Virden hopes to create dynamic oil museum in near future

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This article was published 07/07/2022 (1416 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

A dynamic new museum could be coming to Virden soon, showcasing the town’s deep ties to the oil industry and how that has looked from the time the area first got settled to the present day.

Liza Park, economic development manager for the Town of Virden, held an informal meeting at Tundra Oil & Gas Place on June 13 to see if there was any interest in the community.

The Manitoba Oil Museum has been a corporation since 1992, and has evolved a lot since then, from a brick-and-mortar museum to a presence at trade shows. A provincial Petroleum Branch worker reached out to Park recently, telling her they’d hired a researcher to look through the archives of the museum and compile information for an online website. It was then that Park got the idea for something more dynamic and modern than a traditional brick-and-mortar museum.

“Brick and mortar is really hard, because you have to build it, you have to find artifacts for it … and then you have to staff it. It’s just a lot of money. So rather than the brick and mortar, they were going to do an online museum platform.”

Park is helping to facilitate not just the museum, but hopefully a project that can both bring awareness to the region’s history of oil and gas and help revitalize downtown Virden. Possibilities include displays placed around town, including storyboards and replicas.

“It fits my revitalization plan about bringing people downtown and making the community more walkable.”

Park said people who attended the June 13 discussion about the museum included local citizens, elected officials and stakeholders keen for more information about the project. Overall, she said they seemed very interested in it, and came up with a lot of good ideas, including resurrecting an oil derrick and doing research about the local pioneers who first got into the oil and gas industry. Others thought a Manitoba Oil and Gas Hall of Fame would be a good idea, and talk even moved to fundraising efforts for the future.

“The best thing that came out of the evening was that I had some community people step up and say ‘OK, we’re willing to put our names on this’,” Park said.

Ryan Lozinski, manager of Apex Distributions Inc., located in Virden, said Park has reached out to him to talk about the museum. He’s excited about its possibility.

“I think it’s a great idea, because it really shows where the area has come from to where it is today, and the people that have come and gone, and the way things used to be done and how they’ve transitioned to new technology.”

Colleen Gibson, a longtime Virden resident, was on hand at the meeting, and she agrees with Lozinski. She said she wanted to get involved because she’d really like to see an oil rig with the town of Virden’s name on it, like what the community has had in the past. She is hoping this could be part of the oil museum’s displays.

“We had an oil rig standing here for many years in our community, and it was taken down … because they had to expand on a water treatment plant, and it was never put back up.”

Gibson is keen to help out with the formation of the museum, knowing how important such a thing could be for the town.

“This community is very oil-driven and I think we need to take back that sense of pride and stand that rig.”

Park plans to have more community discussions regarding the potential museum in the near future. A website is now in the works, which will look to create an interactive platform which could be active by the end of the summer.

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