History is made up of stories, each one a unique insight into a past life.
Community members in Carlyle have been, for 40 years, working together to accumulate these histories and make them available for everyone to enjoy through the creation and expansion of the Rusty Relics Museum.
In 1973 a group of individuals set to work investigating the potential of a museum in Carlyle. Interviewing various community members and collecting artifacts the group was able to open a summer museum in the Legion Hut. They would set this up each year, but in 1976 an opportunity presented itself, which the museum executive were excited by; the Canadian National Railway station was put up for tender with Rusty Relics able to purchase the building. The Town of Carlyle in turn gave the museum a generous gift in the form of a small plot of land for the newly acquired building to be placed.
Though officially opened in 1980 the museum has been in progress since the early 1970s and continues to grow today with new additions including a bunk house, which is expected to open in the next few years following restoration.
Recent projects also includes computer cataloging the entire collection within the museum, which totals nearly 10,000 items from wrenches to photographs to clothing to tractors. This has been a huge task that has been undertaken, but one of the curators, Lauren Hume, explains that it is well worth the effort.
Rusty Relics maintain a collection that exemplifies life in the prairies creating an atmosphere strengthened by the authentic buildings set up in a fashion to truly show how people lived in the early 1900s.
The museum is an important feature, in an ever changing world for the southeast because of this.
"Well I think it plays a role to try and preserve our past and to give us a connection to what went on before and what's happened," Hume explained. "And I think preserving things that are important right now for the future, because sometimes we don't think of things from, like all of a sudden we realize that children don't know what a rotary dial telephone is or what a record is as opposed to a CD or downloading your music onto files. Things change so rapidly and preserving some of these things has become important."
Some interesting items that the museum has includes the very first vacuum to have been brought to Carlyle by the Ramsey family, designer dresses from the 1920s, and multiple buildings related to the railroads which were once an integral part of the town.
On Aug. 26, to celebrate their 40th Anniversary, Rusty Relics will be holding coffee and cake between 2 p.m. and 4 p.m. as a way to thank their donors and encourage museum visits in the future.
Museum executives hope that Carlyle and the surrounding communities will continue to enjoy the museum as it epitomizes what life was once like on the prairies, giving youth a look at the past while allowing others to reminisce.
