The Reminder is making its archives back to 2003 available on our website. Please note that, due to technical limitations, archive articles are presented without the usual formatting.
Denare Beach has an amazingly rich history for a small community. And it was a strong curiosity in the village's past that brought some 100 people to the Northern Gateway Museum yesterday for an open house appropriately titled Discovery Day. It was just one of many busy days this summer for the museum, which has seen hundreds of visitors from near and afar, including Germany, Scotland and Michigan. Chairperson Norma Barr chalks up the museum's popularity to its uniqueness. "The objects are one of a kind and nothing could replace them," she said. "I just think it really shows the true beginnings of this area." Over 500 artifacts are contained within the museum's walls. There are birch bark bitings from the late Angelique Merasty, a well-known Denare Beach resident for over six decades. First Nations beadwork and embroidery from area resident Bernadette Hillier and her grandmother, Marie McDermott, occupy another cabinet. See 'Books' P.# Con't from P.# Other exhibits include books and a desk from the defunct Denare Beach school, replicas of pots brought by settlers to Amisk Lake in the early 1900s and a wooden aboriginal man carved from a single tree. Overhead hangs one of the museum's more popular artifacts, the practice canoe of the Saskatchewan team from the 1967 Centennial Canoe Race. Among the oldest items are those retrieved from the site of Fort Henry Frobisher, a fur trading post that operated in the Amisk Lake area in the 1700s, including a rusted ax head and scissors. Right beside the museum is its much smaller predecessor, which is slowly transforming into a historical warehouse in its own right. Museum staff are turning the old museum into a replica of a 1940s era Denare Beach home, and have already gathered about 300 vintage items such as a cook stove and wooden washing machine as well as an ice box. "Artifacts for the old building must be at least 50 years old," noted Barr. The plan is to have the two museums directly connected, possibly with a hallway, by next year. Fundraising efforts to pay for the newer museum have been successful, and Barr expects the last of the bills to be paid by the end of next year. One of the more successful fundraisers allows people to symbolically buy one of the logs that constitute the facility. Everyone who purchases one of the $100 logs is recognized on a plaque inside the museum and receives a tax receipt. The opening of the new museum in 2000 came after a decade of fundraising by the museum board, who saw that the old building was deteriorating and lacked the desired space. The museum's last day of regular operations this year will be Sunday, Aug. 29.
