M E T A L M A N 9

M E T A L M A N 9

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July 8, 2024 Discovery: The St. Joseph Museum

July 8, 2024 Discovery: The St. Joseph Museum

July 8, 2024 Discovery: The St. Joseph Museum Research is an ongoing pursuit. Today, with friends, I attended the St Joseph Museum which is located in St Joseph, Manitoba. St Joseph is one hours’ drive south of Winnipeg just off of Highway 75. When you get to Letellier, turn and head 4 miles west on Hwy 201. The museum is the first thing you’ll see when you get to the town. It is a hidden gem!!! It houses a main reception hall that holds some exhibits, a gift shop and offices. On the grounds near the main hall are about five new tractor storage sheds or buildings that house an incredible array of antique and some older farm equipment. The sugar beet industry exhibit shed is packed full of local equipment from when the Red River Valley was home to an annual multimillion dollar sugar industry. There is a shed full of vintage stationary engines that came to the Red River Valley from all around the world. Incredible! There is a shed packed full of antique tractors too. Oh… and did I mention that on the other side of the street from the reception hall and sheds is an entire antique village complete with a one room school, a church, a grocery store, homes from the pioneer era and more. And… the individual buildings are well stocked with hundreds if not thousands of daily living artifacts. Some buildings have a second floor and yes, it’s all open for you to explore. It is in the Blacksmith’s Shop or the building next to it that I recognized the same type of horse tack and buckles that I had just recently cleaned and restored. One discovery was the realization that a 10 inches long - 6 loop chain that I had found in a local farm field is a part of a horse’s bridle. See: October 19, 2023 Permission granted and the hunt continues . Photos # 14 & 17. In one of the homes, I suddenly realized that a thick and heavy 1 lb. handle that I had found years ago is actually the handle for a clothes iron. You know, the heavy and thick irons that have a point at one or at both ends. I knew that my artifact was a handle but without visually seeing one just like it, here at the St. Joseph Museum, I would never have guessed what it belonged to. Research comes in many ways and formats. It’s not always by sitting in a library or in the archives somewhere in a quiet room. Research and discovery is also by going out and visiting museums like this one, especially one that is so well stocked with artifacts. I tend to be a visual person by nature and by taking the time to walk around and see these places, I have more than once been able to link a metal detecting find with an item's intended purpose or simply recognize what this find is and its use. The pottery sherds from the June 1 and 9, 2024 post would have gone unnoticed had it not been for a visit to the Manitoba Museum back in March of this year. See: June 1 and 9, 2024 – Precontact Pottery Found . I can only encourage you to take the time and go out and discover history at this, the St. Joseph Museum or at any of the many museums around the province. See: March 1, 2024 - Museums as a Research Tool . Be it in Winnipeg or Gimli or Winkler or St George or Steinbach or here in St Joseph… history and discovery awaits you. Roger Reference: http://www.mhs.mb.ca/docs/sites/stjosephmuseum.shtml

July 20, 2024 The Old # 1 Highway. 1932. And a stop at Falcon Lake Beach.

July 20, 2024 The Old # 1 Highway. 1932. And a stop at Falcon Lake Beach.

July 20, 2024 The Old # 1 Highway. 1932. And a stop at Falcon Lake Beach. We are on the Old # 1 Highway, just a few dozen kilometers into Ontario from Manitoba, on the opposite side (North side) of the turn off to 673 highway. The old highway from Winnipeg to Kenora was officially opened with great fanfare on June 4th, 1932. That’s 92 years ago. In 1950, construction began again to modernize and to streamline the old road to the highway that we presently use today. Construction, in its entirety, on the present TransCanada Highway ended in 1962 when Prime Minister John Diefenbaker opened the highway. A postage stamp was issued for the occasion. That was 62 years ago. And, as you read this post, stage one of a three stage construction project has already started: to four lane the TransCanada all the way from the Manitoba border to Kenora. On numerous vacation trips to Kenora, I’d noticed remnants of the old 1932 road. They veer north, off from the main highway and disappear into the woods. Other parts run alongside the newer road. See the first YouTube video below. In fact, you can see trees and grasses and flowers growing out of the old roadbed. And as a bonus, Google satellite maps actually show these road remnants quite well. So today, my good friend and fellow detectorist Monty and I headed out to metal detect along these deserted stretches of roadway. Our first stop on this road trip was for a bit of detecting on Falcon Lake Beach. It is going to be a hot and humid day. So we thought to stop at the beach both before it gets too hot and before the crowd builds. It is Saturday after all and already there are people at the beach at 9:00 AM. The first set of pictures is Falcon Lake Beach along with our beach finds. Finds were mainly pull tabs and more pull tabs including an old ring type pull. Zing cola anyone? They all ring up on my metal detector, the same as nickels and as gold or silver rings so you’re compelled to dig them up, just in case. It’s the same with bottle caps. If nothing else, it cleans up the beach. The one nickel that I did find dates 1975. The Old Vienna bottle cap is probably just as old as that nickel. Beaches always yield bolts and screws and bits of wire for some strange reason. And yes, that is a false finger nail. Monty fared much better finding a bit of “Bling”, a brooch with multiple stones, a silver looking ring and five actual coins. Yeah Monty!!! The second set of pictures are that of the old #1 highway and associated finds. Yes, lots and lots of bottle caps. They come with the era. The find if the day for me had to be a pristine, unbroken and unchipped, “Stubby” beer bottle. Brewers stopped using these in Canada in 1986. My very first along the old highway find was a piece of a car’s name, most likely from a Plymouth Reliant. Other car parts found were a valve stem cover, a wheel lug nut, a spark plug cable and a frame bracket. The galvanized brackets were “junk drops” in the woods. The bullet casing is a 30-30 and both shotgun casings are 12 gauge. Someone took the time to fire a shotgun at a pop can. Have a close look and you can see the pellet holes. I’m a little surprised to find these so close to a main highway. Someone also had lunch there… remember the old style meat or pate chubs… they used to have a metal ring to seal the ends. Found one! It was the heat and humidity and an impending thunderstorm that ended the day for us. Yes, the bugs were bad enough but we had applied lots of bug spray. Although no amount of bug spray had prepared me for what happened when I started to dig into a well concealed ant nest. Whatever registered as a ring or a nickel on my metal detector is still in the ant nest. I’ll happily assume it was just another old style ring pull. There is another long stretch of abandoned highway along which to metal detect but considering the heat, we decided to call it a day. We can always come back in the fall when it’s cooler and the bugs are gone. All and all, we really didn’t know what to expect in the way of finds, but that my friends is the fun of metal detecting in wayward places and that is what we call an adventure. Roger Reference: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IL_4wDDQcdw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gVhHHcvNoFA https://www.google.ca/maps/@49.7326077,- 95.0661037,1528m/data=!3m1!1e3?entry=ttu

July 25, 2024 An Early Stop on St. Malo Beach

July 25, 2024 An Early Stop on St. Malo Beach

July 25, 2024 An Early Stop on St. Malo Beach By early, I mean that I got there at 7:30 AM. The beauty of that early hour is that I have the entire beach to myself, at least for a little while. I had not been back to metal detecting on St. Malo Beach for 2 years plus. See: May 16, 2022 - St. Malo’s Overflow Beach . I don't want to sound negative on any of my posts but: from a public beach point of view St. Malo is not great. Yes, it’s one of the beaches that is closest to Winnipeg and it serves a large extended southern community but after going to Falcon Lake Beach and Winnipeg Beach and Gimli, well I’d rather drive an extra half hour and spend time on a cleaner and sandier beach. A large part of the south end of the beach in St. Malo has about an inch or less of gravelly and dusty sand. One large spot bears pure clay. The sand contains a lot of clay and small rocks. I think it all comes out of a local sand pit where the larger stones have been screened out. Beneath this thin layer of rough sand is clay. Not great for kids to dig in compared to the one or two feet of pure silica sand at the other mentioned locations. Even the water showed a plume of suspended soil all along the water’s edge. And don’t get me going about the amount of Canada Geese poop lying about. I don’t have a solution to offer other than more resources need to be spent to bring this important beach back up to par. Sorry but I just had to vent! I’ve spent numerous days here as a young child with my parents, either camping or on a day trip and I certainly do not remember the beach in this way. From a detecting point of view, it’s as good as any other beach in Manitoba. Beach detecting and the odds of finding lost coins and jewelry and interesting items is directly related to the numbers of people going to the beach. Some detectorists are “Beach Detectorists” only and some seem to do rather well in finding valuables. One thing is certain, digging is at its easiest and there’s less expectation to properly cover or refill your holes. Personally, I prefer a wide open farm field for the same reasons. But I am always very careful when digging in a public park or school yard. A year or two ago, two young fellows put a shovel to a school yard somewhere here in Winnipeg and literally dug and tore up the grounds. Reverberations from the actions of these two are still making the rounds and permissions have been denied because of this one incident. Always fill your holes, leave the space in the same way that you found it, take out any garbage that you find or dig up, and get permission when you’re on private property. These are but some of the key Code of Conduct and Ethics followed by metal detectorists everywhere. In total, I spent about 4 hours metal detecting on the beach. It’s been a while since I’ve detected a beach but I’d say that my finds are fairly typical. Pull tabs and more pull tabs. 21 in all. Bottle caps ring up the same as a nickel so… add 6. The two toys were found buried under the sand; right at the water's edge. The car is a 1986 Mattel Hot Wheels, the Steam Roller is more recent... made in China. The hair barrette is copper and rang up nice and loud. The price of the day has to be the “Bling” ring. One always hopes for gold or silver but this was great fun nonetheless. I did leave the beach a little cleaner than how I found it. Roger Reference: https://bonjourmanitoba.com/en/regions/st-malo/ h t t p : / / c a n a d i a n m e t a l d e t e c t i n g . c a / c a n a d i a n - m e t a l - d e t e c t i n g - c o d e - o f - ethics/