Boissevain resident Stan Peck was nominated for Volunteer of the Year award for this year's Tribute to Tourism Awards.  Stan and his wife Sharon attended the Awards Gala with Boissevain-Morton executive assistant Melissa Perkins who nominated Peck for this prestigious award.

For the past two plus years both Stan and Sharon have been working on restoring the train collection of the late Earl Patterson who had his collection stored at the Boissevain Wildlife Museum.  This was no easy task, but for Stan it was a labor of love.  He was given his first train set in 1967 by his parents when he was 12 years old.

It wasn't that long ago that he had his own train collection displayed in the building that stands just west of the wildlife museum, alongside Patterson's collection and fellow Boissevain collector, Jake Remple.

When the Pecks moved from Winnipeg to Boissevain eight years ago, Stan was invited to add his collection to that building.  However, the building experienced water damage and the trains sets had to be moved to the Wildlife Museum just across the parking lot, but there wasn't enough room for the three sets. Stan was asked to take apart Earl Patterson's collection to move it to its own separate room in the wildlife museum.

At first the museum asked Stan to just reconstruct the train set and the display that goes with it.  But then they asked if he could get the trains running, and that took longer than he could have imagined.

"That was a big job," shares Stan. "Tracks were cut and had to be put back together and the building floor is at a different level and so each leg had to be levelled different for it to run properly.  So, it took about almost 2 years to get it running right."

Three tracks are in operation with three trains on separate tracks, and each building is built by hand by Earl Patterson.  Stone buildings were made with actual stones.  The display showcases pioneering days and some iconic sites in southwestern Manitoba, but also in Manitoba as a whole, such as the Flin Flon mine and the Churchill port.

"This is pretty old," adds Stan. "Earl had this for years and the paint was showing its age, and so Sharon, the artist she is, she came, and she spent lots of hours painting and cleaning and getting things ready for the show, and you have to give her a big bouquet for spending almost 2 years here!"

"It took a lot of work," says Sharon.  "The colors had been getting so faded.  It just really needed brightening up. So, we scrubbed everything first and then repainted.  I still have quite a bit left to do but you can only do so much in one winter!"

Please listen to more with both Stan and Sharon below as they share more on the Patterson train exhibition.

 Being nominated Volunteer of the Year for the 2024 Tourism Awards, Stan says he was so pleased but didn't know what to think!

"It was an honor because I didn't feel like it was any work at all," shares Stan. "The whole thing was just having fun with something I like!  I had no idea we would be going to a Gala.  I had never been to a Gala, and I asked Sharon what do I wear? What is it?  But the whole experience of being nominated and going to the Gala was just so very cool!"