What do you do when your collection of military memorabilia outgrows your house?  If you’re Jim Sheppard of Rencontre East, Nfld., you buy another  house and fix it up as a museum. 

According to news reports, at first, Retired Chief Warrant Officer Jim Sheppard’s collection decorated his office with a few treasured items on display at home.  With donations from friends and colleagues, the collection grew and grew.  After retiring from the Canadian Military Engineers in 1995, (he started his career with the Queen’s Own Rifles) he discovered the collection was too big for his house.  So he bought and renovated another small house to exhibit the collection.

Jim’s Independent Military Museum opened on Remembrance Day, 2011. Inside are displays of military memorabilia, badges, uniforms, shadowbox biographies of individual soldiers,  flags, books, posters, plates, uniforms, newspaper articles, medals and citations illuminating military history in Canada and Newfoundland.

For those unable to travel to The Rock, photos of the collection (like the  samples below) can be seen online here.