It’s been a busy summer for Stacey Bruyere and her staff at the Kay-Nah-Chi-Wah-Nung Interpretative Centre but things aren’t going to slow down too much over the winter as work continues on the exhibits.
Bruyere said they’ve been running non-stop since the centre officially opened to the public in May.
“The advertising was minimal but the place seemed to speak for itself,” she remarked, noting the centre attracted tourists from around the world.
“I still get e-mails every day from across the world from people inquiring about us,” she added.
The main accomplishment this summer was completing the huge diorama exhibit, which depicts a dwelling along the river, complete with wigwam and a couple in a birchbark canoe.
“Everything in the exhibit is accurate, right down to the necklace she’s wearing to the grass on the riverbank to the type of kettle on the fire,” Bruyere said.
“We still have to set our text panels up,” she added. “And we ordered some fake meat for the meat rack.”
Now that the summer rush is over, Bruyere wants to concentrate on building two more exhibits on different levels inside the interpretive centre.
“It’s an exhibit of people harvesting wild rice about 100 years ago,” she noted. “Then it slowly builds into people building burial mounds about 2,000 years ago.”
The winter months also will be spent attending a lot of trade and tourist shows across the continent to promote the centre, Bruyere said. And one of their artifacts–a painting of a village scene on birchbark–is being sent to the Canadian Conservation Institute in Ottawa to be cleaned, moisturized, and brightened up a bit.
“It sounds like an easy process but it’s about two years’ work,” Bruyere said.
Meanwhile, the centre remain opens to the public Wednesday to Sunday from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. This includes the centre’s restaurant, which Bruyere said has been a really big hit, especially the Sunday buffet.
The interpretive centre also has some banquet and meeting facilities Bruyere is hopeful to rent out in the next few months. But she’s also grateful for the chance to catch her breath as things settle down.
“We’ll still cater to school groups and visitors [but] it’s basically in this time we get organized,” she remarked.
Fort Frances Times
Local News from Across the Rainy River District
