Regiment Museum expansion project right on schedule

By Dave Flaherty/The Oshawa Express

The past few months have made Ontario Regiment Museum executive director Jeremy Blowers somewhat of a believer in Christmas miracles.

As reported earlier in The Oshawa Express, the museum is in the midst of constructing a 17,000 square foot addition to its existing building at 1000 Stevenson Road North.

Work is well underway on the project, with the initial foundations dug, and concrete scheduled to be poured early as this week.

However, for Blowers, he admits it’s “almost a miracle” that the project is on schedule.

“When we approached the city in August saying we wanted a building this winter, it was almost an impossible task,” he says.

“The very fact we will have a building this winter shows a lot of people at the city and in the community made a lot of accommodations,” he adds.

The steel structure is scheduled to arrive at the museum on Dec. 23, with installation set to begin Jan. 2, 2018.

It is expected it will take between four to six weeks to put up the building. A grand opening is tentatively scheduled for late-April or early-May in 2018.

The museum currently houses the largest collection of operational historic military vehicles in Canada, and in recent years the collection has been growing by two to three vehicles annually.

Now at 83, the need to keep the vehicles out of the harsh winter elements is becoming a growing priority as the worth of the collection reaches into the millions of dollars, Blowers told The Express in August.

It estimated the new addition should be able to store up to 90 vehicles.