The Museum’s signature “Antique Show and Sale Fundraiser” ran from 1991 until 2016, successfully raising 33% of our annual budget.  In the early days, we hosted five back to back weeklong, and sometimes two week long, antique shows on a revolving basis. Starting with Unicity, setting up displays and vendor tables on a Sunday evening and taking down the following Sunday evening, then moving the whole show to five other malls including: Garden City, Grant Park, St. Vital, Polo Park and North Gate. 

From 1999 to 2016 the Polo Park, St. Vital, Grant Park and Garden City Shopping Centres became a huge draw with shoppers from every corner of the city and rurally.  We set up between 100 – 125 tables, plus large-scale historic displays, information booths on preserving family archival treasurers and memorabilia, and gave free hand-outs and crafts for children.  We ran the Antique Show and Sale Fundraisers all day and evening for 6 – 7 days each week.  Definitely a labour of love given the long hours, arduous set-ups of vendor locations within the entire common area of the various malls, and the incredible work involved in planning and creating new large scale museum exhibits and displays each time we did a show.

The Museum’s vendors came from Manitoba, Saskatchewan, Alberta, British Columbia, Ontario and even Nova Scotia.  Eventually, the out of town vendors became older and sadly could not support the Museum due to an inability to travel such long distances.  We were known throughout the industry for providing the highest quality shows with items that appealed to a large audience of shoppers and collectors, with the latter shows showcasing pop culture and vintage wares as well.

We can say without a doubt that this signature fundraiser put the St. James-Assiniboia Museum on the map as the only Winnipeg Museum to attempt such a complex undertaking. One that resulted in an uniquely innovative  and self-generated venue for raising  funds.  It was especially lucrative for our vendors with many becoming like family, travelling with us from location to location.  All in all, we produced close to 100 Antique Show and Sale Fundraisers throughout the City of Winnipeg with the support of 250 vendors.  However, as with most things, all good things must come to an end, and due to the Shopping Centres’ substantial increase in rental costs it was no longer a tenable fundraiser strategy.