COLLECTION DRAWS THOUSANDS
“I’m a junkaholic,” says the now-76-year-old man. “I still keep buying ... I always said I was a poor kid so when you got a little toy or something, you really appreciated it. But the real fact is I really enjoy our Canadian Prairie history.”
For the past 34 years, Chopping has opened his home — Old George’s Museum & Hidden Village, located at Whitewood on the Trans-canada Highway — and his eclectic collection to visitors.
The house itself is something of an historical artifact. Built in 1885 by French aristocrat Benjamin Limoges — with additional rooms constructed in the early 1900s — Chopping says the sizeable house was Limoges’s response to not wanting “to put his wife in a shanty.”
The house contains four levels, including basement and attic, and each is now stuffed full of Chopping’s many collectibles. One of the reasons Chopping purchased the large house in the 1980s was for precisely that reason.
“I’m one of the, I guess, last few of the collectors that when we were starting to collect when I was a teenager — the old-timers — we collected everything,” he says. “Traps, guns, spinning wheels, coffee grinders, gramophones and all that. So we kind of acquired it. Nowadays, collecting is that people start specializing. One person will go for signs, another one will go for lamps, another one for brass items. So that made the market go up the collecting field. But with me and my museum, I have thousands of different items.”
Those items quickly filled, and continue to fill, the space. One room alone holds 250 kerosene lamps. Another contains more than 350 coal lamps. He has old bottles of different colours, carvings, furniture and — one of his personal favourites — classic tin cans. Chopping says tins often show a piece of history, reflecting the places and times marking their exteriors, and he particularly loves finding ones from Saskatchewan, Manitoba or Alberta.
Given his propensity for collecting, Chopping quickly found he needed outdoor space as well. A solution came in the form of a growing village behind the house, a collection of buildings that include a saloon, a chapel, a laundromat, a blacksmith shop, a house and log cabins, among other structures. He now has 30 buildings and those have been filled with items as well.
While many come to view his collection, others come to see Chopping himself. With the look of a classic cowboy or mining prospector, an infectious sense of humour and a detailed knowledge of Prairie history, Chopping easily fits into the surroundings he’s created. He’s had visitors from as far away as Australia, Africa and Germany and has had people drive from other parts of Canada specifically to see his museum. So far, he’s had 25,000 people visit.
Chopping has also been honoured in some unusual ways. He’s found his way into a magazine in China and has had his likeness carved not once but twice. The larger, nearly life-sized one he’s dubbed “Quiet George,” while the smaller, naturally, became “Little Quiet George.”
Chopping loves to talk about his collection. Every piece tells a tale, and he encourages people to write down the stories behind their own items to ensure records are kept for the future.
“We all have stories to tell,” he says. “Sometimes it’s not written down and that is sad. And I’m guilty of that too.”
He says maintaining Prairie history through antiques is key to educating future generations about the lives their grandparents and great-grandparents once lived.
“The younger generation have no idea of the hardship that these pioneers (faced) when they came across into Canada ...,” he says. “That’s kind of one of my themes in my collecting is that I believe in saving some of our Prairie history so the next generation can realize the hardship and some of the businesses that were in there.”
Given he runs the museum on his own, Chopping suggests would-be visitors call ahead to (306) 735-2255 to ensure he’s around when they arrive. While there’s no set charge to tour the museum, he says he appreciates donations.
“I used to charge five dollars for the museum, but really now it’s kind of got a goat trail and it’s kind of dusty,” he says. “And so now if anybody comes, I just say, ‘You’re welcome to the most filthiest goat-trail museum you’ve ever been in.’ ”
Chopping acknowledges he’s getting older, and is struggling to maintain everything by himself. He’s turned his mind to what he’d like to see done with the place, and he says he hopes the provincial government will take it over for continued use as a museum. He’s been told that would involve cataloguing his collection — a chore he doesn’t envision being able to accomplish on his own.
“I used to go 90 miles an hour but now the only thing that still goes 90 miles an hour is my jaw,” he quips. “It doesn’t seem to slow down.”
Neither does his interest in antiques. Despite the immensity of his current collection, he’s always on the lookout for new items to add to it. He notes he recently spent $1,000 at a flea market, then another $65 on a lamp, some pans and a tin can.
When asked what compels him to continue to collect, he tells a story about a tin can he once paid $2,000 for.
“I really, really wanted it,” he says. “It was a really rare Saskatchewan can, nobody else has it. There’s only one known so far ... So it’s the adrenaline of going looking for something. It’s like you go fishing. Well, you go out and you finally catch a fish, and then you always wish you get the big one. Well, it’s the same thing in this collecting field. We’re all big kids.” hpolischuk@postmedia.com twitter.com/lpheatherp