Beausejour (Manitoba)

Beausejour is a town of about 3,100 people (2011) in eastern Manitoba. Beausejour's primary attraction is a pioneer village open-air museum. As the town is 60 km (40 mi) from Winnipeg, it makes a good day trip from the city.

Understand
Beausejour was founded in 1874 and incorporated as a village in 1908. The 1906 Manitoba Glass Works, which employed hundreds of workers in its heyday, left the community in 1913.

As part of the Cold War-era Pinetree Line, a radar station was built for the United States Air Force (USAF) in 1952 and turned over to the Royal Canadian Air Force in 1961; it closed in 1986. The site is now a provincial jail.

Get in
Beausejour is reachable by provincial highways PTH 44 and PTH 12, which run concurrently north of town.

PTH 44 was part of an old alignment of Highway 1, bypassed in 1958 as part of the Trans-Canada Highway project. It runs from Lockport (near Winnipeg) east through Beausejour, rejoining the Trans-Canada mainline at Whiteshell Provincial Park near the Ontario border.

PTH 12 runs south to the Minnesota border. The so-called "MOM's Way" series of highways (Manitoba, Ontario, Minnesota) provides a secondary route (Manitoba PTH 12, Minnesota 313, Minnesota 11, Ontario 11) to bypass the Trans-Canada mainline between Winnipeg and Thunder Bay.