Here's the article:
https://www.princeedwardisland.ca/en/news/bringing-history-home
Stacy
MacInnis remembers bundling up on cold winter mornings when he was five years
old and going next door with his mother to stoke the coal stove for waiting
passengers at the Elliott family’s train station in Pleasant Valley.
Fast
forward more than 50 years – it’s a summer day and MacInnis, now 59 and his
mother gone, has moved the station to his own homestead in Burlington where the
Woodleigh Replicas once stood.
While
repairing a part of the coal room wall, he spots his grandmother’s name among
the many names carved into the tinder-dry wooden board.
“It
hit me, I felt like I was saving a piece of heritage and creating a stronger
connection with my ancestors,” MacInnis said.
MacInnis
was one of several Islanders and groups awarded with a 2016 Heritage Award for
his restoration of the 1888 station.
“I did
it as a labour of love, I didn’t expect any reward for it,” he said.
Not
every train station was a grand piece of architecture. The so-called flag
stops, like the one at Elliotts Station, were very simple structures. Like many
of its kind, when the Elliotts station was decommissioned in the 1960s, it was
moved to a local farm to take up a new life as an outbuilding. That’s the end
of the road for most buildings like this, and after fifty years as a storage
shed, the old flag stop had deteriorated to where it was barely recognizable --
ready for demolition.
But
the old Elliotts station always held a fascination for MacInnis. In 2014, he
bought it and arranged to have it moved to his property in Burlington. There he
brought it back to life, with new roof and shingles, but its original door and
windows. The Heritage Award was recognition of his efforts to restore this
small, but important example of both our railroad and architectural heritage.
The
Elliott family was a staple of Pleasant Valley in days gone by. They had a wood
mill, a grist mill, and a pond at the flag stop where the station stood. In
winter they cut large chunks of ice from their pond to package in sawdust and
ship by train to Charlottetown ice boxes in the days before electrical
refrigeration.
The
train station has two rooms, one waiting room where benches line the walls and
sliding doors into a coal storage room.
MacInnis
plans to showcase his photography and display train artifacts to make it feel
like a little museum. He has painted the rusty red shingles to their original
color.
His
mother, Cecilia MacDowell, who tended its fires all those years ago, died six
years ago at the age of 90, before MacInnis even got the idea to restore the
station.
“She
thought it was such a shame it was falling down,” he said. “She would have
laughed to see it now.”
For a full list of 2016 Heritage Awards Winners
visit the PEI Museum and Heritage Foundation(link is external)
2016 PEI Heritage Award
recipient Stacy MacInnis is pictured with His Honour, the Honourable H. Frank
Lewis, Lieutenant Governor of PEI at the recent Heritage Awards ceremony
Hi, Is the Elliott Train Station on PEI in Burlington .. I would love to be able to see this in person if it still exists. I will be coming to PEI this week. Taken me a while to research this..
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