LAKELAND – Four businesses in the St. Paul and Elk Point areas have been identified as potential économusée sites. Carl-Eric Guertin, general director of the Quebec-based Économusée Network Company and Mélanie Dassylva, Director Artisan at Work Experience and Business Development met in St. Paul on June 12 with community leaders from across the Lakeland region to report on their findings from an extensive 10-day visit in March, with the mandate of determining if the Iron Horse Trail would qualify as an économusée destination.
“I’m looking forward to this,” MLA Scott Cyr said, adding that he had sat in on one of the concept phases in Plamondon and was familiar with the concept. “Tourism is important and if we can incorporate small businesses, it’s a plus for us. It gets artisans out in the public. I want to see the region thrive and show that we are a constituency that is not dying, it’s thriving.”
Marianne Janke of Alberta’s Lakeland and North East Municorr, said the Iron Horse Trail, which officially opened 20 years ago on June 8, is one of the major tourist attractions in the area and “has come a long way – look at the different things developed along the way. Our strategy is to animate the Trail and develop reasons to stay overnight or a week, to take vacations here.”
During the March visit, Guertin said, “We did not visit all of the trail, its businesses and attractions,” but met with 18 businesses, museums and heritage sites, enough to determine its potential for the goal of giving visitors an ‘artisans at work’ experience, including heritage spaces, traditional know-how, culinary spaces and destinations. The area’s cultural diversity, and diversity of tourist attractions give the area “a rich history with a story to tell.”
Guertin added that many of the businesses “are at the beginning of tourism,” while others are well established, and the area has “an untapped potential of agricultural tourism and culinary tourism, but some businesses weren’t interested and some attractions don’t meet visitor expectation. The major provincial sites are only open in the summer.”
Six businesses were identified: Elk Point’s Sew Heavenly Quilting, housed in a former church, which Guertin said was “a fantastic place,” and award-winning Golden Loaf Bakery, Glendon’s Pyrogy Park with its world’s largest pyrogy, Serben Farms near Smoky Lake offering home-grown meats, dairy products and baking, River Ranch, a new business nearing completion east if St. Paul along the North Saskatchewan, and Moo-Lait dairy farm from St. Edouard.
“We bring businesses to a standard, and make sure their amenities are acceptable,” Guertin said. “We will first concentrate on Smoky Lake, St. Paul and Elk Point, then add the other branch of the trail; wen need 12 to 15 businesses along the trail.”
Potential additions range from the Mannawannis Native Friendship Centre, which he felt could both offer and produce Indigenous crafts and products, the UFO Landing Pad, more pumpkin-based businesses for Smoky Lake and museums and historic sites along the Iron Horse Trail.
“The Iron Horse Trail has what it takes, it needs to increase its businesses, but it’s fully aligned with the new Travel Lakeland brand,” Guertin concluded.
“There will be a lot of continued discussion all along the trail,” Janke confirmed, turning the microphone over to Chris Down of Travel Alberta.
“Travel Alberta has had a mandate shift,” Down said, “we’re now on development, and it’s a great opportunity to bring new entrepreneurs into tourism space. There’s already collaboration going on. The Lakeland has potential. The Iron Horse Trail has a great opportunity as part of the Trans Canada Trail, and it can snowball. I look forward to working with the businesses.”
“The économusée is not just for the Iron Horse Trail,” Janke noted. “They are being developed all across the province. The Old School Cheesery at Vermilion was the first in the province and now there are 18, one of them The Twisted Fork in St. Paul, and this hasn’t even scratched the surface. I’m excited to see it evolve. We can make this a huge part of why people visit northeast Alberta.”
