Whether it’s finding the right carpenter to frame new wood around a century-old window, or trying to find information about a historic house in Saanich, the Hallmark Heritage Society is the place to go.
The volunteer-driven non-profit operates on a modest budget of about $10,000 per year, yet it saves Greater Victoria municipalities thousands of dollars in time and resources annually.
As the settler-built Victorian era houses and buildings, and those of the 20th century generation of settlers, continues to age, the need for expert information on how to renovate and maintain them continues to grow. Hallmark Heritage has more than 10,000 files as there are 600 designated heritage homes in Victoria and another 300 in Saanich, plus about 20,000 homes built in the region before 1945.
“We provide advice, people call us and we try to help as best we can,” said Hallmark Heritage Society president Ken Johnson. “We don’t charge anyone to use their files so all kinds of people, city staff, realtors, etc., will use our resources.”
Most people ask about the history of their homes, but since moving into the Craigflower Schoolhouse the society has grown its offerings to include the popular expert-led seminars and workshops.
“We are planning more of those again for this year, how to paint your house, to insure your house, change windows,” Johnson said. “But also how to remove asbestos is a popular one. We get a lot of questions on how to do that, as people grow sensitive to asbestos in their homes, and a lot of old homes have asbestos in them. We couldn’t do these workshops without the schoolhouse.”
Hallmark Heritage took over as a full-time tenant at the historic Craigflower Schoolhouse in December 2014. They qualified for the Nominal Rent Tenure fee of $1 annually, making their existence a reality, though they recently survived a hefty tax scare.
In January, the society was delivered a $2,809 property tax bill, the first for a tenant of the building in 160 years. At 28.8 per cent of the society’s annual budget, the bill would have been devastating. However, it’s since been contested, and is likely to be nullified, Johnson said.
“Saanich says they’ll take care of it if the province doesn’t, and the province says they’ll take care of it if Saanich doesn’t, so it’s just a matter of sorting out who will,” Johnson said.
Of course, the Hallmark Heritage Society isn’t the only heritage resource in town. Many callers are redirected to the Saanich Heritage Foundation, and Johnson, a Saanich resident, sits on that board too. The foundation owns and operates Saanich’s two heritage houses, the Dodd House in Lambrick Park and Hall House in Knocken Park, but does a lot more.
“The Saanich Heritage Foundation manages those properties, which are rented out on behalf of Saanich,” Johnson said. “Everything [the foundation] does is done through the rents, like a landlord but non-profit.”
Saanich started the Heritage Foundation in the 1980s and put the houses into its hands. The houses are therefore self sustaining, with no grants from Saanich.
“It’s a good use of a house, we [carefully] select tenants, they stay for a long time, and the rent is close to market rent.”
More importantly, volunteer board members of the Heritage Foundation meet once a month to oversee grant applications for municipal funding by the owners of designated heritage homes looking to do renovations.
“We can approve 30 per cent of funding to owners that are upgrading certain aspects of their home, storm windows, exterior repairs, roofs, etc., but nothing on the inside of the house,” Johnson said.
Saanich’s total heritage grants are about $40,000 per year.
