Sheena Bennett, a double major in history and sociology, got a rare opportunity this summer.

Bennett, who will start third year this fall, was hired as a museum educator and archivist by the Jack Miner Migratory Bird Sanctuary outside Kingsville, through a Young Canada Works grant.

Young Canada Works in Heritage Organizations is an employment program for students, offering them the opportunity to improve their skills while acquiring practical knowledge in the heritage field.

“This is just one of the many paid experiential learning opportunities that we, in the Department of History, are providing to our students through our connections with local organizations,” says assistant professor Gregg French.

Matt Olewski, executive director of the Jack Miner Migratory Bird Foundation, says that while the museum building has always been here, they wanted to increase engagement. It was a project they knew had to be done, but didn’t have someone to do it. The grant gave them that opportunity.

Bennett’s job was to reimagine telling Jack Miner’s life story using the archives in the collection. Not being from Windsor-Essex, she had an advantage: she hadn’t heard of Jack Miner before coming to the sanctuary. Bennett read everything available to learn Miner’s story and then researched the materials available to include in the exhibits.

She then took all the former exhibits apart and regrouped the items according to subject. From there, she selected the topics for 14 new exhibits in the museum. Bennett wrote the descriptive text for each exhibit that is now the printed signage and selected the artifacts and photos to be included.

John “Jack” Miner (1865 – 1944) is known as the “Father of Conservation.” In 1904 he founded the Jack Miner Migratory Bird Sanctuary for the conservation of migrating Canada geese and wild ducks and was the originator of the waterfowl refuge management system.

It took four years to attract the first 11 migrating geese to land at the sanctuary. In 1909, he pioneered the tagging of migratory waterfowl by banding his first wild duck. The sanctuary continues to band ducks and geese today using banding nets.

Miner’s data from tagging recoveries were instrumental in creating the Migratory Bird Treaty between the USA and Canada. This act placed the first restrictions on hunting, giving attention to maintaining waterfowl populations for the future.

The author of three books, Miner was considered “not suited for school” as a child and taught himself to read in his 30s. One of the museum’s exhibits includes Miner’s writing table, his pen, and many of his notebooks, along with a photo of the hut in the woods where he would work on his writing projects for days.

In 1929 Miner was awarded the Outdoor Life Gold Medal for “The Greatest Achievement in Wildlife Conservation on the Continent.” This was the first time the award was presented to a Canadian. In 1943 he was presented with the Order of the British Empire by King George VI “for the greatest achievement in conservation in the British Empire.” And in 1977, Canadian prime minister Pierre Elliot Trudeau issued a proclamation for National Wildlife Week saying, “Jack Miner, with his vision and determination is largely responsible for those conservation measures in existence today.”

Following Miner’s death in 1944, several U.S. newspapers rated him fifth best known man on the continent after Henry Ford, Thomas Edison, Charles Lindbergh, and pilot Eddie Rickenbacker.

“The narration of Jack’s story is excellent,” says Olewski. “Sheena envisioned the experience and flow of his story. Her work is impressive.”

Bennett’s reimagined exhibits are available to view at the sanctuary’s museum daily, from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m.