Inglis elevators are top 10 attraction

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 24/11/2016 (3417 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Twenty years after Inglis’ prairie giants were immortalized with national heritage status, the wooden warehouses are standing with newfound pride.

The volunteer board responsible for the historic row of elevators was pleasantly surprised to learn the world’s largest travel guide publisher, Lonely Planet, deemed its restored grain elevators one of the top 10 sights to see in Canada.

Chair Judy Bauereiss said this is the first time the Inglis elevators cracked the list.

“We had no idea,” Bauereiss said of the 2017 ranking. “It came out of the blue.”

The honour this year is significant because Lonely Planet ranked Canada the number one travel destination in the world, which will surely entice travellers to consider both the country and its best attractions for an upcoming trip.

The recognition comes on the heels of the heritage site’s most successful summer, with 890 tours booked from June to September, and when exposure for the sentinels is paramount. The board needs money as they embark on a five-year revitalization plan to repaint the structures and replace rotting wood.

The northernmost Paterson elevator, scaling 75-feet high, cost $46,000 for a fresh coating this year. They hope to repaint an elevator a year until the five-elevator set is complete, Bauereiss said.

While seeking funding sources from private donors and governments, she notes the recognition is a feather in their cap.

“This would certainly not hurt our chances to get some more grant money for the next stage,” she said.

The elevators, an enduring symbol of the golden age of Prairie grain handling, were labelled a national heritage site in 1996, a year after the last train departed with wheat to market.

The massive structures were propped up over the next decade, in an ambitious $9-million rehabilitation effort completed in 2006, Bauereiss explained.

Area farmers, who she described as practical, scoffed at the cost to keep them standing.

“They said just tear them down and put up a plaque, but 20 years later that perspective has changed,” she said. “The elevators really are a way of life.”

Four of the elevators have stood since 1922, the year the railway arrived, and one was constructed in the 1940s. It is currently the only standing row of five wooden grain elevators remaining in the world.

At their peak, there were nearly 6,000 wooden grain elevators across Canada. Today, there are fewer than 300.

A former high school history and English teacher, Bauereiss admits this jewel of the rural landscape is romanticized nowadays, but they conjure up special memories.

“We have these concrete silos, which I don’t doubt are more efficient and can hold more, but they just don’t have the charm and the attraction for me that the wooden elevators do because of what goes with that — people’s childhood memories of small towns.”

The Inglis Area Heritage Committee recognizes their role in preserving this nostalgia.

Bauereiss said in the midst of regular fundraising campaigns, they have mounted an art gallery inside one of the elevators and hope to attract musicians who want to play in a grain elevator, which has acoustics “to die for.”

Some of the visitors who caught a glimpse of the structure this year came from every Canadian province, Germany and Austria.

» ifroese@brandonsun.com

» Twitter: @ianfroese