Sukanen Ship Museum Offers More Than the Prairie Ship Story
The Sukanen Ship Pioneer Village and Museum presents the story of Finnish Settler Tom Sukanen . . . and a lot more. The village museum has been around for 51 years, with the Sukanen Ship moved here in the 1970s to recognize the work of this talented, determined settler building an ocean-going ship in the middle of the Prairies by hand with tools he made. Sukanen never got to try his plan to move the ship up the Saskatchewan River, float it sideways through shallow parts and sail up the Churchill River to Hudson Bay and his home of Finland. Neighbours in the Finnish communities of Lucky Lake and Macrorie reported the odd settler. Mounties took him to the insane
asylum in North Battleford where he died. Located on 40 acres, the pioneer village hosts pretty well all the businesses and institutions that would have operated in a rural Saskatchewan town of nearly 100 years ago. The streets are lined with a church, one-room school, general store, hardware store, blacksmith shop, municipal office, service station, newspaper/print shop, CNR railway station, pharmacy and carriage house. A farm barn and seven vintage houses form part of the collection that includes an 1890s ranch house, two settler shacks and a one-and-one-half storey farmhouse. A fire hall and extensive collec-
tion of fire engines and firefighter apparatus has been built over the years. A 1913 grain elevator in working condition is located on the north end of the property A line of buildings on the west side stores three large farm tractor collections — Case, Allis-Chalmers and John Deere. These are supplemented by the replica International Harvester Company dealership and machinery collection. This collection of buildings includes dozens of vintage cars and trucks with more than 200 vehi-
cles and tractors on display. A not-to-be-missed exhibit is the homestead shack where Prime Minister John Diefenbaker grew up in Northern Saskatchewan. The shack his Uncle Elmer lived in is adjacent. Diefenbaker is the only one of three Canadian prime ministers elected in Saskatchewan who was a resident of the province. Closed for the summer of 2020.
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