If the folks of the Kinosayo Museum have anything to do with it (and it turns out that they do), the landmark UGG grain elevator in Kinuso will stand tall for another 25 years.
Museum curator Jennifer Churchill has spent the better part of a year putting together a deal that will see the ownership of the elevator turned over to the museum, while CN Rail renews a 25-year lease on the land where it stands.
For its part, the museum has to reshingle the roof (among other things), in a fashion that is in keeping with the history of the building. In this case, that means cedar shake shingles on all eight or so roof elements, or 3,600 square feet of shakes.
Nowadays, the trains don’t stop in Kinuso. But, they did for over 50 years. When the elevator was completed in 1951, Kinuso was a bustling little farm community and grain growers from all over the region brought their crops to the giant wooden structure to be sorted, stored and ultimately paid out to trains and trucks on route to other communities.
Many people have seen grain elevators from the outside, but may not know just what goes on inside them.
Inside the huge, windowless structures (also known as sentinels), a host of old-world technology and mechanics made the work of sorting and storing crops easy, by the standards of the day.
Trucks would drive up a ramp into the elevator, where the haul is weighed and inspected. The grain is then dumped through a grate on the ground level into a pit, well below ground level. From there, it is hoisted either by a mechanical or electric lift, to the top of the elevator, nearly 100 feet up.
By using a series of wooden levers, the operator can choose from 27 bins arranged in a semi-circle, depositing the harvested grain where they like. There, it is stored until it is to be delivered to either train or truck. Again, the operator can choose the storage bin, emptying it from the bottom, into the waiting transport vehicle.
By the early 1970’s, there were only a few farmers raising grain crops in the area. Brothers Sloco and Zanny McRee were two of them.
When United Grain Growers decided they no longer wanted the elevator in 1974, the brothers purchased it to store their own grain.
Sloco and Zanny took care of the elevator for nearly 35 years, and even used it up until a couple years ago, but maintenance of the building eventually became too much for the brothers to bear.
“At the time, the McRee brothers could not receive any substantial aid from the government, because they did not own the land the elevator was on,” said Jennifer Churchill, curator for the Kinosayo Museum. “Neither did they have a long-term lease from CN, which is a requirement for government funding.”
Jobs that might be easy on a normal building, such as replacing shingles becomes hugely expensive, and dangerous, when scaled up by orders of magnitude such as on a building of this size. “Replacing the shingles, as you can imagine, is very expensive,” said Churchill. “But if we did not replace them within the year, the future of the elevator would be uncertain.”
The brothers wisely decided to turn ownership of the building over to the museum.
The museum, in turn, used its charms to renew the CN lease and thereby qualify for Heritage Resource funding to pay for the roof and save the heritage building that is so much a part of Kinuso history. Finally, the M.D. of Big Lakes helped the museum make the lease payment.
Today, most farms in the area concentrate on growing hay. So, why keep an old, possibly dangerous and rarely used elevator around anyway? The elevator is the last in Alberta with the original UGG logo, and it is an important landmark.
“It’s a symbol for the community and the lifestyles of those who live in it,” said Churchill. “Grandparents and great grandparents, many of which still have relatives living in the area, see the elevator as a symbol of progress. Now, true farmers in the area are few and far between and the family farm is now too endangered. Many locals see it as a symbol of who we are, as people from Kinuso and as rural Canadians.” So then, the giant building is spared the indignity of being pulled down and bulldozed, or worse, being neglected until it falls down.
The museum has committed itself to a big job. After the cedar shingles are in place, they then need to repaint the building; no small task either. “It’s all lead paint, which will make the clean up tricky,” said Churchill. “And, along the way, siding will need repair and replacement.”
But the building has survived much already. It has withstood more than 55 northern Alberta winters and even vandals’ fire in the operator’s room, Sloco McRee told us.
“About four years ago, some kids got into the operator’s room,” he said, referring to the office, a separate, but close building. “They were drinking, and decided to light the room on fire. Luckily, we have a quick fire crew in town. It could have been very much worse.”
Thanks to the McRee brothers, the Kinosayo Museum, CN and the province, the village of Kinuso can look forward to at least another quarter century of the landmark sentinel as it surveys the surrounding landscape.

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