Whanganui museum re-dedication inspires family gathering

Jeannie and John Kennedy wait outside Whanganui Regional Museum for the second of two re-dedication events on March 15. Photo / Laurel Stowell

When John Kennedy took his grandson to Whanganui Regional Museum to see his great great grandfather's carving the museum was closed for earthquake strengthening.

The two went to its temporary premises in Ridgway St. They told staff the visit was special to them because their forebear, Thomas Arthur Dewson, carved the side panels on the museum's biggest waka, Te Mata o Hoturoa.

Staff responded by sending Kennedy a personal invitation to the museum's re-opening and re-dedication on March 15. It became a wonderful family occasion for 14 direct descendants, their spouses and friends.

They came from Auckland, Kerikeri, Thames, Coromandel, Otaki and Hamilton.

Staying at the Grand Hotel, Jeannie and John Kennedy were among 11 of the group who attended the dawn ceremony on March 15.

They said Māori did it just right, because it was "from the heart".

When they walked through the doors in the predawn darkness, to the sound of singing, they felt they were walking with their own ancestors.

"It was wonderful. It was very powerful. It was moving," Kennedy said.

His English great grandfather Thomas Arthur Dewson was a woodcarver and the son of a woodcarver. In 1934 he applied to carve side panels and beading for the war canoe, which was being refurbished after being gifted to the museum in 1917.

He was paid 16/6 per foot for the panels, and 2/6 a foot for the beading. The carving design followed a pattern traced by historian T W Downes and the work took him a whole year, for a total price of 123 pounds, 12 shillings and sixpence.

Dewson lived at 96 Somme Pde, and a family member remembers the carving was done indoors, and a house window had to be removed to get the panels out.

While the Kennedys were in town this week they also went to Bushy Park homestead, to see the mantelpiece there, also carved by Thomas Dewson.

The Kennedys were impressed with the changes to the museum and its many ongoing links with Whanganui people.

"It gives us such pride and mana to actually go and touch the carvings and think that our great grandfather actually did that," John Kennedy said.

The waka he added to, Te Mata o Hoturoa, was made from a totara felled at Kākahi, near the confluence of the Whakapapa and Whanganui rivers. It was built before 1810 and used in several battles, including a combined assault on Te Rauparaha's stronghold on Kāpiti Island in the 1820s.