‘Huge loss’: University student works to preserve national database on historic sites set to be unplugged

A university student is trying to preserve history and track heritage places in New Brunswick.

Wyatt Hudson is a student at Saint Mary’s University in Halifax. When he isn’t busy doing homework or assignments, he’s working to save the information from a unique internet archive that is set to disappear soon.

The Canadian Register of Historic Places is a “single source of information about historic places in Canada recognized for their heritage value at the local, provincial, territorial and national levels, according to the federal government.

The archive is set to shut down in 2026.

“I’ve been saving Historic Sites across New Brunswick mainly, but I got introduced by saving historic sites across Nova Scotia. So, everything that’s federally registered, municipally, provincially registered across Nova Scotia, I went in and saved from this Historic Places website, and then after the project was done, I had saved a few dozen, I looked at New Brunswick and started trying to save historic sites across New Brunswick,” he said in an interview with CTV News Atlantic’s Paul Dewitt.

Launched in 2004, the website was a collaboration between Parks Canada and the federal, provincial, and territorial governments across the country, serving as a database for information on more than 13,000 historic places across the country.

In late 2025, Parks Canada announced it would be permanently unplugged, meaning all the information on the site would effectively disappear.

“It’s incredibly important to save all of these historic sites because these are all sorts of databases with documents and photos, some of which are owned by families rather than a museum or something along those lines,” said Hudson.

“So, these are kind of firsthand accounts that we may not actually ever see again, and losing all of this work that had been put into these websites and stuff would be a huge loss to the heritage across Canada.”

Hudson says he’s been working with the Association of Heritage of New Brunswick in hopes of archiving the information until a new website or database is made.