05/25/2026
MV Celebrates 25 Years ☀
We’re sharing facts, photos, and history all year to celebrate 25 Years of Madawaska Valley. View all our shares so far on our website: www.madawaskavalley.ca/MV25.
Tragedy struck Wilno in 1937, as Flora’s General Store burned to the ground due to a faulty chimney. The entire store, as well as the blacksmith shop next door, was lost. The Exchange Hotel (now Wilno Tavern) was also damaged in the blaze. Flora Blank was undeterred – she’d been running the store since 1933 in her late husband’s office, selling groceries and ice cream and was no stranger to hardship. After the fire, she built a new store that same year, which grew to sell everything from dry goods, footwear, hardware, and gas. The store was taken over by Flora’s daughter in 1953, and changed hands a number of times before closing its doors in the mid 2010s. The building that exists today is the same one Flora and her husband Felix Lazinskie built after the fire. Flora died in 1989 at the age of 85.
1938 was also a year for business in Barry’s Bay: Paul Mask opens his dairy this year, where the old Barry’s Bay Dairy Bar still is today. Mask purchased the lot for $175 and built a plant to pasteurize milk from his cows on Mask Island. The raw milk was delivered by family members to the plant to be processed, where it was then delivered to houses and stores in the community by horse and cart. The Masks sold the dairy in 1945 but continued to supply milk to the new owners.
