Settlers, Rails & Trails

This town’s community-run, non-profit museum is home to the Canadian Flag Collection

- Shayne Campbell

As I pull up to the small post office here in Argyle, Man., to get my mail, our friendly postmistress greets me. Along with my personal letters, she tells me that the museum has also received two packages, and smiling, inquires where these two are from. With a shared sense of local pride, I reply that one comes from a private collector in Ontario and the other from a small town in British Columbia. You see, over the last decade, our local museum has been receiving flags from across the country and even from some of Canada’s embassies around the globe. With more than 1,300 flags in our permanent holdings, I believe that our collection is the second largest in the country, behind only that of the Canadian Museum of History in Gatineau, Que.