‘I love the articles in the “Heritage Matters” reprints: now I can tell my visitors the truth’ Anonymous Taxi DriverMany in Bermuda yet object to the fact that local history was not generally taught in schools in previous generations and thus there is much of our heritage about which older folk may not be aware.In my last days of school, we were fortunate to have Sister Jean de Chantal Kennedy, who could not resist from deviating from the stated educational course to give us a blast about her latest discoveries in the Bermuda Archives.Thus we were driven, via the mind, to Hezekiah Frith’s home, ‘Spithead’ on the Harbour Road, or were transported on his ship, Experiment, on a privateering voyage to the wealth-laden centres of the Caribbean Sea, there to take ships of the enemy for the glory of the King and quite a bit of private profit.Sister Jean went on to produce several fine history books on Bermuda subjects, including “The Biography of a Colonial Town”, about the first century of the City of Hamilton.There is a certain amount of heritage that is taught in person, in the school of life, as it were, so that many traditional activities such as building, cooking, dancing, sailing, and so on, are acquired outside the formal setting of the classroom, following the example of others already learned in such pastimes.Heritage that lies beyond personal memory has to be learned, in large measure, from other media, such as books and articles, which represent the results of research into the Past, in order to obtain an image, or picture, of what happened in history.Such research has to be published, usually in a book form, if it is to be of any value to those who would wish to teach us of the Past, and on the other side of the coin, those who are interested in previous generations, their lives, aspirations, achievements and of course, failures.The lack of teaching history years ago in Bermuda schools might be correlated to the lack of books on the subject of Bermuda and its heritage in all areas, natural as well as cultural.When time permits, it may be of interest to review exactly what was available from scholars at given periods in the history of Bermuda, but what is now certain, especially with internet reproduction of out-of-print works, is that there now exists a reasonable library of Bermuda reference books for the aspiring teacher and acquisitive student of the history and heritage of this land.The internet has transformed the transmission and acquisition of knowledge and public access that may be compared with the Gutenberg Revolution, when in the early 1450s, the Gutenberg Bible became the ‘first major book printed with movable type’.Imagine what Johannes Gutenberg would make of the ‘moving type’ on a personal computer or iPad, but apparently what was of greater significance was that he demonstrated that books could be produced by his method, not just leaflets, or flyers, as we might now call such individual printed pages.Despite the internet and the digitisation of data, ‘hard copy’ books and booklets are still as important as ever and remain a major way in which heritage and historic data is transmitted from one generation to the next.So it is that this column is now in the process of being reprinted in book format, for newspaper print has the short term permanency of last week’s e-mails, unless you are a printer and cataloguer by nature and your computer has not crashed, taking BerNews with it, or the roaches have not eaten The Royal Gazette in your filing drawer.Thus last week, at an evening at the Commissioner’s House, sponsored by Bank of Bermuda Foundation, “Heritage Matters Volume 4” was launched, being the articles published in the year 2008 in The Mid-Ocean News, a now defunct newspaper, another educational victim of the present recession.The series began on Friday, 4 March, 2005, with two pictures and a story about the second-oldest surviving building in the Bermuda Dockyard, the Casemate Barracks, the subject again of a recent column, as volunteers from international companies helped with the pre-restoration of the historic structure, which was a prison for 31 years from 1963.That year some 44 articles were produced, a production that would not have been possible before the internet Age, due to the earlier issues of taking hard copy and original photographs to the newspaper by hand.As e-mail and bulk transmission of data has improved, it has been possible to produce the articles in remote Somerset and dispatch them to the newspaper at the press of a key all in colour to boot!Unlike a major tome on history or heritage, the column seeks to focus on smaller subjects, often not in books, but which have images that add to the story being told.Any subject that has to do with Bermuda, her people and our heritage, is grist for the mill, hopefully producing a flour and a loaf that is of interest and palatable to many.To date, over 400 articles on a wide range of subjects have been produced, with five years having 52 each and the others over 40.Many of the articles are the result of data and images sent in by the public and much comes out of the archives of the National Museum through the efforts of the Curator, Elena Strong, and the Registrar, Jane Downing and helpful Bermudian summer intern students.The object of the reprints, now four in number, all sponsored by Bank of Bermuda Foundation and designed by Brimstone Media, is to make the contents of the articles permanently available to the Public.Across the community, there appears to be considerable interest in preserving Bermuda’s heritage (as exhibited in the many comments that have been received on the Heritage Matters column), which is why I will continue to lay such material before you.In the interest of spreading the truth, touring taxi drivers may apply for a free copy of Heritage Matters Volume 4 ‘by the flags at Scaur Hill’, not the ‘Blue Flag’, but those of the Union, Bermuda and various other countries, including a handmade one sent to me by yachting friends from the Galapagos Islands.