Portage la Prairie's City Hall received a replica model of the HMCS Portage from the Naval Museum of Manitoba recently.

Museum Curator Claude Rivard explains why.

"The Naval Museum made an agreement with the Town of Portage a number of years ago that in exchange for one of the two bells they had on display at City Hall. We would provide them with a model of the ship itself, and as it turns out we finally finished it. It took 18 months to get the model built, and a number of years to come to the agreement and fulfil it, but now it's done."

Museum Curator Claude Rivard says it wasn't an easy build, but it sure is beautiful.

"When you see something start with a flat paper -- 1 dimension -- and you build it, and you make the pieces for it, and it becomes 3 dimensional... I can't really compare it to having a baby, but it's almost along the same vein. There's a lot of pride that goes into it, I take a lot of pride building the models, and I would not build a model that I would not display in public and I'll put mine up against anything that's out there right now."

Museum Curator Claude Rivard gives a brief description of the ship's life.

"She was classified as an Algerine Class Minesweeper, but in Portage's case she never had her sweep gear put on. She served more of a convoy escort than anything else, and after the war she spent some time in the Great Lakes as a training ship until they decided to scrap her and dispose of here. Appropriately they sent her pieces to be remanufactured into steel, and probably a Buick."

He's happy both parties are satisfied with the deal.