It's not every day that you get to celebrate the founding of your museum. On Monday, April 10th we celebrated the 50th Anniversary of our founding. You see, Paul Martin who was an Alderman of the City of Transcona, desired to create a museum to provide an educational experience for the community and as a Canada Centennial project. He made a motion to the Transcona City Council on April 10, 1967 for a community museum. One week later on April 17, 1967, the motion was approved to create a museum ‘in principle’. Alderman Paul Martin proposed that the museum be housed in the new expansion in the basement of the Transcona Library. A meeting between Mayor Harry Fuller and the Transcona Public Library Board led to space allocation for the museum in the library basement.
The original members of the board were:
These individuals worked hard to get the museum established, start collecting artifacts and preparing the space for the museum. That is where we got our start. The museum didn't open to the public until October of 1968. In the years that followed the Transcona Museum moved from the basement of the library to the basement of the Roland Michener Arena to our current location at 141 Regent Avenue West. Our current home was first built as the Bank of Toronto in 1925, and later became the Transcona Municipal office.
Our museum would not have succeeded if it hadn't been for all the volunteers, board members, staff members, and members! We want to thank you all for all the work you did over the years.
To celebrate we held a 50th Anniversary Event at the museum on Monday, April 10th. That night we unveiled our new exhibitions for 2017-2018, celebrated our founding and unveiled our new logo. That night we were honoured to have the sons of the last remaining original board member attend the event in honour of their mother, Edna Perry. Our Masters of Ceremonies was Peter Martin our current President of the Board and the son of our founder, Paul Martin.
Our brand new logo!
We have a busy, exciting year planned for 2017. Not only do we celebrate Canada 150 but our own 50th. We are planning the Transcona Short Film Festival as our Canada 150 project (more to come on that soon), the Transcona Amazing Race for Canada Day and so much more. It's going to be a great year!