Grain elevators in Nanton receive Provincial Historic Resources designation

“It’s a very big, exciting ball of wax that we’re just starting to work through.”

A video of the historic designation being announced can be viewed below.

There used to be seven elevators in total at the Nanton site, all set up along the former Canadian Pacific (CP) Railway Macleod branch line, roughly 500 metres from the historic site of the CP Rail station.

Now, only three elevators remain, with the last of the structures decommissioned in 2022. Two are twin structures and one stands on its own.

Wieser said the ‘orange elevator’, which stands on its own, serves as the Canadian Grain Elevator Discovery Centre’s museum.

He remarked, “we are the only elevator, actually that I know of in Western Canada, that is cut into the grain bins, so you can actually go inside a grain bin and look up, look down and see what it would have looked like inside the grain bin.”

Wieser said that elevator could also be the site of a future events centre, to host talks, concerts and movie nights during the winter months. 2022 marks the structure’s 93^rd anniversary.

He added that the structure is “our flexi-space that we’re working with. We’re maintaining the outside; we’re maintaining the integrity of the original elevator.”

Canadian Grain Elevator Discovery Centre president Leo Wieser and MLA Roger Reid celebrated the Nanton Elevators being declared an Alberta Provincial Historic Resource on April 9th. Photograph by Lorraine Hjalte at Willow Creek Studio & Boutique.

The green twin structures celebrate their 95^th anniversary in 2022.

Wieser said plans are in the works to get them to ‘near-operating condition’ to showcase how a grain operator works and serve as an ‘artifact’ for the popular tourist site.

PRESERVING HISTORY

Wieser said preserving the history of the structures is so important.

He said, “we’ve lost so many buildings and especially an agricultural-industrial building, it’s very rare to see any of that kind of stuff remaining, so the keeping of these buildings is so very important to our community because it reminds of where we’ve come from, of where we’ve been and it also gives us a projection to what we’re going to be like in the future.”

“If we honour the past by maintaining the buildings or adaptive re-use of the buildings, this really makes a space where we’re more whole.”

Wieser added that they receive many guests that do not know what exactly a grain elevator is and where and how grain was handled.

“It’s really an important link to who we were and who we’re going to be.”

Wieser said there have been talks of rebuilding the historic CP Rail station as well.

“This was really a centre of society and having the station come back, it kind of gives a nod to this is where immigrants came into our area to come and create new lives, this is where our young people went off to war in World War One and World War Two.”

GOING INTO THE FUTURE

He said the goal of the museum team is to be a “centre of cultural engagement” and provide an interactive experience for guests.

“Museums have this idea that they’re stuffy and old. We’re trying to be very interactive.”

The twin structures lit in the colours of the Ukrainian at night. (Photo supplied by Leo Wieser)

Some of the initiatives undertaken by the Discovery Centre are projecting movies on the side of the larger stand-alone orange elevator and digitizing the structures.

“We’re trying to take them into a virtual reality and we did some early experiments with putting them in VR Chat, so that you could actually go into a VR headset and you could walk around and talk to other people within our grain elevator environment…then it’s not just a local thing, it takes it out to the world. Anybody with a headset and access to internet cam go and walk through our elevators.”

Wieser said they have served as a satellite venue for the Calgary Animated Objects Society.

“During COVID, we’ve been doing drive-in puppet films – Heather Henson’s [Handmade] Puppet Dreams, we had David Bowie in Labyrinth.”

A film being projected onto the grain elevator wall. (Photo supplied by Leo Wieser)

There are also plans to host music concerts later this spring, as well as opera performances.

Wieser said, “it’s an amazing experience just to be there in the presence of these buildings and there is so much history and just coolness there.”

“We have a museum component. Yes, we’re trying to be open all summer this year, but the combination of all that we’re doing kind of creates the experience of what the Nanton elevators is going to be.”

More information is available at the Canadian Grain Elevator Discovery Centre website as well as the centre’s Facebook page.

by Justin Goulet

Grain elevators in Nanton receive Provincial Historic Resources designation

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