The Flin Flon Station Museum has received a special status from the province.
The museum received Star Attraction status from Travel Manitoba and the Manitoba Ministry of Growth, Enterprise and Trade on May 8.
“I was, shall we say, exceedingly pleased,” said museum board chair Tom Heine, who added the board had tried to get the museum on the Star Attractions list since 2013.
“It puts us on the map, with respect to quite a few sites already in the province. We figured quite a few years ago that we should try for Star Attraction status – the Sam Waller Museum [in The Pas] has it, the Mining Museum in Snow Lake has it. We figured, ‘Hey, we need to get on the wagon here!’”
Highway signs and tourism materials will be produced for the museum as part of the new classification. The museum is now one of 63 sites in Manitoba to be named Star Attractions, including cultural and heritage sites, natural and outdoor recreation spots and tourist destinations.
Out of the 63 locations, only six are located north of the 53rd parallel – the station museum, the Sam Waller Museum, the Snow Lake Mining Museum, Spirit Way in Thompson, Pisew Falls-Kwasitchewan Falls, and Thompson’s Heritage North Museum.
Heine said having the new designation will serve as a motivation to further tweak the site in the future.
“When you have a Star Attraction, it’s a special location that you might want to visit. It’ll force us to up our game a little bit, I think.“
Some changes are already underway. This summer, the museum will be reorganized to, as Heine puts it, “better reflect the history of Flin Flon.”
“Before we started on the reorganization, our history was more of a disorganized collection. We’re still in the process, but we’re making some progress with it.”
This summer’s seasonal exhibit will be a display of what Flin Flon’s Main Street looked like during the 1930s, when the railway was still the town’s main transportation link and the mine was at its busiest.
In order to make the new exhibit come alive, Heine and other members of the museum board have been in contact with the Flin Flon Heritage Project, wishing to make use of the project’s extensive catalogue of historic photos and documents. It’s the first time the two groups have partnered up on a project for the museum.
“There’s a common goal, plus different expertise. That’s something good. I’m not the expert at everything,” said Heine.
“They’ve got a huge, huge archive. One of our board members has done a great amount of research on it. She’ll be getting in touch with the heritage committee to see if we can get some high-resolution photographs that we can make into a display before we open in July.”
