Historic grain elevator overlooked on list: historian

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This article was published 21/06/2019 (2478 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Canada’s oldest wooden grain elevator, located in southwestern Manitoba, should have been included on a list of Canada’s Top 10 endangered places, says a Manitoba historian.

Because of its proximity to the main rail line in Elva, the standard-plan grain elevator is at risk of being burned down by train-caused fires and humans, said Gordon Goldsborough, the Manitoba Historical Society’s head researcher.

“That’s why I would say it’s not only a historically significant building, given its history to agriculture, but it’s also, I think, highly threatened,” he said Thursday.

Canada’s Top 10 Endangered Places list, compiled by the National Trust for Canada, included two Manitoba buildings this year: the Birtle Residential School and the Rubin Block in Winnipeg.

Constructed in September 1897 by the Lake of the Woods Milling Company, the Elva elevator became part of the Ogilvie Milling Company when, in 1954, the two companies merged, but the elevator retained the original company name painted on its side.

It was purchased in 1959 by Manitoba Pool Elevators, which closed the elevator in 1968 and sold it to private interests. The elevator now sits in a state of disrepair.

Previously, the oldest such grain elevator was in Fleming, Sask., Goldsborough said. When it burned down by arsonists in 2010, that distinction should have gone to Elva, he said, but it didn’t.

Elva is a tiny community of only a few houses, about 150 kilometres southwest of Brandon in the Municipality of Two Borders.

Meanwhile, the former residential school in Birtle, while historically significant, is far too damaged to try to preserve, Goldsborough said.

“Philosophically, I think it’s worth saving, because I think it’s a worthwhile reminder of the residential school program,” he said.

But he said, he was in the building last November, “and it’s in really rough shape inside.”

Sold by the federal government in 1975, the second owner of the school property began demolishing the interior of the building, but then abandoned the project about 15 years ago.

It has since sat empty and open to the elements with its windows broken and the interior heavily vandalized.

The former school made national headlines in 2015 when the second owner put the property up for sale on Kijiji for $79,000. It changed hands in 2016.

Goldsborough noted there are two other remaining residential schools in Manitoba that are still in use — one in Portage la Prairie and another in Winnipeg.

“It probably makes more sense to maintain the ones we have that are in good condition rather than, you know, putting resources into one that I think is probably not salvageable.”

The National Trust for Canada website says the residential school operated from 1889 to 1972.

It notes consensus has not yet emerged in the local Indigenous community about whether the former school should be preserved as a site of memory and conscience.

Until that happens, the site needs to be secured and stabilized to ensure the historic fabric is not further eroded, the trust said.

The Rubin Block, a three-storey mixed-use building in Winnipeg’s South Osborne is boarded up and sits on the city’s vacant building list. It was opened in 1914 and designed by prominent Winnipeg architect Max Zev Blankstein.

Goldsborough said it’s rare that Manitoba buildings are even included on the list, since they are nominated by trust members who mostly live in Eastern Canada.

He suspects it’s because the trust is holding its annual meeting in Winnipeg the third week in October.

“So I think they’re throwing Manitoba a bone, putting two of our buildings on their list.”

Based in Ottawa, the National Trust for Canada is a charitable not-for-profit organization.

A spokesman for the trust could not be reached for comment Thursday.

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