The contest provides financial support for community landmarks
By Diego Flammini
Staff Writer
Farms.com
The grain elevators at the Canadian Grain Elevator Discovery Centre (CGED) in Nanton, Alta. are currently one of the top three vote getters in the Next Great Save contest.
Voting in the contest, which the National Trust for Canada administers, started on April 18. In total, the contest awards $65,000 to communities to help with local landmark maintenance and preservation.
The winner receives $50,000, second place gets $10,000 and the third-place prize is $5,000.
As of April 25, the grain elevators are in third place with 9,162 votes.
“We were the underdogs for a while and (on April 24) we moved up to third place and we’re really excited about that,” Leo Wieser, president of the CGED, told Farms.com. “But we can’t sit back now. We’re in this for the win, we need all the help we can get, and we encourage anyone to vote for us once a day, wherever they are in the world.”
Ahead of the grain elevators is Our Lady of Mercy Heritage Church in Aguathuna, Nfld., with 10,212 votes. Currently sitting in first place is the LaSalle Theatre in Kirkland Lake, Ont., with 10,644 votes.
Another Alberta landmark, the Roxy Theatre in Coleman, currently sits in fourth place with 8,300 votes.
In total, 12 sites are finalists in the contest.
Each is deserving of the top prize, Wieser says, but the grain elevators especially.
“We lose up to 80 wooden grain elevators in Canada each year,” he said. “In 1933, Alberta had more than 1,700 grain elevators. Today there’s about 80. And of those 80, maybe 10 have a historical society working to save them while the others are deteriorating very rapidly.”
Any winnings would be used to restore the look of the elevators and conduct other activities.
“We need to stabilize the structure and do work on the outside of the Alberta Wheat Pool elevator, it’s in desperate need of structural engineering,” Wieser says. “They really need paint too, and the paint acts as protective layer for the elevators.”
Anyone can vote for their favourite landmark until May 6, with the winners being announced on May 7.
Voting is a two-step process, and voters will be asked to verify their email addresses to ensure the votes count.