community how important the park was, and to the park, how important the community was.
The centennial that we’re working on in 2016 really is trying to key off of that and really celebrate this connection between the community and the park. So many families are still there who are founding families of the park. A lot of great non-profits, you mentioned COA, the Jackson Lab, Maine Coast Heritage Trust, the Abbe Museum. There’s so many institutions that have sprouted up not because of the park but in part because of the energy and interest that the park brought to our communities. It’s made for a terrific community. I think people get grumpy now and then with the park and maybe their management decision or a bureaucracy here or there, but for the most part the centennial I think has really helped celebrate the park and let everybody realize how important it is to all of us.
Lisa: It’s always amazing to me when I go up to visit how large Mount Desert Island is. People think, “Oh, it’s an island. How can big can it be?” But it’s big. I mean if you’re driving to northeast harbor or southwest harbor or you go off the island, you go to Trenton, I mean, it’s just, it’s really, it’s vast and it’s quite varied.
David: It’s diverse. Yeah, that’s what’s wonderful about it. We talked about the fire, how that changed the diversity of the island and the mountains and the geology, the coast line. There are so many different options for you as a visitor in terms of what your interest might be. Sometimes you forget that you’re on island, but if you’ve grown up there and spent a lot of time there it still does have that feel of an island, which is great. But, yeah, it’s the biggest island on the Maine coast.
Lisa: Tell me some of your favorite places there.
David: I love the park in the winter. I mean this weekend was outcross country skiing and snowshoeing. I think Sargent Mountain is my favorite mountain. It’s not as tall as Cadillac but it doesn’t have a road to it, which makes a big difference and it’s got some fabulous trails going up. I love Ilaho which is sort of the remote unit of the park up in Penobscot Bay, go out there with my family, camp in the [inaudible 16:58] out there. That’s just a completely different experience. The carriage roads are just an incredible resource. They’re very unique again in the national park service and even in Maine I think in terms of having this network of crushed gravel roads to ski on, to bike on, to jog on. That’s a part of the park that we use all the time. It’s just a great recreational resource and cultural, cultural treasure really.
Lisa: I’m sure that people ask you when they come to visit what they should go to, what places they should hit before they leave. What do you usually say?
David: I encourage them to get out in the carriage roads, I encourage them to get out on the trails, get out on the water. I mean, taking the mail boat out to the Cranberry Isles or taking a little sail out at Bar Harbor or whale watch, getting off shore and looking back at the island and experiencing the wild life and the beauty from a boat is fabulous. Do a kayak trip. Again, get out on the water and get a little closer to the wildlife. The island can get pretty busy in the summer, but once you get off shore it really that kind of melts away, so if it’s at all possible to get out in the water I highly recommend that.
Lisa: I think one of my favorite visits to Mount Desert was included a trip out to French borough. We went on this boat that was owned by a private lobsterman. It was a fund raiser so they had a little lobster bay and we walked around the island. It really somehow spoke to me in a way that I hadn’t experienced before at Mount Desert because it was this little community. I think that those little communities do exist on Mount Desert all over the place.
David: They do, they do. French borough is unique. There’s nothing like French borough. Being that far out at sea and having that close knit fishing community right around the harbor and then having the incredible natural beauty of the rest of the island. Again, that’s a project that we worked on at Maine Coast Heritage Trust to conserve all that rugged shore line and the trails. But, yeah, Mount Desert has those quiet places too. Being able to get off the beaten path and being able to explore the park, a lot of times our family goes out at supper time. We get a picnic and we go out. That’s when there’s nobody out there. We’ll go to Sand Beach and we’ve got it all to our self and that’s really fun.
Lisa: As you were taking about how special this place is to many people really all over the world the word sacred really rose to the top for me, that this is a place that it’s sacred because people go there with their families, they go there by themselves when they’re trying to sort things out in their lives, they go there to get engaged, they go there to get married. Some people like you did are raised there and other people like the Lunt family on French borough generations have been there. That’s a very big… Well, I guess you recognized it. It’s an honor to really be associated with this sacredness.
David: It is. I mean it’s a big responsibility. The park service takes it very seriously. Their resources unfortunately are limited. That’s why Friends of Acadia exists, to be able to supplement what Congress can’t do through the budget. We provide thousands of volunteers. We raise millions of dollars. People do want to give back. That’s why Friends of Acadia was formed. People wanted a venue to be able to give back to this place that they loved. That continues stronger than ever 30 years in.
What’s interesting is that we do want Congress to continue to fund our national parks. I don’t want to get on a soap box, but the park can’t manage this incredible resource that gets almost 3 million visits a year without adequate staff and funds. People get that. They really do. That’s why we’ve been able to be successful, is that people want to help protect this place that is sacred to them.
I also think that as beautiful it is and you feel the connection, I think you also feel a connection to what people did to protect it. Again, whether you’re in central park or Acadia national park you sort of think about the foresight of those people 100 years ago, and it’s powerful. I think that’s part of what resonates for people. Not just the beauty of the place, but the fact that people acted on that. That strikes a chord.
Lisa: I think that’s absolutely right. When I was a resident at Maine Medical Center one of the doctors that we worked with was Richard Rockefeller. His family of course was involved with the creation of this park and they still have their own island which they maintain a farm on.
David: Bartlett yes.
Lisa: We went camping there when I was a resident. Unfortunately, Richard passed away in a plane crush tragically not too long ago. I think about what a gift that his family gave, because I knew him as a person and I knew some of his family members as people.
David: I did too. Yeah, Richard was a good friend of mine too at Maine Coast Heritage Trust and very much a inspiration to me and a lot of people. Again, what’s amazing is his grandfather did great things 100 years ago. Well, so did Richard in his time. I mean they very much continue that legacy. Richard’s work up and down the Maine coast is so so important. It’s a wonderful tradition, but yet, he came back to that place, on Bartlett Island. That was his soul place for sure. All of us have that spot, a lot of us on the Maine coast, that really resonates, and Bartlett definitely was that for Richard.
Lisa: That being the case knowing that this is a place of history and natural beauty and sacredness and that you are the president and CEO of Friends of Acadia, how can other people become friends of Acadia or how can other people help with your effort or celebrate the centennial?
David: We’re very inclusive. We have lots of opportunities for people to volunteer, get their hands dirty out on the trails. We have people from all over the country and all over the world who are members, who follow our Facebook page and our social media, just to feel that connection while they’re away from this place they love. In terms of the centennial I’ve just been blown away by the number of businesses and individuals who have come on board as we call them Acadia Centennial partners. We have over 300 now who are either organizing an event, designing a product, doing a painting, writing a book, writing a poem, making a film. I mean, there’s just people who want to be part of this.
People should definitely check out the centennial website which is acadiacentennial2016.org. There’s a list of all the partners. There’s a calendar that’s in the process of being filled out. There’s so many options for how to be part of this yearlong celebration. Then linked to that is our website if you want to learn more about our projects or volunteer, drop in work days throughout the summer, or how to sign your kid up for the trail crew for the summer. I mean it’s just countless opportunities.
Lisa: And the website for the Friends of Acadia is?
David: Friendsofacadia.org. Yeah, thanks.
Lisa: Well, this has inspired me to celebrate the 100 years of Acadia. Really it does cause me to think about all the times that I have spent in our national park and feel very grateful for it. I appreciate all the work that you and the Friends of Acadia are doing, and I appreciate you coming in and talking with us today. We’ve been speaking with David MacDonald who is the president and CEO of Friends of Acadia.
David: Thank you.
Lisa: Thanks so much for coming in.
David: Yeah, it’s been a treat. Thank you.
Announcer: Experience chef and owner Harding Lee Smith’s newest hit restaurant, Boone’s Fish House and Oyster Room, Maine’s seafood at its finest. Joining sister restaurants, The Front Room, The Grill Room, and The Corner Room this newly renovated 2-story restaurant at 86 Commercial Street on Custom House Wharf overlooks scenic Portland Harbor. Watch lobster-men bring in the daily catch as you enjoy big stuffed lobster, raw bar, and wood fired flat breads. For more information visit theroomsportland.com.
Portland art Gallery is proud to sponsor Love Maine Radio. Portland Art Gallery is Portland’s largest gallery and is located in the heart of the old port at 154 Middle Street. The gallery focuses on exhibiting work of contemporary Maine artists. We also host a series of monthly solo shows in our newly expanded space. The current show schedule include Eric Hopkins, Matthew Russ, Jane Dahmen, William Crosby, and Ruth Hamill to name a few. Please visit our website for complete show details at artcollectormaine.com.
Lisa: Today it is my great pleasure to speak with Bill and Cookie Horner. Actually we were going to speak just with Cookie and she brought her husband with her and I said, “Hey, I would really like to talk to Bill too,” so she agreed. Cookie moved to Mount Desert Island in 1975. She is the co-chair of The Acadia Centennial Task Force and she is also in the Acadia National Park’s volunteer trail crew. I happen to know that she was the school nurse at MDI High School for 17 years. Thanks for coming in.
Cookie: Thanks for having us.
Lisa: Thank you for bringing of course your husband Bill who is the president of the MDI Historical Society, is a native of Bar Harbor, and author of several articles in their journal which is called Chebacco. Thanks for coming in.
Bill: Pleasure to meet you.
Lisa: I know we kind of roped you in to being actually on the radio, so I appreciate you’re having that kind of willingness.
Bill: Well, thank you. I will limit my remarks.
Lisa: I’m excited to have you here because it is 100 years now that we’ve had the Acadia National Park in our fair state recognized as a national park. It’s a very exciting time for us. Both of you have felt passionately about Acadia National Park for a long time. How did you get involved in this?
Cookie: With the park?
Lisa: Yeah, with the park.
Cookie: I always wanted to work on the volunteer trail crew so when I retired from my nursing job, that was the first thing I did, was sign up for trail crew which goes out 3 times a week, Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday. It’s just a great group of people. There’s kind of a steady year round group. Then we get lots of summer visitors who give time when they’re here, when they’re in Acadia on vacation. The trail crew snips and clips and cuts vistas and breaks ditches and makes trails. It’s just really fun to help keep the park beautiful.
Lisa: Cookie, you’ve been coming to Maine as a summer resident before moving here in 1972, but since 1946?
Cookie: When I was 1-year-old.
Lisa: Well that’s impressive because not that many people have that sort of longevity as far as being a visitor to Mount Desert Island.
Cookie: Yeah, it just gets in your soul. I used to … I couldn’t sleep for weeks before we would come and I used to cry halfway home when I left. I always knew that I would live in Maine, I’d figure out how to get there and really, especially to Mount Desert Island.
Lisa: You’re originally from Philadelphia?
Cookie: Right.
Lisa: How did your family start coming to Maine in the first place?
Cookie: My grandparents did. They knew other people. I mean there were a lot of people from Philadelphia, New York, and Boston who came in the summers, and they were one of them.
Lisa: You were telling me that the place that you stayed in on West Street was one of the few houses that did not get burned down in the great fire.
Cookie: Right. I don’t know exactly what year I bought it, but it’s being renovated right now. We sold it in the early 80s. Another family had it until just last year. Now I’m really glad to see it restored.
Lisa: Bill you have a very different connection to MDI and Acadia. In fact, your connection is, well, it’s impressive in that there probably aren’t that many people who can say that they were actually born there.
Bill: Natives.
Lisa: Natives, yes.
Bill: Yeah, I was born there in September of 1941 and went to public schools whilst growing up there. As I said before, I think to grow up in an environment like that with a national park there and also knowing so many people who worked at the national park, one of my parents’ best friends was a fellow named Paul Favour who was the park naturalist. So that’s what got me oriented toward thinking about maybe I’ll be a park ranger someday.
Lisa: Which I love and is also interesting because instead of being a park ranger at first you had a very different job.
Bill: Yes. Yeah, we make decisions, we sort of climb the tree, we come to a branch. I knew I was interested in biology, loved biology, loved natural history. As I went college and got into that became increasingly clear that I wanted to try to be a doctor. So got a little further out on the branch and you know how it goes. But the love of home never left. In fact, Bar Harbor was my first practice location when I finished my training in 1972. I was there for about 10 years. It’s really firmly rooted I think in both of us. Cookie almost can claim a birth right at this this point.
Lisa: Pretty close if you are one. They’ve got at least give you honoraries-
Cookie: Never, never. You’re just always a year round summer person.
Lisa: I understand. Both sides by of my family are from Maine but I was born my father’s last year of medical school in Vermont, so I cannot claim to be a native, which is a little ironic. So you and I, we feel each other’s pain on this one. Fortunately, it’s a nice group that still lets us honorarily be here. Tell me about the Acadia Centennial Task Force.
Cookie: Well the Centennial Task Force was created from Friends of Acadia and Acadia National Park in figuring out how to put together a community group that would help Acadia to celebrate its centennial. We began actually in December of 2012 with our planning. Some of the people on the task force are from the park staff and the staff of Friends of Acadia and board members of Friends of Acadia and some community people. We’ve been working really, really hard for all this time and now it’s bearing fruit. It’s very exciting.
Lisa: What are some of your favorite things that are going to be happening this year that you’ve been working on?
Cookie: It’s hard to know where to begin, but we really wanted to reach out community wide from the whole of the park, not just Mount Desert Island, but all the way from Winter Harbor, the Schoodic Peninsula to Ilaho and actually throughout the state and all the communities in between the surrounding communities, and hope that they would partner with us. To our astonishment we now have more than 350 partners and it’s still growing. That’s just really exciting.
People can become partners with a financial donation or if they’re non-profits they can plan a program or an event, they can produce a product and sell it and give a percentage to Friends of Acadia for programs in the park, or they can buy one of the existing products and do the same. It’s just a huge variety of things.
We’ve started off in January with the kickoff event which was the Baked Bean Supper for more than 400 people and we aired for the first time a centennial film done by a young movie maker, Peter Logue, featuring among others Bill and me and quite many other people to as kind of an archival product of how the centennial was celebrated. Hopefully that will go into our time capsule at the end of the year.
All of the local libraries from throughout the surrounding communities celebrated with a big community read in February where they read 3 books, a young person’s book, “Spoonhandle” by Ruth Moore, and “The End of Night” about dark skies or not dark skies. Then there was also a winter festival held between Camp Beech Cliff and Schoodic for families, for children with all kinds of activities. It was supposed to be all snow related and there wasn’t any snow so they just came up with all sorts of great other things.
There’s so many things coming up by … give you a few other ideas. One of the family things that’s going to start in April is Acadia Quest: The Centennial Edition, which is youth and family centered challenges. You do it at your own pace. The Friends of Acadia and the interpretive rangers in Acadia National Park put it together. The idea is to get kids just out there and loving it. It’s sort of an experiential scavenger hunt. It goes on throughout the year.
There’s going to be the opening reception at the Abbe Museum for their new exhibit which is cataloging their time in Acadia from 12,000 years go. There are actually 6 musical courses and festivals each of whom have commissioned an original piece of music honoring Acadia. The first one is the Acadia Choral Society in early May and the Bagaduce Chorale. Later Bar Harbor Brass Week Faculty is giving a huge brass concert in June. Mount Dessert Summer Chorale, Bar Harbor Music Festival. It’s very exciting.
Park Science Day which is one of the evens that Acadia National Park is actually responsible for entirely. That’s going to be the reopening of their Nature Center at Sieur de Monts with an emphasis on climate change. That’s another family and child friendly event. That’s in June. Of course the 4th of July parade will be themed to the centennial with the park in full dress at the head of the line, and hopefully lots of floats about the Centennial.
There’s going to be an Open Garden Day where all the garden clubs on the island are planted together. There’ll be some old gardens, historic gardens, and some newer gardens for everybody to see. There the Maine Historical Society in Portland is going to have an exhibit that I think starts in June or May and goes through until December about the conception and design and layout of Acadia National Park. Those are a few.
Lisa: There’s a lot of things to choose from. So anybody, if you have an interest in history or gardens or if you have a child, you can just pick the thing that best celebrates 100 years of Acadia.
Bill, you’re the president of the MDI Historical Society. I know that you and I were talking before you came on about the fact that you were a trauma surgeon. You actually you did a very different thing and now you’ve gone back to these interests as a naturalist and a historian. What are some of the things about the history of MDI that particularly appeal to you?
Bill: Well, I think it goes back to my being a native son in the sense that I’m very fortunate to have family roots there. One of the things I wanted to do when I retired from surgery is to more intensively study some of my family history as it relates to the island history in general, and get involved with the history community and do some writing. My initial research focused on the group of men who came together initially in 1901, called themselves the Hancock County Trustees of Public Reservations. They were a combination of summer people and local people who build the foundations for the subsequent land acquisitions that in series ultimately became Acadia National Park.
My great grandfather as it turns out was one of those original founders along with president Eliot from Harvard and a number of other luminaries of the day who had great education and great wealth so that they could formulate this idea. That was an area in which I was very interested in what motivated these people, I got very interested in the history of conservation, going back to the early part of the 19th century and how it came to pass on Mount Desert Island.
Lisa: I know that both of you love the trails of Acadia. Do you have any favorites that you visit on a regular basis?
Bill: Absolutely.
Cookie: We do but actually we’re doing … We decided we’re going to do a personal centennial challenge and do the 26 major peaks which adds up to about 48 miles and then finish the rest on the trails and carriage roads to do 100 miles. But we decided we would do them in a different way because you sort of end up doing, going on the same trails in the same way. So we’re going to try to do them from some different directions, different trails.
Lisa: And when is this going to start for you?
Cookie: We already started.
Lisa: Excellent. So some of the trails are actually clear and available to walk on even now?
Cookie: Yeah. Well the carriage roads are closed still. Actually they may have opened them again because it froze up, but they usually close them to all traffic including foot traffic when the ground is soft. But they’ll open soon.
Lisa: Cookie I know that there are a few more important events that you want to make sure that we talk about.
Cookie: Yes. One of them, well, this is a very exciting one is the Maine Windjammer Association. They are going to bring 6, 7, or 8 windjammers up on the 2nd of August and they’re going to convene out in the Western Bay and then sail up Somes Sound. It’s just going to be a glorious sight. It will give people an idea of what it might have been like 100 years ago. One of them actually did ply the waters of Mount Desert 100 years ago. So that’s really going to be an exciting event.
Then in August there’s also going to be a re-enactment of the celebration of Acadia’s founding with the descendants of people who were originally involved, including Bill. I just wanted to mention also he mentioned Eliot. I’d like mention George B Dorr who’s known as the founding father of Acadia National Park. One of the events happening this week is the sort of formal launch of the first ever biography of George B Dorr by historian Ronald Epp. That’s happening this week. I know Bill has already-
Bill: I read the book. It’s phenomenal. It’s a monumental achievement.
Cookie: He read the whole thing yesterday.
Bill: Really did. I’m so envious.
Cookie: Yeah. Then the big event that Acadia National Park is doing is because this is of course the co-centennial with the National Park Service. August 27th will be a big event at Jordan Pond where there will be speakers. That’s the closest date to the actual date of the anniversary of the National Park Service. There will be 100 junior rangers sworn in on that day and we’re going to have a chorus of 100 singers to sing This Land is Your Land and America the Beautiful. It’s going to be a fabulous day. We will hope for good weather.
Lisa: Between the 2 of you, you have 6 children and 11 grandchildren, 7 of whom live on MDI. Will they be part of these festivities?
Bill: Well, we’re hoping we can get them out for at least some of the remaining 24 peaks.
Cookie: Yeah, yeah, sure.
Bill: Yeah, all of them are active people. Our oldest who’s a freshman in college can’t wait to get home for the summer. She’s got a summer job lined up already and she’s eager to get out there.
Cookie: Then another one is volunteering at Friends of Acadia, helping with the centennial duties.
Lisa: I think you said your youngest grandchild is 2?
Cookie: Yeah. They live in North Carolina sadly.
Lisa: So you might have to-
Cookie: They will be here for a week in the summer and we’ll have them out doing things in the park for sure.
Lisa: There you go.
Cookie: They’re old enough to go up a small mountain now.
Lisa: A lot has changed in the years since Bill you were born there and Cookie you started visiting when you were 1. What are some of the positive changes that you’ve seen with Acadia and MDI in general?
Cookie: Well, the park trails and carriage roads are in much better shape. There was, I don’t know, 30 years ago they weren’t in such great shape. But there’s now an endowment to keep the trails going and the trail volunteers. There’s so many of them that help. So that’s a huge change.
Bill: Yeah, my window is about 55 years, and obviously I can see a lot of changes in the towns themselves. I think it’s particularly striking in Bar Harbor which is now entirely a tourist economy. Of course over the last decade or decade and a half we’ve seen that boom with the addition of cruise ships and so on and so forth. But we’ve also seen a wonderful influx of incredible retired people. There’s an entity called Acadia Senior College which goes on among other places on MDI. It’s really a pleasure to live there in our retirement now. That’s a demographic that’s very, very much changed since I was a kid.
I think the other thing is as part of this centennial it’s an opportunity for us to look back 100 years and look at some of the issues that were hot at that time and think about them now. One that immediately comes to mind is of course is the automobile, which between 1903 and 1913 there was a so called decade of these so called automobile wars, because automobiles were prohibited on Mount Desert Island for at least a decade beyond their arrival elsewhere in the state. There was a big kind of not necessarily so nice on occasion civic discourse between people representing both points of view.
It’s interesting to look back at that as for example the Seal Cove Auto Museum is doing with their exhibit and put that in the context of some of our present day concerns about automobiles and the issues raised for the park in terms of equality of the visitor experience because of the great number of vehicles that we have to deal with.
Cookie: The park and the Centennial Task Force have taken some really proactive steps to address the concerns about visitor spike and visitation. Of course we have the explorer bus system which is fantastic and has been there for about 16 years. We’re messaging to prospective visitors to plan their visits thinking about how they can have the best quality experience, and that includes leaving your car at your hotel and taking the bus and walking on the trails to get into the park, or taking a bike, and how to go to places maybe that are a little different than some of the most iconic ones, or go at different times when it’s not so busy. Also, to think about not just right there, but spreading out and seeing what other joining communities have to offer and exploring that, which is good for Acadia and good for those communities. Also, to realize that the centennial activities are yearlong and that they don’t have to come right in the middle 2 weeks of July and August. We’re trying to get that message out in all kinds of media.
Lisa: Cookie, how can people find out about the centennial activities on Acadia?
Cookie: Go to the Acadia website acadiacentennial2016.org. It’s a terrific website. There are at least 100 events posted on there. You can read about all the 350 partners. There are products that you can find out where to buy them or some that you can buy right online. There are so many products that are being produced for the centennial from jam to beer to coffee mugs, to all kinds of artwork, all kinds of crafts. Oh, and I thought of crafts. Reminded me that there’s going to be a fantastic quilt show and also a web cooking show that will be on in May and June and July. That’s an exciting thing.
Bill: Not to mention art, art, art, art.
Cookie: Yes, lots of art. Of course, all the … I mean, the artists were the first ones there after … and starting in 1800s. There’s just so much art and art galleries, everything is themed to Acadia. It’s going to be wonderful.
Lisa: So the Abbe Museum will be featuring people who were there probably before the artists I would guess.
Cookie: Oh way before.
Lisa: Native Americans.
Bill: Thousands of years.
Lisa: Thousands of years. That’s a nice …
Cookie: And before Champlain supposedly discovered it.
Lisa: There’s a lot of excitement going on up in Acadia so I appreciate you both coming down and having a chance to talk with you. We’ve been speaking with Cookie Horner who moved to MDI, Mount Desert Island in 1975. She’s the co-chair of the Acadia Centennial Task Force and also on the Acadia National Park’s volunteer trail crew. And as an added bonus we’ve been also speaking with her husband, Bill, Dr. Bill Horner who’s the president of the MDI Historical Society. He is a native of Bar Harbor and the author of several articles in their journal Chebacco. Thanks for coming in.
Cookie: Thank you for having us.
Bill: Thanks very much.
Lisa: You’ve been listening to Love Maine Radio, show number 240, Acadia Centennial. Our guests have included David MacDonald and Cookie and Bill Horner. For more information on our guests and extended interviews visit lovemaineradio.com. Love Maine Radio is downloadable for free on iTunes. For a preview of each week’s show sign up for our e-newsletter and like our Love Maine Radio Facebook page. Follow me on Twitter as Dr. Lisa and see my running, travel, food, and wellness photos as Bountiful1 on Instagram.
We’d love to hear from you so please let us know what you think of Love Maine Radio. We welcome your suggestions for future shows. Also let our sponsors know that you have heard about them here. We are privileged that they enable us to bring Love Maine Radio to you each week. This is Dr. Lisa Belisle. I hope that you have enjoyed our Acadia Centennial show. Thank you for allowing me to be a part of your day. May you have a bountiful life.
Announcer: Love Maine Radio is made possible with the support of Berlin City Honda, The Rooms by Harding Lee Smith, Maine Magazine, Portland Art Gallery and Art Collector Maine. Audio production and original music have been provided by Spencer Albee. Our editorial producer is Kelly Chase. Our assistant producer is Shelbi Wassick. Our community development manager is Casey Lovejoy. Our executive producers are Kevin Thomas, Susan Grisanti, and Dr. Lisa Belisle. For more information on our host, production team, Maine Magazine, or any of the guests featured here today, please visit us at lovemaineradio.com. Here’s an excerpt from Lisa’s interview with Pious Ali from next week’s program.
Lisa: What are some of the issues that you hear from students or from parents who are from other countries or have a different religious background and they’re trying to interact with a school or a community? What types of things come up that you hear about?
Pious: Well, so I’m going to take off my hat as a staff member for Portland Empowered. I wear so many hats and I’m also not speaking as a school board member. I’m speaking as me, somebody who does a lot of work in the community. I think some of the issues that comes up are in my engagement with families and students in the community is some of the claims that students of some of the families that made are that that there’s some language barrier on both sides, or misunderstanding or miscommunication of … as tuition.
Well the young people, the Portland Public School is very diverse in terms of racial and language and religion. We have kids who are coming from a many different backgrounds. The staff at Portland Schools do their best to understand where and who is coming from where. Unfortunately, it’s … How do you say it? It’s a tall list of things that you have to learn, and so there’s bound to be somebody being called names or somebody being referred to as this or that by other students who may not necessarily even know what they are saying. Yeah, so there are situations like that.
Most specifically you hear stories here and there. I’m a Muslim so I have … I talk to people a lot in the Muslim community, in the immigrant Muslim communities. The recent national platform political rhetoric did yes increase or created a few instances here in Portland where there was a parent, a woman from Iraq who was sitting in at a bus stop. She didn’t specifically said which bus stop, where somebody was talking to her and the person look at her and spit on her face. This one doesn’t speak any English, so she doesn’t even know what to say. There was an instance where someone was sitting in the waiting room in one of the big hospitals in Portland and another patient start yelling at her and telling her to go back where she came from because her [inaudible 56:23] like Americans what is she doing here.
In both situations these people don’t necessarily speak good English so they didn’t know how to react. Is unfortunate that both situations happen to women, based on the way they look. Because I can walk down the street, yes, I’m a black man, someone will see there’s a black man and probably say, “Oh, he’s not an immigrant,” but a person can’t know whether I’m a … what I worship or what religion or what is my faith based on the color of my skin or how I look. Also, I don’t dress specifically like any … I don’t wear any religious in fact that shows that this person is a Muslim or a Jew or a Christian or whatever it is. So it’s difficult for mostly women and children.
Lisa: I just think about if I was, as a woman, if I was in another country standing in a bus stop and somebody spit in my face and said something to me and I didn’t even understand them, I can’t even imagine how that would make me feel.
Pious: Right. Looking at an instance where a young woman was at a gas station here in Portland. I think that’s about a year ago. So another person who was buying gas, he happens to be a veteran. He’s not from Portland, so actually not from Maine. He’s from Connecticut or somewhere and he’s been to Iraq. He kept calling her all sorts of names. He said he was going to kill her. The gas station attendants have to literally hold on the door and tell him that he was not welcome there.
The good thing was that he’s already finished paying for his gas so there’s no need for him to get into the building. They took his license plate number and handed it over to the police. It came out the car doesn’t even belong to him, is for his dad. He lives in Connecticut. He was a veteran. I don’t know how that case ended, but the police were working on it at the time that I know of it. Yeah, it’s difficult.
Lisa: It’s so complicated because you have on one side people who may be refugees, who have their own set of painful circumstances. Then you have people who are veterans or have their set of their background and their experience, and there’s enough pain to go around. We all have to coexist. We all have to live here together. So how do we make that happen?
Pious: Well, try to understand each other. I believe, I’m a firm believer that speaking to people irrespective of where they are or what your beliefs are, try at least to reach out to that person, talk to that person, understand where that person is coming from. Yeah, having that conversation opens a lot of doors and a lot of opportunities for us as humans to live peacefully next to each other, irrespective of what we believe or what we lean on. I believe that we all are looking for the same thing.
Announcer: Thank you for listening to Love Maine Radio. We hope you’ll join us next week.