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As our Awards approach we want to highlight one of our sponsors! This year Wilhelm Masonry has generously supported the 2025 Lieutenant Governor’s Heritage Awards, which celebrates the rich diversity of heritage across Saskatchewan.

While they are based out of Estevan, Wilhelm Masonry works across the province, most recently working on a full restoration of the masonry at Government House; repointing, repairing broken and spalling bricks. We spoke to Shawn Wilhelm about his work and heritage. Shawn is not only proud of the work they did on Government House, but also found the work meaningful; “knowing you’re part of history, to preserve and restore it, and knowing the significance of the building to the province, and continued significance,” all made the project special, a “very exciting project for us, great project,” said Shawn.

“We’d like to be a part of the heritage side more prominently, and we’re very grateful to have had the opportunity to work on Government House and we’d like that kind of work to be a normal thing for us.” Working on historic structures influenced Wilhelm’s desire to sponsor the Awards, but Shawn himself has been a part of the Sask Masonry Institute for a number of years as well, becoming more active recently (we interviewed SMI as a sponsor of the 2023 awards). He’s also part of the apprenticeship board, another way of giving back to the trade, and ensuring its ongoing success. “We’d like to give back a little bit,” he said, knowing that people are putting a lot of work in, often for free as volunteers, it’s important for him to give back and acknowledge the good work people are doing. Sponsoring the Awards is part of that giving back.

Shawn talked about his involvement in training and fostering the trade, “it’s important we teach the younger generation in the apprenticeship classes to have at least a little knowledge of how to do some restoration work.” Wilhelm Masonry sends some of their employees to New York to learn to do restoration work there, “some of that [knowledge] will be handed down, just working with an older person, but it’s important we teach the younger generation in the apprenticeship classes.” Shawn mentioned the catch-22 in Saskatchewan, where we don’t have as many old buildings as a place like New York or London so people get less training on old buildings, which means the old buildings we do have could end up with less care. Not ideal! In addition, to keep employment up in the masonry sector, they need new buildings too, which Sask Masonry advocates for as well. This means, in a round about way, the new school, swimming pool or library being built right now in the suburbs is directly connected through the tradespeople who work on them, with the historic brick courthouse or warehouse in older parts of the city, or somewhere like Claybank Brick Plant.

“Claybank has a special place in my heart,” a sentiment many of us in the heritage community share. For Shawn it’s part of the history of his trade as well, adding a personal connection, “you can see all the old machinery, the kilns, it’s pretty amazing”.

“Heritage is not just the building structures themselves, it’s our identity as a province, it’s who we are as people. It’s definitely something we need to take note of and pay attention to in years coming,” said Shawn on the importance of heritage.

“Some of these buildings are 130, 140 years old so it’s going to be a very important part of our future to maintain and restore these buildings. We did some work on the Yorkton Brick Mill, and the committee recognized the importance of the old structure and the importance to the community. If the building fails, it’s gone forever. We appreciate the committees that are realizing the importance of these structures and bringing them back to life.”

Wilhelm is grateful for the work and opportunities they’ve had in the last 15 years, the projects they’ve been a part of, and look forward to working on more heritage restoration in the future.

Thank you, Wilhelm Masonry, for sponsoring our 2025 Awards Program, and thanks Shawn for sitting down to share a bit about your work.

To learn more about Wilhelm Masonry, see their website. To learn more about our Awards, including the 2025 winners, you can visit our Awards page.