The population of Tolstoi grew by hundreds this weekend as the community hosted a homecoming on Saturday.

Wayne Arseny was part of the organizing committee. Arseny says Tolstoi used to be a vibrant community. He notes in the 1950's there were four grocery stores, two garages and a population of about 250. But, he says Tolstoi is no different from many small communities, once the railway line moves and stores shut down then commerce leaves and so do the people. Today there are about 30 people living there.

Arseny, who now lives in Emerson was part of a group of people that decided a homecoming was needed in order to reunite people who once called Tolstoi home. In order to get the community ready, a town cleanup was held leading up to the event. Arseny says he expected a handful of people to show up with their work gloves, instead, they had nearly forty. In the end, they held three of these cleanup events and Arseny says each time they had similar numbers.

"When we got together to make perogies for the perogy dinner it was over forty people in the hall of different organizations coming together," recalls Arseny. "Some never making perogies before coordinating and working together on a project."

Arseny says that is what is needed in southern Manitoba, communities pooling together.

According to Arseny, Saturday was a day filled with food, tours, music and baseball. He says people came from all over.

"We had some visitors that were from BC and other parts of Canada that knew about the event and just sort of coordinated their holiday to come back," he notes. "I know a friend of mine that I haven't seen since high school from Vancouver showed up."

Arseny says while on the Church tour, he heard from a couple that said they got married in that Church 45 years ago, and this was their first time back.

"I would say it was a tremendous success," says Arseny. "A lot of work put in by volunteers in cleaning up the town, putting up banners."

And Arseny says he is hopeful they can make this an annual event. But in order to do that, he says they will need to tweak some of the activities to make sure there is a purpose for people to show up.