TORRINGTON, Alta. – For a small-town project that set out to bait a few tourists as they sped by, the Torrington Gopher Hole museum has lured more than its share of international publicity.
The museum featuring 54 stuffed gophers posed in 31 scenes representing Torrington businesses opened June 8 after months of flurried activity by volunteers building displays, sewing costumes and painting sets.
The museum drew attention before the first gopher was ever mounted when the animal rights group, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, protested last summer. The Washington, D.C.-based group criticized the village folk for using animals as entertainment and killing them so they could be stuffed and displayed in the museum.
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As far as tourism committee members Diane Kurta and Sheila Chimke can see, PETA’s protests are being scoffed at by supporters from all over the world. Their phones have been ringing steadily with support for defying the protesters.
“We’ve had calls from all over congratulating us for going ahead and not listening to PETA,” said Chimke.
Calls have come from the United States, Canada, Germany, France and England giving the central Alberta village of 177 people hope that tourists will stop and inject a few dollars into the community.
Not endangered
Kurta, who helped sew gopher costumes and is a chair of the tourism committee, said they’ve explained to callers the rodents are not an endangered species and are so much a part of prairie life, that Torrington made a gopher its mascot.
“We told them there’s more killed on the highway in an hour than there were killed here,” she said.
The museum is a converted grain elevator office building and an old teacher residence joined together to house the displays and a small gift shop.
Two taxidermists were hired to prepare the gophers and a volunteer artist made the vignettes. Volunteer seamstresses fitted the oddly shaped rodents with clothes.
To get the project going, grants totaling $17,000 were received from the province and federal governments.
As far as the community is concerned it’s money well spent. MLA Carol Haley told them during the museum’s opening ceremonies, “never has a small grant received so much attention.”
