Long overdue

Town council has seen the light and authorized Community Services manager George Bell to seek out funding to renovate the Fort Frances Museum.
It’s about time.
The condition of the museum (housed in a century-old building), and the resulting impact on its collection, has been a big concern for more than 10 years. In fact, a major feasibility study was undertaken back in the early 1990s to draw up different options on how to fix the problem.
That study—footed by taxpayers—has been gathering dust ever since.
Fortunately, the mood around the council table seems to have shifted, if comments made at Monday night’s regular meeting are any indication. And there’s certainly no more time to waste. As Coun. Struchan Gilson put it, “If we don’t do anything at this time, we won’t have a museum because the exhibits will be shot.”
For too long, the Fort Frances Museum has been shunted to the backburner when it comes to municipal priorities. But while renovations won’t be cheap, boarding up the doors and windows would be a far greater price to pay.
A museum should be the centrepiece of any town—both as a place to preserve a community’s past for future generations to enjoy and to give passing tourists a reason to stop. It should be treated like a treasured asset.
We’ve already lost Fort St. Pierre and the Lookout Tower at Pither’s Point as tourist attractions because previous town councils allowed them to decay beyond repair.
We must not allow the same thing to happen to our museum.