CFDC holds AGM
The past year was a good one for the Canadian Fossil Discovery Centre in Morden in most respects.
Visitation increased, the museum ended up in a good financial position, and there is continuing optimism as more fossil discoveries continue to be found.
“Since the pandemic, it has been growing every year,” executive director Adolfo Cuetara said of their visitation rates. “The best year was the year before 2024 when the growth was bigger, and from 2025, it was just barely a little bit more visitation, just like 70 people more but still as high as 2024, so it was a very good year.”
Cuetara believes the major factor is the programming such as dig tours, and admissions overall were proportionally bigger at almost 16 per cent more than the year before.
He said their programs are continuing to benefit and grow a lot with the field station set up in their main dig area.
“That is making all the difference. Without the field station that we have there, it would be unthinkable to do this kind of activity,” he said. “It’s been growing exponentially in the last three years, double amount of people from the previous year, and this year is looking in the right direction as well because we already have a lot of bookings for the summer.”
The museum had 125 dig tour participants in 2025 compared to 67 in 2024, and there were 540 kids who enjoyed day camps as well as almost 1,000 students who came by as part of 35 school tours.
“Most of the success was due to the marketing campaign that we did last year, and that that’s why we won that award [from Tourism Manitoba],” said Cuetara. “We are attracting people from outside. We got people last year from Netherlands, France, and this year already we have had from New Zealand … so it’s giving us international visitation. So all together, it was just a very good year. It’s going to be difficult to surpass those results.”
And the CFDC recorded a surplus of just over $62,000 following three years of relatively minor deficits, so it is in a solid position with an accumulated surplus of over $172,000 over the last five years.
“In the long term, we are growing. We are growing in results, growing in visitation, growing in stability, and we are reducing the dependency on the operational grant from the city,” Cuetara said. “That’s one of the main objectives to the strategic plan, to try … to generate [income] and reduce the dependency on public funds. That’s the purpose of all these activities.”
And it makes a big difference that they keep making more discoveries which continue to keep bringing more attention and interest to the CFDC.
“We’ll see what this year is bringing us. You never know. We have a very good spot in the property with lot of fossils,” Cuetara said. “That’s the most exciting part … that the people are not expecting to find so many neat things … they’re just blown away because they realize that, okay, this was just underground until I came to dig it up.”
They are also continuing to work on a new exhibit around one of their discoveries that could be unveiled soon.
“This is going to be one of the biggest more comprehensive displays that we ever had … it’s going to be very spectacular,” suggested Cuetara, who noted they can use technology to scan and digitize all the elements and reconstruct the missing parts and create a complete replica skeleton.
“Then the last stage is to create a life like creature just to show how that animal would be when he was alive, and we are working on that last stage right now. It’s just building a lifelike sculpture of that animal to put just by the side of the skeleton, so all together it is going to be really spectacular.”
