Little Synagogue on the Prairie, Wooden synagogue in Heritage Park, Calgary, Canada

The Little Synagogue on the Prairie is a wooden building at Heritage Park Historical Village in Calgary with a prayer room, Torah scroll storage, a kitchen, and Star of David decorations throughout. The interior shows how a small rural community set up their religious home.

The Montefiore colony of Jewish immigrants, settled in Alberta from 1910, built the wooden synagogue as the Montefiore Institute in 1913 or 1916, naming it after Sir Moses Montefiore. It served about 30 families on the Chetner farm at Sibbald as community centre, school and house of worship. After the colony was abandoned in the 1920s, the government sold the building around 1937 for $200; it became a two-bedroom house in Hanna for nearly 70 years.

The building tells the story of how a small Jewish community maintained their traditions in the prairie, far from major cities. Visitors see traditional religious objects and understand how important this place was to the farming families who gathered here.

The synagogue stands inside Heritage Park Historical Village in Calgary, where it was moved in 2008 and dedicated on June 28, 2009. Look for the east wall of the sanctuary, where the aron kodesh holds the Torah scrolls and the congregation faces Jerusalem in prayer. The building covers about 74 square metres, so the bimah and the painted Stars of David and natural forms can be seen in a short stop.

The structure was the first Jewish house of worship to be permanently displayed in a Canadian historical park after its relocation in 2008. This preservation keeps alive an almost forgotten history of Jewish prairie settlers.