from WorldWeb.com Travel Guide
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| The Raven and the First Men by Bill Haida, 1980, UBC Museum of Anthropology, Vancouver 1 |
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Stretching from Nova
Scotia in the east to Vancouver
Island in the west, Canada
boasts more than 2,500
museums that range from large metropolitan galleries to small community
museums and chronicle everything from prehistoric dinosaur remains to
the latest developments in science and technology. No clay shard, no
centuries-old painting, no children’s toy is left unturned or
unexamined for the 59 million visitors who pass through the country’s
museums each year.
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)
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Montreal Museum Pass
Montreal has dozens of notable museums and for those
visitors who simply cannot choose, the city offers a Montreal Museum
Pass which gives access to 30 museums along with public
transit for three consecutive days.
The package includes large museums, smaller
historic sites scattered around the city and non-museum centres
such as the Montreal Botanical Gardens, the Biosphere and the Insectarium.
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What was Canada’s first art museum remains among its finest and today the Montreal
Museum of Fine Arts draws visitors from across
Canada and around the world for its collections of both classic and
contemporary pieces. Located in Montreal, the museum has continually been home to some of the finest paintings in the country
and features permanent and temporary exhibits of European
Impressionists, Canadian luminaries such as the Group of Seven and
Inuit and First Nations artists. In 2000, the museum absorbed one of
the continent’s most impressive collections of decorative arts, and
thus boasts an incredibly diverse collection of fine artifacts. Today,
the museum is housed in two sections connected by an underground
tunnel—the older 1912 home of the museum, a sober and imposing work of
white
marble and neoclassical architecture, and across the street the new,
striking glass-fronted pavilion designed by internationally renowned
architect Moshe Safdie.
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
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| The Michael Lee-Chin Building, Royal Ontario Museum, Toronto 2 |
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Considered by many to be Canada’s best museum, the Royal Ontario Museum is also its largest
and no trip to Toronto is complete without a visit to this museum of
natural history and culture. A new and grand redevelopment project
ensures its continued place as one of the world’s notable museums, not
least for the museum’s controversial design, which is a bold
example of 21st century architecture by Daniel Libeskind. Less
controversial but no less impressive is the museum’s collection of over
six million items ranging from a renowned collection of dinosaurs to
Yaun Dynasty paintings in its East Asian collections to galleries
of ancient Egyptian and Bronze Age art. For children who can’t resist
the urge to touch, the museum offers several hands-on galleries, among
them a dinosaur dig for young palaeontologists and an interactive
high-tech gallery.
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.
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A Tyrannosaurus rex skeleton, Royal Tyrrell Museum, Drumheller, 3 |
ROYAL
ALBERTA MUSEUM
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.
ROYAL
BRITISH COLUMBIA MUSEUM
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:
- Bill McLennan; c/o UBC Museum of Anthropology; The Raven and the First Men by Bill Haida, 1980; Vancouver, BC, Canada
- c/o Wikipedia; The Michael Lee-Chin Crystal Building, Royal Ontario Museum; Toronto, ON, Canada
- c/o Royal Tyrrell Museum; Tyrannosaurus rex skeleton; Drumheller, AB, Canada
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Churchill Wild
Polar Bear, Beluga Whale & Northern Lights viewing in Churchill, MB! |
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Canadian North
is the leader in northern air travel. Seriously Northern. |
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