Bill Black was beyond giddy. After six years of planning, fund-raising and construction, he could barely believe that his beloved Potato World was finally open to the public.
The $1.5-million museum, science and technology centre is, in the words of its executive director, "the Disney World" of spuds.
Set just outside of Florenceville, N.B., home of McCain Foods Ltd., Potato World is 1,000 square metres of spud stuff, an interactive potato-palooza that hopes to lure the 30,000 or so tourists each year who visit Grand Falls Gorge to the north and the famous Hartland covered bridge to the south.
"This is a huge event," Mr. Black said yesterday from the raucous opening that drew 500 people. "It doesn't get much bigger than this."
The son of a New Brunswick potato farmer, who left a job with a drug company in Halifax to manage Potato World, said the centre is far more than a museum.
"We won't deny our connection to the past, but we also want people to think of our future," he said. "You go into lots of museums, and they are dark and just not fun. We want to give people the lighter side of potatoes, too."
Florenceville is the French-fry capital of the world, so while McCain, the largest producer of fries on the planet, makes potatoes serious business, Potato World can exploit the spud's fun side.
Exhibits devoted to the history of New Brunswick potatoes trace the vegetable's history from horse team farming in the 1800s through modern potato processing. There are antique equipment and current harvesting tools and interactive history lessons featuring a pair of talking potatoes, Trevor and Pirouette, in the image of Mr. Potato Head.
"How many museums have talking potatoes?" Mr. Black asked.
Requests to book school tours are already pouring in.
Potato World grew from a community desire to save old potato-farming equipment that was rusting in fields in the Saint John River Valley potato belt. The provincial government and the Atlantic Canada Opportunities Agency each chipped in a half-million dollars. The community raised the rest.
It is all housed in a handsome cluster of three red barns and includes a 30-seat theatre, boardroom and main hall with soaring, 60-foot post-and-beam ceilings. This fall will see the inaugural inductee into Potato World's Hall of Recognition.
"It's wonderful," said Patton MacDonald, executive director of Potatoes New Brunswick, a growers association. "I've been to potato museums all over North America, but this one is by far the best. The one in Blackfoot, Idaho, has always been considered the big deal, but this one is really something."
Approaching Potato World, one expects an enormous sculptured spud to sprout from the ground, but the board passed on that because there are too many big potatoes elsewhere, such as near Fredericton and in O'Leary, PEI, home to the Prince Edward Island Potato Museum.
A gift shop peddles potato salt and pepper shakers, potato baskets, toy tractors and art: drawings, paintings and photographs of potatoes and farming. A cafe sells all things potato, from bread and biscuits to candy and fudge. Next year visitors will be able to visit an active potato field out back, pick their own spud and have cafe workers make French fries from it.
"I just hope this is a fun centre for the industry and local people," Mr. Black said. "Let's celebrate who and what we are. We're proud of our heritage. We want people to realize that potatoes just don't show up in the grocery store."
He also hopes the centre pays proper homage to a vegetable that has taken a public-relations beating with the low-carb diet craze.
"The potato is the economic driver for this whole region," said Dave Morgan, the mayor of Florenceville. "The McCains took the potato and went around the world with it, and we've seen so much prosperity. This museum is all about who were are."