Summer has officially begun at the Hanna Museum! In the first week alone we’ve had visitors from Quebec, Germany, and even San Francisco stopping by. Our three local student tour guides are happy to take visitors through the time portal and explore Hanna and areas’ history.
This week we are featuring…wait…I hear the phones ringing. Hello? Oh yes, this is the Operator. How may I direct your call? The telephone office? You want to know a bit about the building? What a coincidence! That is the building we are featuring in this week’s column. In 1929 the telephone office was built. We’ve preserved the telephone building for the future. This building stood on 2nd Ave, west of the Royal Bank corner, and served as the telephone exchange until 1960. After it was used for a number of years by the Health Unit. In 1971 the Royal Bank purchased the land for its new structure, and donated the building to the Hanna and District Historical Society.
The moving of the building was an interesting experience. It was necessary to remove the bricks then to clean them before resetting them on the building. Unfortunately, many bricks were discovered to be unusable so some new ones had to bought. The colour could not be matched so you will notice the bottom part of the building is a different shade. That’s the outside of the building, but if you want to learn some more about the inside, you’ll have to stop by for a tour.
Not only does the museum offer its visitors a peek into the oddities and uniqueness of Hanna’s history, we have a host of other events taking place on our grounds throughout the summer. Dr. Wilkins will be stopping by to help up revamp the hospital, and on July 19th the reading program will be day-tripping to our grounds. In just over a month we will once again be hosting the Hanna and District Bench Fair. There will be a wide variety of activities for children of all ages, as well as bench fair items displayed throughout our main buildings. Watch this column for more details as we get closer to the date.
Darn, there’s that phone ringing again, but before I go I encourage you to pop on over to learn more about this fabulous Hanna treasure. Until next week, make history!
Author:
Ashlyn McCormick