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Calder School takes shape in Red Deer

Sunnybrook Farm Museum’s latest addition

For an 86-year-old building, Calder School has never looked better.

A one-room school house from east of Innisfail, relocated to the south end of Sunnybrook Farm Museum, has been preserved and improved.

The school was lifted onto its foundation about a year ago. Now it has a downstairs commercial kitchen and spacious meeting room that can seat about 75. Museum administration offices will move in upstairs next month next to the the school room that will be furnished with historic exhibits to tell the story of the one-room school house.

“In the end the final price tag was a hair over $600,000. That’s the biggest project we’ve ever undertaken,” said museum executive director Ian Warwick.

The project received $275,000 from the province, $50,000 each from Red Deer City and Red Deer County, and was also supported by the estate of Vladimir (Laddie) Novak who left $185,000 to the museum.

Shunda Construction were the project builders.

Museum programs are being developed for school groups to visit Calder School with a grand opening next spring, and two community groups already meet regularly downstairs.

“We’ve always struggled with event space. This is our first real building that has event space that’s open year round and has this beautiful commercial kitchen built in. We think there will be a lot of opportunities for people to use it. It’s really affordable for people to use it on a long-term basis.

The new south end 65-vehicle parking lot will soon be finished with crushed gravel.

When administration moves into Calder School, it will leave room for a charity to move into the 1941 farm house where administration currently resides.

“It’s such a piece of history. We’re eventually going to do some restoration work on this house and make it an exhibition building to be part of the museum. But it takes time to do that.”

Sunnybrook Farm Museum, located at 4701 30th St. on 10 acres donated by Norman and Iva Bower in 1988, has about 10 buildings, big and small, filled with farm artifacts.

Warwick said last year a pilot program was started for repairing antique tractors.

“A couple of new volunteers came in with a lot of experience with antique tractors so we started a new maintenance program where we’ll bring in someone’s tractor and do maintenance work on it. Dealers won’t work on these old tractors.”



szielinski@reddeeradvocate.com

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