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Avonlea Heritage Day celebrates new agricultural display building

The event included a car show that attracted about 80 vehicles

Visitors to the Avonlea Museum Heritage Day this year got a peek at the new agriculture building.

Funded by the Radius Innovation Credit Union and erected during the last year, the large metal building houses exhibits showing the agricultural history of Avonlea and district.

Museum directors thought the agricultural artifacts were under-represented in the existing Doreen and Wally Nelson Main Street building.

The new building, high enough to develop a mezzanine, has plenty of space with current displays of horse driven farm equipment, tools, a Massey-Harris 101 tractor, and an old cookhouse on wheels.

This building frees space in the Nelson building to develop more vintage Main Street stores.      

The car show at the event drew about 80 vehicles, among them Bill Nelson’s 1940 Buick Special.

Nelson bought the car just before COVID struck and kept it in the family dealership show room until now. The car has been rebuilt with a 385 horsepower motor sad power steering.

“My wife will even drive it,” said Nelson. The striking colour shifts tones depending on the light, appearing orange, red or bronze.

Don McDonald of Moose Jaw brought his 1967 Meteor Montcalm car, a well-travelled unit with 75,500 miles.

The car was shipped west by train from Cape Breton, Nova Scotia when he got it 14 years ago.

It was originally sold to a banker at a Mahone Bay dealership. The banker, it turned out, authorized McDonald’s brother’s first mortgage on a house in Halifax.  

In 1995 a mechanic in Cape Breton bought the car, redid the motor and transmission and paint job and then sold it to an elderly gentleman.

“She just floats on the road, keeps up with the others,” said McDonald.

The Avonlea Museum is open daily from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. to the end of August. Tours of the nearby badlands can be booked through the museum.

Ron Walter can be reached at ronjoy@sasktel.net

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