Governance

Mission Statement:

The Stratford Perth Museum collects, preserves and celebrates the tangible and cultural heritage of the County of Perth and the City of Stratford. The Museum features exhibits and programs which bring history to life and presents community-oriented programming that educates and inspires throughout its indoor and outdoor spaces.

Vision Statement:

To be respected and valued as a vibrant and relevant community partner through exhibits and programs that celebrate our collection, our roots, and our stories.

Our Strategic Plan

To reach a destination one has to know where you’d like to go and then plan the route. Thorough planning builds strong organizations and is the basis of attaining desired goals. The Museum’s volunteer Board of Directors and its staff team are firm believers in this simple but absolute truth.

For this reason, the Board and staff ensure that a Strategic Plan, or longer term planning agenda, is in place at all times. Ongoing strategic planning defines the central goals and priorities for the Museum for each three to five year period. The governing Strategic Plan for any given period becomes the foundation for annual business and operational plans, including budgets. Regular reviews assess the Museum’s strategic course and allow for adjustments, where and when needed.

As part of this ongoing planning process, the Stratford Perth Museum put a new strategic plan in place in July 2024, FUSION, and it will be the cornerstone document for the Museum through 2030.

FUSION defines five core goals for the Museum during this period.

  • 1. Ensure the continued financial stability of the Stratford Perth Museum in both the immediate planning period and longer term.
  • 2. Put into place as soon as realistically possible, a permanent and robust agricultural exhibit honouring the deep roots of the County’s rich, agricultural legacy.
  • 3. Develop a more nuanced exhibit strategy with a focus on wider access to the collection and an increased County-wide presence.
  • 4. Increase community outreach and brand awareness, both locally and more broadly across the County.
  • 5. Take every step possible to ensure the optimal staffing and volunteer models, with emphasis on recruitment, motivation, and retention.

Kelly McIntosh – Managing Director

Kelly McIntosh is an award-winning theatre artist whose work celebrates community, history, and the resilience of women. She co-wrote Ladies of the CNR and Kroehler Girls! two collective creations that honour Stratford’s rich industrial past and the women who shaped it.

Since joining the Stratford Perth Museum, Kelly has helped usher in a new era of community engagement. In a short time, she has introduced a wide range of programs and events including the hugely successful Menopause Seminars, community conversations around legendary local clairvoyant Vera McNichol and the reimagined Grand Trunk site, and the museum’s continued commitment to oral history through storytelling.

She has invited renowned artists and thinkers to collaborate with the museum and local residents in new and meaningful ways, including Peter Hinton, Garvia Bailey, Haui, Seana McKenna, Ron Kennell, Bob Wiseman and Rod Beattie.

Through her podcast work, Kelly has explored topics ranging from the stories of workers at Kroehler Manufacturing to gender exploration and inclusivity at the Stratford Festival. She is currently producing an audio documentary celebrating the life and work of beloved union leader Roxie Baker.

Now more than ever, the Stratford Perth Museum is living its tagline: Your Community, Your Museum. Kelly has never been happier to be part of the reinvention of what a community museum can be: a gathering place where stories that matter are shared every day, and where the community has more ways than ever to connect, indoors, outdoors, and in our hearts.

kelly@stratfordperthmuseum.ca

Megan

Megan Patterson
Manager of Programs and Education & Exhibits Lead
Groups@stratfordperthmuseum.ca

Reagan MacMillan
Collections Coordinator
collections@stratfordperthmuseum.ca

Your Museum Board

The Stratford Perth Museum is governed by a volunteer Board of Directors who are responsible to members of the Association and to the communities they serve, ensuring that appropriate preservation, conservation and curatorial services are provided for all collections placed in our care. The Board is elected at its Annual General Meeting by the Association’s membership.

Mike Valliquette is the current interim board chair, having been elected at the museum’s AGM in February of 2025.

The Board also includes two council appointed representatives from the City of Stratford and Perth County. The Board is responsible for setting the Museum’s strategic direction, reviewing the operating budget, developing policies and procedures, and for fundraising. And as a working board, you will find board members working side by side with the museum team everyday.

The board of the Stratford Perth Museum meets every two months beginning in April of 2026.

Current Board of Directors, Stratford-Perth Museum Association:

Mike Valiquette – Interim Chair & Secretary
Janice Richardson – Finance chair
Ron Hikel
Deanna Horton
Sandra Jordan
Eddie Matthews
John McIntosh
Laura Pogson
Shelley Stevenson

Robert Wilhelm – County of Perth Representative
Larry McCabe – City of Stratford Representative

The full recording of the 2026 AGM meeting is available on our youtube channel here

The 2025 AGM Report is attached and available to view on our website
The 2025 Approved Audited Financials are available to view on our website

Our Funding Base

The Stratford Perth Museum is a vital part of the community, committed to preserving the past and promoting local history. The Museum’s two principle funding partners, the City of Stratford and the County of Perth, are committed to assisting the Museum carry out its mandate.

The Stratford Perth Museum Association generates over 40% of its total revenue from admissions, programs, fundraising, memberships, donations and grants.

2004 City/County/Museum Task Force click here.

Our Privacy Commitment

The Stratford Perth Museum Association and The Stratford Perth Museum are committed to respecting the personal privacy of individuals who visit our website, the museum, our events, and programs. All personal information held or collected by the Stratford Perth Museum is protected under the Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act.

  • This website does not automatically gather any personal information from you, such as your name, phone number or e-mail address. We would only obtain this type of information if you supplied it voluntarily.
  • Our website does not use “cookies” to track how our visitors use this site or to determine sites previously visited. (A “cookie” is a file that may be placed on your hard drive without your knowledge by a website to allow it to monitor your use of the site.)
  • Information provided voluntarily by individual visitors is used by Stratford Perth Museum employees who need to know the information in order to respond to your requests.
  • We only share the information you give us with other institutions if your inquiry relates to that institution.
  • We do not use the information to create individually identifiable profiles, nor do we disclose this information to anyone outside the association without your permission.

If you have any questions or comments regarding this policy, please contact us at the museum.

Our Accessibility Promise

The Stratford Perth Museum and its staff, volunteers and trustees, are committed to ensuring equality of access to the museum, our exhibits, programs, and events, for everyone in our community:

  • We are here to help make this Your Museum. The museum and its exhibits are carefully planned to be barrier free. Please let us know if there is any way we can assist you when you visit the museum.
  • If you require any information from this website or other museum publications in some alternative format, please let us know.
  • If there are any other ways we can help make the museum and our exhibits, events, and programmes accessible, please contact us so we can work together to create a museum for everyone in our community.
  • For our accessibility policy, click here:  accessibility-policy-2016