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History comes to life in heritage village

Homes belonging to Icelandic, Ukrainian pioneers restored

By: Bill Redekop

Posted: 05/24/2011 1:00 AM | Comments: 0

Curator/ manager Trish Marteinson holds an old washboard outside the Sigvaldason house. (RUTH BONNEVILLE/ WINNIPEG FREE PRESS) Photo Store

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Curator/ manager Trish Marteinson visits the grist mill. (RUTH BONNEVILLE/ WINNIPEG FREE PRESS) Photo Store

ARBORG -- Bjorn and Lara Sigvaldason had 16 children.

The family used flour sacks for curtains. Lara baked 24 loaves of bread at a time to feed her brood. Her best set of dishes were bone china from Berkshire, England.

Those kind of intimate details about the people who once lived in the restored pioneer homes that comprise the Arborg Heritage Village is what makes a visit unique.

The village's six pioneer homes include family photos, much of the family's furniture, such as cabinets, tables, dishes, rugs, etc., and the family histories of the people who lived in them. "You get to feel like you know the people," said Pat Eyolfson, co-chairwoman of the Arborg Heritage Village board.

There are some large pioneer villages in Manitoba: Fort La Reine Museum & Pioneer Village in Portage la Prairie; the Mennonite Heritage Village in Steinbach; a large pioneer village at the Manitoba Agricultural Museum in Austin; a small pioneer village in Cartwright in southwestern Manitoba and others.

The Arborg Heritage Village is the newest, opening in 2007. It's essentially a Ukrainian-Icelandic mix. That includes six homes (three Icelandic, two Ukrainian and one Polish), a Ukrainian church (that had a Ukrainian-Icelandic congregation), a Ukrainian parish hall, the former Poplar Heights School (from Warren), a grist mill, a 1921 CPR caboose and a teepee.

It's a tremendous restoration job started a decade ago. No less than 20 carpenters loaned their time to bring the village back to life, in addition to several hundred other volunteers.

Some of that work included re-chinking the log siding of the Trausti Vigfusson home built in 1898. Sound easy? First, volunteer Stan Zolinski harvested more than 1,300 kilograms of clay from a swamp in mid-July, just as the pioneers would have done. It was left to dry for about a year until it became powder and was then mixed with straw and water (but not manure like the pioneers did) to make the chinking.

And volunteers couldn't just shove the chinking between logs (to keep out drafts) with a putty knife. You had to roll it up and throw it like a baseball into the openings. The chinking has to go through the logs with enough force to grab onto the log siding on the outside. "If not, it will just fall out when it dries," explained Eyolfson, who claimed to throw out her pitching arm doing it.

Restoration also included using square-headed nails like the original. Even the movement of the Vigfusson home from nearby Geysir to Arborg was done with authenticity in mind: by horse-drawn wagon.

The Sigvaldason home mentioned at the top is a classy two-storey house, with railed front porch, originally built for a government agent. The Sigvaldasons moved into the home from Vidir on a hay wagon that carried all their children and possessions.

In keeping with the circa-1910 era, volunteers stripped away seven layers of wallpaper on the Sigvaldason walls, then matched the bottom layer to get the right era. This was done with all the pioneer homes. The heritage museum board wants to turn the Sigvaldason House into a unique bed and breakfast. The village also has a rare wind-powered grist mill that used to grind farmers grain into flour. The former St. Demetrius Ukrainian Catholic Church, used by both Ukrainians and Icelanders, from the village of Bjarmi, is simply beautiful. But when the restorers got it the windows had been shot out, the walls were latticed with bullet holes, and it hadn't been used in 25 years.

Rural settings are ideal for heritage villages because land is cheap. The 12.9-acre-site for the Arborg Heritage Museum was sold by the Town of Arborg for $1. Arborg is the farm service centre for the area, including three farm-implement dealerships, making for a surprisingly active town.

The village will have four students on staff this summer. It opens after the May long weekend. Admission is $5 for adults, $4 for seniors, and $3 for children. It's closed Sundays and Mondays.

bill.redekop@freepress.mb.ca

Republished from the Winnipeg Free Press print edition May 24, 2011 A9

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