Description of Historic Place

The Nicholas Lewchuk Property is a Municipal Heritage Property comprising three lots in the Town of Canora. The property features a house, a ferris wheel, an airplane swing and two midway trailers.

Heritage Value

The heritage value of the Nicholas Lewchuk Property resides in its association with Nicholas Lewchuk. The Lewchuk family emigrated from the Ukraine when Nicholas was a child and homesteaded near Canora in 1902. Lewchuck’s eclectic interests came to include vaudeville, publishing, magic, photography, design, recording and horticulture. In the 1920s, he founded a travelling vaudeville show and carnival that toured the prairies and western Ontario for the next five decades. Lewchuk designed and built the carnival rides himself, the “airplane swing” being the first.

Around 1908, Lewchuk’s father built the house and Nicholas lived here during the “off-season” for most of his life. From an office off the main entrance, he wrote and edited English and Ukrainian periodicals and ran the seed catalogue business founded by his mother. In 1968 the rides, trailers and animal pens from the travelling carnival were set up permanently in the yard behind the house. Known as the “Fun Spot,” Lewchuk operated his midway intermittently for the next few years. Lewchuk continued his publishing, editing and horticultural activities intermittently until his death in 1990.

Source:

Town of Canora Bylaw No. 97-24.

Character-Defining Elements

The heritage value of the Nicholas Lewchuk Property resides in the following character-defining elements:
-those elements associated with the “Fun Spot,” such as the trailers, animal pens, the ferris wheel and the remains of other rides;
-those elements associated with Lewchuk’s writing and publishing activities, such as the built-in desk located in the foyer off the main entrance;
-those elements associated with Lewchuk’s recording activities, such as the acoustic modifications to the living room ceiling;
-the orientation of house and carnival equipment on its original lot.