We Did Our Bit: WWI Exhibition Favourites Part 6 – Ordinary Objects, Extraordinary Stories

This is the sixth and final installment of the We Did Our Bit WWI exhibit-closing series. This post was contributed by […]

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Morningstar Mill, Black Watch and Lance-Cpl. Fred Fisher and his Victoria Cross

Morningstar Mill remembers the Black Watch. This token is hammered into one of wooden flour elevator shafts in Wilson Morningstar’s […]

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We Did Our Bit: WWI Exhibition Favourites Part 3 – Bessie Beyer’s Uniform

This is the third installment of the We Did Our Bit series. Click to read earlier posts in the series here.  This post […]

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We Did Our Bit: WWI Exhibition Favourites Part 1 – “Pip, Squeak and Wilfred”

After four great years, the St. Catharines Museum’s Doing Our Bit: WWI from St. Catharines to the Western Front exhibition […]

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At War’s End: Behind-the-Scenes Part 1

Those who served in the Great War, both domestically and overseas, deserve our respect and recognition. I am honoured to be part of the process of creating the St. Catharines Museum’s 2018 Guided Spirit Walks because it means that I get to help share the stories of these heroic individuals. As the programming assistant I am helping to conduct research on our characters, to create the script, and to facilitate rehearsals. Jack Hardy acquired some valuable wisdom from his experiences and emerged from the war grateful for his successes. It is my hope that we will all be able to learn similar insight from the stories of Hardy and a variety of others who were affected by the war that ended one hundred years ago this November.

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BHM Part 4: How to Reconcile the Good and Bad Parts of Our History

Stories like the establishment of the Refugee Slaves Friends Society here in St. Catharines, or the popular Emancipation Day Picnic, held at Lakeside Park from the 1920s to the 1950s to celebrate the 1833 Act for the Abolition of Slavery, are enjoyable to share and to consume because they can help us to feel better about ourselves and our past while living in troubling times. Unfortunately, history is messy. We love organization and labels as much as you do, but history is complex and accurately telling stories includes acknowledging the bad parts too. Recognizing messy histories can actually help to clean up and heal the impacts that history has on our community today. Reconciling the good with the bad parts of our history can help us to move forward.

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BHM Part 1: Using Our Past to Inspire Us to Compassion and Action

Black History Month is an incredibly important time to recognize, reflect, and commemorate the history of the Black community in St. Catharines, and indeed, throughout Canada. It does not start on February 1, nor stop on February 29.

More over, Black History should never be recognized, reflected, or commemorated as a silo of history. Black History is as important and vital a part of the Canadian story as any other.

I’ve found myself searching for ways to make our history relevant to our current human experience. To be honest, it can be difficult to connect to the past with the news the way it is these days. Things move so fast that it’s hard to figure it all out. 

Yet parallels exist. Our community has a strong history of responding to injustice with compassion and action. And so my goal, with this first post in our series of four is to reveal how our history can inspire compassion and action in our daily lives and in our community. 

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Museum Chat Live! E301 – Company Town

In this podcast study guide (to go along with your reading of the book) we take a look at the idea of Merritton, one of the 4 former cities that amalgamated into St. Catharines, and it’s development as a ‘company town’ alongside the historic Welland Canals. Of course, the history of Merritton, and the history of any place, is far more complex than could possibly be analysed in a brief study-guide podcast, and so this episdoe should not be considered a complete history of the town, but rather the presentation of one idea as a just one part of explaining its rich history. 

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A Walk Around Town – Walk S – The Discovery of Mineral Springs in St. Catharines

Excerpt from “Walk S” in “St. Catharines A-Z” by Junius, originally published in the St. Catharines Journal on September 18th, […]

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Museum Chat Live! E204 – Spooky Halloween Episode

It’s the spookiest time of year! In the haunted spirit of Halloween, we’ve dedicate this episode of Museum Chat Live!  to some of the creepiest and eeriest stories in St. Catharines’ history.  You might want to listen with the lights on…

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A Walk Around Town – Walk Q – Big Fish Story…or shall we say BIG Mosquito?

Excerpt from “Walk Q” in “St. Catharines A-Z” by Junius, originally published in the St. Catharines Journal on September 4th, […]

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Museum Chat Live! E202 – The Monuments

How do we deal with monuments that commemorate problematic histories and problematic historical figures? It’s a debate that has gotten quite heated in recent weeks, and as museum professionals, the Museum Chat Live! podcast team thought we’d weight in.

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aMUSE is popping up at Rodman Hall!

The role of gender in advertising has been an issue in society since the advent of modern media and advertising methods. Over the years media sources have used methods that concentrate on sex and stereotypical images and ideas of the parts men and women play as consumers. Such methods have constructed a paradigm of how we view females and the roles they play in society, the most prominent being the housewife which began in the early 1950s.

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