WABIGOON — A group of residents in a small community near Dryden are working together to extend the life of a 125-year-old church building, this time as a museum.
St. John’s Anglican Church, across from Wabigoon Memorial Hall at the corner of Hill Street and Highway 17, has been standing since 1898.
Sunday service only recently stopped being delivered in the small white structure, leaving it with little purpose and in danger of being shuttered and eventually — heaven forbid — torn down.
Then a group of Wabigoon folks stepped in with an idea: Why not repurpose this old building, purchased by Wabigoon’s local services board, as a museum for the unincorporated community’s history?
“We would like to keep the building in Wabigoon. We don’t want to see it get torn down,” Tracy Pakarinen said Tuesday in the church’s nave.
Pakarinen is a member of the citizens group spearheading the project to turn the old place of worship into a repository of history and an event venue.
They’re looking for monetary and artifact donations, she said, adding that artifacts could be newspaper articles, trophies, pictures or “anything about Wabigoon.”
She said some things in the building, including some pews and the organ, would remain as part of the museum.
Some of the wooden pews will likely be sold to aid in fundraising for, among other things, the roofing work the old building needs to stay in shape.
They would like to have the museum and event venue up and running by next summer, she said.
A museum is a good idea, former local services board chair Richard Wetelainen agrees.
But “what will happen with the church building is not yet determined,” he said Wednesday in a phone interview.
The most important thing, he said, “is that we are not going to lose that building.”
