The Castor & District Museum building was originally Castor’s Canadian Pacific Railway station. It houses artifacts documenting the settlement and growth of Castor and District from its earliest beginnings.
Two stained glass windows, reputed to have been rescued from Chicago Stock-Exchange during the Great Chicago Fire of 1871, distinguished the lobby. It also houses an extensive collection of photographs of people and events from Castor’s earliest years. If you want to sit and read the stories of people who lived in Castor, or the memoirs of local men who served in the armed forces from the Boer War to the Korean War, take a seat and learn of their experiences. Perhaps one of your ancestors is in these pages.
To the right you can find exhibits portraying life as it would have been on a visit to the hairdressers, the Castor hospital and even the dentist’s office in days gone by. You can also sample early issues of The Castor Advance, books and magazines, or look at some of the amazing devices, which brought music and entertainment to lonely homesteads and farms. Also in this section you can find features from Castor’s early landmark buildings, most of which were lost to fires. You can also find some examples of amazing pioneer outdoor wear.
To the left of the lobby you can view ladies’ fashions from the early 1900’s to the 1930’s and wonder at the care that it must have taken to keep such clothing clean and fresh when all washing was done by hand with soap in a tub. On the other hand, you can marvel at the delicate elegance of these stylish outfits. In this exhibit you can also find examples of original military uniforms donated by local people who served in various branches of the armed services.
In the stairwell, sports uniforms and trophies show how sports teams lent prestige to prairie towns like Castor and provided a major source of entertainment. Fiery local rivalries flourished in ball, curling and most of all, hockey. The upstairs shows typical scenes from a fairly well-to-do Castor house around 1915 to 1920, with a complete kitchen, dining room, sitting room and bedroom fully furnished with period items donated by local families.