The Souris Valley Museum is hosting an interactive display on early aviation with the ACE Academy Flying Experience. Loaned from the Canadian Aviation and Space Museum, the display sees visitors put in a World War 1 biplane and dogfighting using a motion camera.
Melanie Memory, the director-curator of the Souris Valley museum, talks about why she wanted to have an exhibit like this in the museum.
"It's historical first of all, because it's from World War 1 and it's interactive, which was another kind of thing we were looking for to engage our visitors when they come to the museum. I think our board was kind of interested in it because of that factor, just getting more people into the museum in the winter time, it's kind of the idea behind it."
Memory says that she tried out the display herself and after a bit of practice was able to shoot down four planes herself, saying the experience was pretty fun.
Larger museums tend to loan out exhibits such as this to other, smaller museums, with Memory saying that she hopes to see more exhibits like this in the future.
"We had one last year, so that's kind of why I did it again this winter, because after it's here, it's going to another museum in Saskatchewan. I think in the future, we definitely will do it, but probably kind of in our offseason, cause in the busy season, we're busy with camps and different things in the summer with tourists and that. So I like to free up my room in the middle there for if we have events or things like that, so I probably wouldn't have one in the summer."
Anyone is able to come to the museum during their regular hours and try that out until the exhibit leaves on May 16th, with a $5 admission into the museum.
There was one group that tried it out last night as some members of the Estevan Air Cadets were in attendance to take part in the exhibit.
Commanding Officer Connie Hagel says that being able to take some Air Cadets out to an exhibit like this.
"Even if it's virtually, it's just always something exciting that goes along with the theme of being an air cadet. So it's a lot of fun."
Memory says she hopes to see more people come down to try out the exhibit, including any classes that want to take a trip down to the museum.