Janie Fries has spent years helping preserve and promote Moose Jaw’s heritage. Now, she says the city council has pulled the rug out from under her — and the volunteers who worked alongside her.
Fries, vice-chair of Moose Jaw’s Heritage Advisory Committee, says the committee and its members were blindsided when council amalgamated seven advisory committees into two, with the new structure meeting only four times per year.
“We were invited to reapply, but basically our terms all came up at the same time,” said Fries. The staggered two-year terms that had always ensured continuity from one committee cycle to the next were abandoned without explanation.
“There was no transfer of knowledge planned from one group to the next,” she said. “I can’t imagine that things are going to continue smoothly.”
The Heritage Advisory Committee has been operating since approximately 1981, and its members have invested significant volunteer hours in long-term projects — including the recently launched “Moose Jaw Memories” initiative, which uses QR codes and an online platform to tell the stories of historic downtown buildings. Fries says the committee was in the middle of active projects when the consolidation took effect.
“We’ve virtually been shut down,” she said. “And we just don’t understand why. We’ve not been told why.”
Committee members have formally asked council for an explanation but have not received one. Fries speculates the decision may have been financially motivated — not because volunteers cost the city money, but because city staff who attend meetings, take minutes, and advise on protocol must be compensated for their time after hours.
“I do understand that when we have a meeting that lasts an hour and a half, that is after five o’clock, they do have to either be paid or compensated time in lieu,” she said. “So in that way, it is financial. But we were not told if that is the reason.”
A pattern of concealment, says longtime member
John Bye, another longtime Heritage Advisory Committee member and community builder, went further in a public statement posted to Facebook on January 28. Bye says the signs of what was coming were there — the committee just didn’t see them until it was too late.
Bye pointed to a sequence of events in the months leading up to the December 1 council vote. When the committee reconvened in September after a break, he said, several members-at-large had terms that were overdue for renewal, and the standard process for electing a chair and vice-chair had not taken place. When members asked city administration why, the response was casual dismissal.
“‘Nobody seemed to object so we just left everything and everybody in place if that’s ok with you?'” Bye recalled being told.
At the November meeting, Bye said administration staff appeared to be clearing out as many outstanding agenda items as possible. Then, before the committee’s regular December meeting could take place, city staff suggested cancelling it — citing Christmas busyness and claiming there was no new business to conduct.
On December 1, council passed the bylaw dissolving the committees. Members weren’t informed until weeks later.
“These tactics — that we all didn’t put together until after the heritage award nomination form blunder — and lack of transparency is not only disrespectful to us,” Bye wrote, “but disrespect to the work of all the people who chaired and sat on this committee before us.”
City’s public response disputed
Bye took particular issue with the city’s official response to media coverage of the restructuring, in which the city stated that council’s decision “followed the standard public bylaw process, including review, discussion, a public hearing, and a formal vote prior to adoption.”
“There was NO review at any of our or other committee’s meetings,” Bye wrote. “NO discussion with any of the existing committees as a whole or with individual members — whether they were members at large or appointed — and there was NO public hearing of any kind.”
He also noted something the city’s response and the broader media coverage have largely overlooked: The Heritage Advisory Committee is the only one of the dissolved committees that is bound by actual provincial legislation as part of its mandate.
“This work cannot be done in quarterly meetings,” Bye wrote.
“Why bother?”
Bye also pushed back against critics who have questioned the committee’s track record, noting that heritage property owners in Saskatchewan can deny any type of heritage designation on property they own.
“To those who say how many buildings has the Heritage Advisory Committee actually saved? The answer is zero,” Bye wrote. “Why — because heritage property and/or landowners can deny any type of heritage designation on property they own. The HAC is very limited at that point and we were not in place to put heritage constraints on any dilapidated buildings to hinder development of this city.”
Fries, for her part, said the damage to trust may be irreversible — regardless of what council does next.
“Even if it’s reinstated, can we trust that it’s going to continue?” she said. “I’m not really holding my breath for it to be reinstated at all. I don’t think they’ll go back on that.”
What frustrates Fries most isn’t the restructuring itself — it’s the lack of consultation from a council that ran on transparency.
“That’s what’s so irritating,” she said. “We had an election about a year and a half ago, and they all ran on transparency and wanting to be as transparent as possible with the public. And then this happened and it was not transparent at all.”
She described running through many emotions since learning of the decision. “I’m not angry about it,” she said, “but I can tell you the wind’s been knocked out of my sails. All of my energy and enthusiasm and some things — why bother? It’s sad. Very, very sad.”
Fries also raised concerns about the practical impact on Moose Jaw’s economy. “Our city depends a lot on heritage to help run the economic machine of the city,” she said. “So, that’s frustrating as well.”
The committee is still waiting for an explanation from council.
“Might be waiting for a while,” Fries said. “We’ll see.”