Another season started up recently at the Pembina Threshermen’s Museum in the highway corridor between Winkler and Morden.
The usual array of events are planned for the summer, and volunteer directors again hope to see more people come to check out this unique pioneer village.
“There’s always some people who have not been here before … this past weekend, there were some people from Winnipeg who had not been here before,” said Marlene Loewen, chairperson of the museum board.
Following opening day, the first main event of the year is the Heritage Days coming up June 5-6.
“That’s when we’ll have perhaps 700 or 800 school kids coming through, and we’re able to do all kind of activities with them and do a bunch of demonstrations,” said Loewen.
Following that is Pioneer Day July 11 and Frontier Day Aug. 15, both offering an enhanced day of activities for the general public.
The main event of the summer, as always, is Reunion Days, which take place this year on Sept. 11-2 and features a packed lineup of activities, demonstrations, food, and entertainment.
As always, the museum has a few to-do projects lined up for the season, one of which has already been completed: a makeover of the main office.
“It needed some updating and stuff. In March, we tackled that, put in some new flooring, some new lights, to just give it a new look … and it just makes it looks a bit nicer,” said Loewen.
“We want to do a makeover of the chain link fence in front. It badly needs to be redone … and there’s always building maintenance,” she continued. “We have some extra funding for summer students this year, so we’re going to be doing a lot of painting and redoing some things on the outside, just giving things a general facelift.”
A more substantial project is a phase one of a makeover of the Brimberly Village building which houses a streetscape of pioneer shops and a wide range of historical memorabilia.
“We want to give it a good facelift on the outside,” explained Loewen. “We’ve had a few people interested in partnering with us. We have a contractor in place who will do the bulk of the rebuild … just to kind of enhance the look of the building.”
They have applied for a couple grants and have received a number of other smaller donations to support this project.
“We have a bit of money to start with, so we will at least get phase one done this year. And if we don’t get it all done this year, we’ll finish it up next year or the year after as funding comes in,” Loewen said.
Loewen noted they always have a five-year plan on the go and try to have perhaps one more major project or part of a major project to at least start on every season.
“Last year was more smaller ones, but it was still, I think, a really good year.”
As always, PTM could use some more volunteers to help keep things running smoothly.
“With the Valley Harvest Maids, we have an awesome bunch of ladies who have really stepped up and taken on a big role there,” Loewen said. “And we’re very grateful for everyone who comes out to help us do all of our events.”
