Rocanville Museum Day Saturday
September 15, 2017, 2:55 am
Kara Kinna
Rocanville museum will be a busy place this Saturday when it invites the general public in for a walk back in time with its annual Museum Day.
Museum Day is a long-time annual tradition at Rocanville Museum, and the main fundraiser for the museum each year.
This year the day starts with pancake breakfast at 8 am. The rest of the day includes historical demonstrations all day long, lunch, a threshing demonstration at 1 pm, local musical entertainment, children’s activities, hayrack rides, and a barbecue beef supper.
The monthly market at the museum will also be in full swing that day, with vendors selling their wares at booths outdoors on the museum grounds. It will be the last market of the season.
There will also be a special ribbon cutting at 5 pm that day for the new Lockerbie Hole building on the museum grounds, and a cake cutting to celebrate the museum’s 50th anniversary.
“The Lockerbie Hole building is a new building that was built in the last couple of years and it was built with funds raised by volunteers,” explains Pat Watson, a member of the museum committee. “We had volunteers stripping copper wire, and we sold the wire, and from those funds we put up the new Lockerbie Hole building. It was the Lockerbie Hole electrical contractors from the mine expansion that donated their scrap wire. They gave all their scrap wire to the museum and then the boys in the winter stripped the coating off it and sold the copper, and we had enough funds from that to put up that building.
“We put up a big steel building and now we have got all our old machines, stoves, cars, and snowplanes all displayed in there now.”
The threshing demonstration is one of the most popular events at museum day and Watson says it likely will be again.
“Last year they did it with steam and gas and this year they are hoping to do that again,” she says.
Between 200 and 300 people attend Museum Day each year.
“We usually get around 250 for supper. We plan for 300 and I think we had 67 take out suppers that went out to the field last year,” says Watson.
While there is a small museum committee that plans the event, Watson says they call on about 30 to 40 community volunteers each year to help put Museum Day on.
She says it’s well worth it to come out and enjoy the day, and people who have never been to it should make the trip.
“You get an idea of how it was in the past and you can go through all the buildings and exhibits—you are stepping back into time,” she says. “You get to experience the progression of time from working with steam engines to what they do now, and the same with the threshing. You get to experience the old way of doing things and all the old tools they had.”
Watson says people who visit the museum for the first time are often surprised at how much there is to see there.
“It is amazing—there are people right in Rocanville that say ‘oh I have never been to the museum, it is wonderful.’ Through June we have school tours, and the kids from kindergarten to grade three come for a day. They wash socks on scrub boards, bake biscuits, make butter and try to do a fun craft. Kids love it and the parents quite often come along with them and think it is great. We are trying to put out there what we have. People come and are amazed with the amount of stuff out there.”
