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| Canada Canada in Review |  |
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Featuring collections of every persuasion, Canada’s museums offer something for every visitor. Culture hounds can find fine art collections in most Canadian cities and history buffs have a wealth of choice from the large royal provincial museums documenting the region’s development to small, non-profit museums at historical sites. Macho men can inspect instruments of war while women will surely be impressed at North America’s largest shoe museum. Families can find surprise and adventure at several children’s museums across the country and sports enthusiasts can relive great sporting moments at various halls of fame. Large or small, world-renowned or locally-inspired, Canada’s museums work to preserve the collective history of the country, indeed the world, and to promote understanding of its peoples, its cultures and its past. Many of Canada’s museums are worth visiting but those featured below are considered the country’s best. FEATURED MUSEUMS (listed from east to west) MUSÉE DE L'AMÉRIQUE FRANCAISE (MUSEUM OF FRENCH AMERICA) It is perhaps fitting that the first museum listed here is also Canada’s oldest. Showcasing its first collection in 1806, the Musée de l’Amérique Francaise is located in the heart of Québec City and traces France’s historical and cultural significance in the settlement of North America and Canada’s oldest province. Featuring an extensive permanent collection of European and Canadian paintings dating to the 15th century, parchments of French regiments and early French coins and instruments, the museum sheds light on the historic heritage of Québec and is a must-see for both Canadians and visitors alike. Housed in a former student residence of the Québec Seminary, which was founded in 1663, the museum includes the seminary’s former chapel as well as hands-on exhibits that are popular with children. MONTREAL MUSEUM OF FINE ARTS (MUSÉE DES BEAUX-ARTS DE MONTRÉAL)
CANADIAN MUSEUM OF CIVILIZATION Attracting well over a million visitors a year, the Canadian Museum of Civilization is Canada’s most-visited museum and offers a winning tri-fecta of striking architecture, a stunning setting and what is reported to be the country’s most comprehensive exhibit of Canadian history. Situated on the Ottawa River directly across from Parliament Hill in Gatineau, the museum is considered one of Canada’s architectural masterpieces and features the Grand Hall, a wall of windows 112 m (367 ft) wide by 15 m (49 ft) high, which outwardly faces today’s seat of government while inside exhibiting an arresting collection of huge totem poles and First Nations artifacts. Beyond the Grand Hall, visitors can literally stroll through “streetscape” galleries representing thousands of years of Canadian human history or see the past brought back to life through re-enactments and improvisations by a resident theatre company. And if that isn’t enough, the museum is also home to the Canadian Children’s and Postal Museums and an IMAX theatre. CANADA SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY MUSEUM An Ottawa attraction not to be missed, the Canada Science and Technology Museum is the largest of its kind in Canada. From trains, planes and automobiles to rockets, space travel simulation and Canada’s largest refractor telescope, the museum studies the past, present and future of science and technological developments in Canada. No serious studying is required of visitors, however, as the museum is known for its hands-on, climb-on, walk-through exhibits and quirky approach to technology. High-tech to low-tech, wired to wireless, Space Odysseys to Odysseys of Light, the Canada Science and Technology Museum is a family favourite. ROYAL ONTARIO MUSEUM
ART GALLERY OF ONTARIO Founded in 1900 and also located in Toronto, the Art Gallery of Ontario is the eighth largest art museum in North America and includes more than 65,000 works of art, almost half of which are by Canadian artists. Its collections, spanning from 100 AD to present day, include European masters such as Picasso, van Gogh and Cezanne and Canadian notables like Emily Carr, David Milne and the Group of Seven. The museum also houses contemporary galleries and the Henry Moore Sculpture Centre, the world’s largest public collection of the internationally renowned British sculptor by the same name. The museum does not appear to be resting on its laurels, however, and in 2004 unveiled a transformation plan (to conclude in 2008) that includes spectacular new architecture and equally impressive new art. Among the expansion are outstanding collections of historical African and Australian Aboriginal art and an exciting new building designed by acclaimed architect Frank Gehry that includes a glass-fronted façade running hundreds of metres along Dundas Street as well as a new entrance which incorporates the Grange, the gallery’s first home. ROYAL TYRRELL MUSEUM While many museums are all-encompassing in scope, others are specific in their focus and prehistoric fossils are the name of the game at the Royal Tyrrell Museum in Drumheller (near Calgary). Highlighting millions of years of Earth’s history and boasting the largest collection of complete dinosaur skeletons, the palaeontology museum and research facility enjoys international acclaim despite having only opened in 1985. Its location in the badlands of Alberta near a dig site means visitors can watch ongoing archaeological exploration or tour one of its signature galleries, which bring prehistoric animals, plants and an underwater reef to life and feature almost 40 mounted skeletons of ancient dinosaurs, among them the granddaddies of all, the Tyrannosaurus rex.
The Royal Alberta Museum, already one of Canada’s most popular, is on its way to further distinction. Bestowed with royal patronage in 2005, the Edmonton museum is now undergoing an extensive renewal project to turn an already notable museum into an outstanding state-of-the-art research and visitor facility. Currently, the museum traces the human and natural history of western Canada and exhibits range from impressive temporary collections to popular permanent ones such as the Wild Alberta gallery, a journey across Alberta and like no other Canadian museum experience. The museum’s new name is not its only stately characteristic. Outside its innovative galleries, the museum enjoys a location near downtown Edmonton’s stately Old Glenora district and shares its grounds with a former government mansion, all of which is emphasized in the new design. MUSEUM OF ANTHROPOLOGY Part of the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, the Museum of Anthropology is Canada’s largest teaching museum and arguably the city’s best. Situated above the cliffs of Point Grey, the glass-fronted, award-winning facility features giant carved doors (carved by master Gitxsan artists), bent-box panels at the entrance (which the Salish believed held the meaning of life) and a central rotunda (where renowned Haida artist Bill Reid’s considerable sculpture, “The Raven and the First Men” is displayed) which all pay tribute to the museum’s primary focus— the history and culture of the Pacific Northwest’s First Nations peoples. Among the facility’s 500,000 artifacts, most of which originated in coastal British Columbia, are native ceramics spanning five centuries, Haida sculptures and, not least, a magnificent collection of feast dishes, canoes and massive totem poles, the latter of which are featured in the museum’s Great Hall, a stunning space of 15-m (49-ft) glass windows with commanding views of the sea and mountains where the very totem poles were carved and celebrated.
Touted as one of the world’s top regional museums, the Royal British Columbia Museum is one of Canada’s most-visited and, located on Victoria’s Inner Harbour, is a cultural centerpiece of the city. The museum traces the natural and human history of British Columbia in three permanent galleries, all of which are excellent. Life-sized woolly mammoths and live tidal pools take visitors from the Ice Age to the present in the Natural History Gallery while the sights, smells and sounds of more recent times are experienced in the Modern History Gallery, replete with accurate re-creations of early European homesteads, Victoria’s cobblestone streets, silent movies and Chinatown’s alleys and shops. Finally, the First Peoples Gallery is a dramatic showpiece of First Nations cultures featuring ceremonial masks, totem poles and a full-sized long house re-created by First Nation descendants of a Kwakwaka’wakw chief. Visitors enthralled with the spiritual and cultural beliefs of the province’s first inhabitants can even watch native carvers working on new totem poles in another long house behind the museum. PHOTOS COURTESY OF:
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