There are more museum buildings than residents in Isabella, Man.
The Preserving the Past for Future Museum comprises three houses, a store, a barn and a workshop in the four resident village.
Making sure the 103-year-old community’s heyday is not forgotten has been a major preoccupation for volunteer Bernice Still for 25 years.
She has catalogued cemeteries, drawn house plans and collected artifacts, such as china plates, games and farm newspapers.
“I hated to see that disappear,” said Still, who has gathered photographs and information on 400 farm and rural houses in Birtle, Hamiota and Virden and the Rural Municipality of Miniota.
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“Some are beautiful, some small, but all were homes,” said Still, who was raised on the farm, married a farmer and drove a school bus.
She ran the store until it became unprofitable and closed in 1995. She also operated the post office for more than 29 years until 1999.
Still meticulously recorded each home with photographs, hand-drawn floor plans and information she collected from interviews with local residents.
Her data is the only source of information on many of them, some of which have been torn down.
Still has gathered family data in local history books such as Rural Reflections and keeps track of births and deaths in the area.
She has also trans-cribed many of the cemeteries in the Birtle area, including Birtle, Arrow River, Birdtail Sioux, Bissett Willow Tree, Blenheim and Miniota, and has preserved and promoted family and community histories.
Happy to keep busy, she takes the work at her own pace.
“If I don’t feel like working one day, I put it off until the next day,” she said.
She started the Isabella museum with one room in a house in 1984. Another family donated a three-storey, nine room house, which Still prepared for room displays by 1994.
When the store closed, she began filling it with articles, fixed the attic for more room and put in stairs. In 1997, she took over her son’s house for more display space.
She maintains the museum, which relies on an annual cold plate supper fundraiser.
The museum includes special displays on the wars, school and the Isabella Women’s Institute, for which she serves as president.
The former telephone operator rigged up phone connections between the buildings so the schoolchildren who flock here on tours can call one another on the antique switchboard.
One of the more unusual artifacts is a 1900-era game called Fort, a kind of early pinball machine with clay balls.
A friendship quilt containing the names of men from Isabella who served in the Second World War is also a local treasure.
She haunts flea markets and auction sales looking for bits to match her sets, such as the china canisters she found.
Still is unsure of the value of the collection, saying the artifacts’ values are subjective.
“It depends on what value people put on them,” she said. “I think they’re all really valuable, coming from our area and representing people’s lives.”
For her heritage efforts, she received the Ruth Tester award from the Manitoba Genealogical Society in 2008.
“There’s an awful lot of people working in the background and who do a lot of work and haven’t been recognized,” said Jack Dodds of the society’s southwest branch, who nominated her for the award.
“What she does for the branch is really great but what she does for her community is even more so.”
He said Isabella isofficially a ghost town, but the community lives on through Still’s tireless commitment to preserving its heritage.
“It’s been a very vibrant community,” he said.
“People don’t see the character of the community these days without people like Bernice who are able to show the old houses and plans.”
Dodds, who grew up in nearby Birtle, said he can remember people gathering in Isabella every second Friday night for some of the best dances in the region.
