Seven historic buildings in Westman make annual top-10 ‘endangered’ list

A century-old picturesque home on the 1300 block of 10th Street in Brandon once owned by prominent educator B.J. Hales is worth saving, according to Gordon Goldsborough of the Manitoba Historical Society.

“The Hales house is so attractive and is quite a beautiful building,” said Goldsborough.

“As you look at the front, it has two windows on the second floor that have what looks like eyebrows on its roof line, with a brick facade and stucco on the back.”

The house at 1312 10th St., built in 1912, has the dubious honour of being on the top-10 list of endangered buildings in the province.

Of the 10 listed last week, seven are in western Manitoba.

As the society’s president and head researcher, Goldsborough compiles the list and releases it once a year. The purpose is to let people know about historically relevant buildings that are threatened by vacancy or decay, or under pressure to redevelop.

“We want to make people aware of what we are losing,” Goldsborough said, “because every loss is some information that’s chipped away. I guess you could almost think of it as Alzheimer’s for culture that when we lose something, we can’t ever get it back. Reminders of the way things used to be are important.”

Hales was the first principal of the Brandon Normal School in 1907, a position he held for 31 years. He also served on Brandon City Council and was a naturalist who amassed a substantial collection of Manitoba plants and taxidermized animals. Those pieces became the basis for the B.J. Hales Museum of Natural History, now located at the Brandon General Museum.

Hales lived in the two-and-a-half-storey house for 33 years until his death in 1945.

The home is in quite good condition, Goldsborough said.

“One of the things that really surprises me is that it’s only had a few families living in it during its entire existence,” he said. “And the owner is trying to seek heritage designation for the house because he knows that if it receives that designation, it would then be safe from demolition.

“The reality is that the minute he moves out, his house will be gone — not because there’s anything wrong with it, but simply because it’s not what developers want.”

On Monday morning, the homeowner allowed the Sun to take photos of his property but declined to comment.

The six other buildings in western Manitoba on the society’ s endangered list are:

• The Union Bank Building in Crystal City.

• The town hall in Hartney.

• The Lake of the Woods Grain Elevator in Cameron in the Municipality of Two Borders.

• The Scallion Granary in the Rural Municipality of Wallace-Woodworth.

• The Methodist Church in Lauder.

• The Canadian National Railway Turntable in Dauphin.

“The little church in Lauder is a beautiful church,” Goldsborough said, adding, “It’s gorgeous inside, but there’s not much we can do to save it. Although with this year being the 100th anniversary of the United Church of Canada, this brings more attention to it.”

Brothers James and Thomas Scallion built the one-storey squat granary on their farm northwest of Virden in 1893.

It is one of only two surviving examples of a building made of stone to store grain in Manitoba and when operational, held 12,000 bushels. At that time, it stood next to two other stone farm buildings and a two-storey farmhouse. Today it is the only structure left standing in the abandoned farmyard.

“The granary itself is significant,” Goldsborough said, “but I think the ownership of it, the fact that it was built by James Scallion, a noted figure from municipal politics, gives it a double reason to survive.”

Scallion was the founder of the Progressive Party of Manitoba, a consortium of farmers that got into politics and helped elect John Bracken, who became the longest-serving premier of Manitoba.

Sandy Phillips is a self-professed hobby photographer from Killarney and has been to Scallion’s abandoned farm and seen the historic granary behind the lens of her camera.

“I like to drive around and photograph old houses, and this was on my list for a long time,” Phillips said, “so I finally just did it one day.

“It was quite a long driveway, and when you come around the corner you see part of the stone.”

Phillips’ process of preserving history is to take pictures first, and then “dive into the history” to see what she can find out.

“He was a single man, and I think he lived there with his brother and his sister,” she said.

“And the draw to that house, if I remember correctly, was that it was right on the railway, so they could easily load their grain from the granary right over to the track.”

Road trips like the one that Phillips took is exactly what Goldsborough said he likes to hear about. He hopes that the top 10 list will encourage more people to get out, look for and appreciate historic buildings that are at risk.

“In the case of Dauphin,” Goldsborough said, “I think modern Manitobans have kind of forgotten how important railways were at one time.”

Next month, a railway turntable will be dismantled after 119 years. A turntable rotated and moved locomotives in different directions into the stalls of an engine house — also called a roundhouse — where they could be repaired or maintained.

The city uses the roundhouse as an active public works yard and is finding it difficult to navigate around the turntable in the middle.

“I think the City of Dauphin has got its mind made up, and therefore I don’t think any historical arguments are going to convince them otherwise,” Goldsborough said.

The historical society has just released an app called “MHS InSite,” which shows heritage sites near the user that are either still in existence or demolished. Within its first week of launch, there were 3,000 downloads.

The objective is to let people know there are many interesting and valuable artifacts to be discovered.

“Don’t despair, there is still a lot around us,” Goldsborough said.

“And if nothing else, being aware of the ones we might lose will make us redouble our efforts to preserve the others that are still with us.”

The last three buildings to make the top-10 list are the Anglican Rectory in St. Andrews and the Peck Building and the Rover Electric Terminal in Winnipeg.

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