A 124 year-old CPR station resting in Manitou will soon be sitting on a new foundation, funded by $25,000 from the province's Heritage Resources Conservation Grant.
Al Thorleifson, a local heritage advocate, says not only will the money pay for a new foundation for the former La Riviere rail station, it will also cover the cost of structural repairs and a new platform, and point future generations to the value of the area's history.
"Young folk, if they don't see references to what it was like 150 years ago, they're going to lose connection with their traditions. The connections with why their people came here. What did their people have to do to survive here?"
The very existence of a rail station like this one, said Thorleifson, reminds people that less than 80 years ago there were no provincial trunk highways in Manitoba.
"Winter travel was with a horse and sleigh in 1950 for a lot of rural people because the roads were just simply not maintained. The railways were the main source of transportation up to the middle of the last century. It's really important for young folk to see references to that, to be reminded of that, and in that way to kind of celebrate how far we've actually come."
Upon completion of the foundation, the station will be situated at the north end of Main Street in Manitou.
The project was also awarded $5,000 for conservation planning.
Thorleifson is also excited about a joint project by the Pembina Manitou Archive and the Boundary Trail Heritage Region.
"It's a history of the Boundary Trail National Heritage Region. That basically means from Emerson to the Saskatchewan border, the first 18 or 24 miles north of the American border. It's called that because the Boundary Commission Trail that originally defined the 49th parallel. And also it's important because that's the route that the Northwest Mounted Police took. This history basically is going to tell the story of that whole process of settlement."
Ed Ledohowski is primary author, giving credit to archives and museums for supplying photographs and narrative.
"He has found photographs that I have never seen, and I've been working with history for quite a while. About half the book is photographs," said Thorleifson.
Titled A Story for Every Mile, Thorleifson expects the book to be published within the next eight or nine months.