Ever wonder how homesteaders lived and what tools they used in everyday life?
Visitors to the Sukanen Ship Pioneer Village and Museum will get a better idea of early life on the homestead when the Alfred Volman Building is stocked with artifacts from the past.
Volman’s grandfather came to Canada from Hungary in 1903, worked in coal mines at Michel, B.C., then in 1905 homesteaded in the Lestock district south of Yorkton.
Collections of items used to work and live on the farm from the last 115 years will be displayed in the building.
“A lot of this stuff was dumped in a big slough. No place to put it,” said Volman in an interviews as family members set up the collection.
“It was from the early 1900s. There was 150-year -old furniture. Some if it deteriorated too much.’’
Volman decided to save and restore items, putting up a building called the Volman Brothers Museum in Leross, next to the Leross Museum
“The town is degrading and they wanted that stuff out of there.” Only 40 residents are left.
He wanted to donate the collection to Leross then heard it might be sold off. Volman wanted to save the family legacy.
He approached the Sukanen Museum and arranged to put up a 49-foot by 84-foot building for the collections.
“It fit right in with what we are doing,” Sukanen chairman Gord Ross told the members.
Volman wishes now that he had made the building bigger.
“I’m very happy the museum accepted me to come here,” said Volman, age 84. “I wanted to keep this stuff. l’m the last one (of seven boys and two girls). When l’m gone it’s gone.”
Items that will be on display range from the power board he used for 34 years operating the boiler plant at Gray Nuns Hospital to a band saw, old stove, tools, camera and a host of other things.
Machinery includes a steam engine, Massey-Harris 55 tractor, a Cockshutt 30 tractor, threshing machine, hay rack, binder and grain wagon.
Volman is the last left in the family. “Only two of the boys married. I stayed a bachelor.”
They are hoping to have the building ready for the public by the threshing bee on Sept. 10-11.
Ron Walter can be reached at [email protected]
