The Executive Director for Mennonite Heritage Village in Steinbach refers to 2017 as a good year financially for the museum.

MHV put the finishing touches on 2017 at Wednesday's 53rd annual general meeting. Barry Dyck says their operating fund did not generate as much as they would have liked. But he senses some of the donations that would have otherwise gone to that fund, were put into the capital fund in 2017. And Dyck says the capital fund did very, very well last year.

"The bottom line on our entire statement was that we had a surplus of about ninety-five thousand dollars in 2017, which includes the operating fund and capital and so on," explains Dyck. "So we're very pleased about that."

(MHV Auxiliary President Linda Schroeder speaks at Wednesday's AGM.)However, Dyck says the museum still has some debt to take care of. He explains they took out a $300,000 loan for construction of the pavilion last year and still have that to pay back. In addition, they are still into their line of credit by about $300,000.

"We're not home free yet," says Dyck. "We still have a lot of hard work to do to liquidate these debts."

Dyck says two capital projects highlighted 2017. One of those was the construction of the pavilion. Dyck says it is a modern and contemporary option for things like banquets and wedding receptions and is already seeing a lot of traffic. He notes it is also a great facility for their education program.

The second capital project involved restoration of the Waldheim House. The structure needed a new thatched roof, which Dyck refers to as a significant project. He says they were fortunate to be able to showcase the work on Canada Day and says it was great to have this project completed.

Also in 2017, Dyck says they took over the car show from the Lions Club. He notes they are reformatting it to hopefully generate more interest. Dyck says they are quite optimistic for this year's show on July 14th.

At Wednesday's annual general meeting, four board members were re-elected by acclamation. They are Sid Reimer, Carol Kroeker, Roland Sawatzky and Allan Kroeker.

Meanwhile, MHV in 2017 saw about 40,000 people pass through the gates. Dyck says that is very similar to recent years.

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