If you are looking for a couple of great reads in leading up to Remembrance Day in November, I recommend these two books by Canadian author Tim Cook. Both books make an effort to provide a human face to Canada’s participation in the First and Second World Wars.
Museum Chat Live! E602 – Victorian Tweets: Who Were the Victorians?
As modern, progressive people of the 21st century we enjoy a certain distance from the romanticized and contradictory Victorian period but are we really that different from our Victorian ancestors?
On this first episode of the special podcast series, we’ll explore what it means to be Victorian. We’ll hear some of the tweets and their original sources on this podcast, read and recoded by some familiar voices of staff and volunteers.
A Stompin’ Good Time: The Niagara Grape & Wine Festival
I don’t know about you, but this weather stirs my nostalgia for fall festivals. It’s the kind of weather that gets us excited for corn mazes, pumpkin patches, fall craft markets, apple cider, and everything synonymous with harvest celebrations. In St. Catharines, one of the most well know is the Niagara Grape and Wine Festival, which, of course, celebrates the fall grape harvest and the delicious nectar made from the fruit.
Museum at Home: Visiting Cards
With businesses, restaurants, and public places like museums reopening to the public, families are now often asked to give their […]
REPOST: Museum Chat Live! E404 – Guided Spirit Walks
We are gearing up for the 2020 Guided Spirit Walks season, now a virtual experience that you can enjoy from the comfort of your home!
To highlight what it takes to produce our Guided Spirit Walks program each year, we are resharing this 2019 Museum Chat Live! episode, where we chat with cast and members of the creative team about the walks. While this years’ production will look very different than previous years, we are continuing to put our all into creating a high-quality, meaningful experience for you.
Museum From Home – Learning to Cook – Mac and Cheese the student staple!
This week’s Museum From Home blog post is inspired by two photos from the St. Catharines Standard Collection from 1937 and 1940, relating to back-to-school and new curriculum for students at the time.
Museum at Home: Bedroom Archaeology Part III – Curate Your Exhibition
For the final activity of the Bedroom Archaeology series, it’s time for you to curate your own exhibition!
Museum at Home: Fruit Crisps, Crumbles and Cobblers
This week’s Museum at Home blog post is inspired by a photo from the St. Catharines Standard Collection of a bountiful peach harvest at the Taylor Farm in 1939. This photo has inspired us to make peach crisp and to consider baked fruit desserts!
Museum at Home: Bedroom Archaeology Part II – Catalogue Your Findings
Museum at Home is a weekly blog series offering fun and educational hands-on activities for children to do at home […]
Museum at Home: Let’s Make Shortbread!
A couple of weeks ago, Museum at Home had you making butter. What a better way to use that homemade butter than to make cookies!!
Museum at Home: Bedroom Archaeology Part I – The Inventory
The STUFF in our bedrooms can tell us a lot about ourselves, the stories that make us who we are, and what is special to us. And a lot of this stuff can be found in our bedrooms.
Over the course of three Museum at Home activities published throughout the summer,we’ll give you the tools to become an archaeologist, and study the contents of your bedroom.
Museum at Home: Let’s Make Butter!
Making butter would have been a regular part of the week for many people living in St. Catharines, but luckily, it’s pretty easy and very straightforward.
Museum at Home: Family History for Kids!
Every family has a story. What’s yours? In Family History for Kids!, you can become a family history detective and discover your family history and roots!
Below, you’ll find a few tools you can use to become family history detectives, and gather stories of your family’s history.
Celebrating Canada Day in St. Catharines
Happy Canada Day! It’s Canada’s 153rd birthday today and I don’t need to remind you that celebrations look very different this year. Rather than dwelling on what isn’t this year, a look back to the very first Canada Day celebrations in St. Catharines can teach us something valuable.
Indigenous History Month – Suggested Reading
To mark Indigenous History Month, Kathleen Powell, Supervisor of Historical Service and Curator at the St. Catharines Museum and Welland Canals Centre shares her suggested reading list to give you a start on how you can move your mindset towards Truth and Reconciliation.
Museum Classroom: Virtual Tours and Programs
St. Catharines Museum is presenting free virtual tours and programs!
The St. Catharines Museum and Welland Canals Centre is happy to offer free, private, booked virtual school and educational programs and tours.
Our engaging and experienced staff are ready to take your students on a virtual tour of our permanent galleries or behind-the-scenes in our Museum’s collection. Other fun and exciting opportunities involve programs like The Travelling Museum and Jr. Engineers, which have been modified slightly to ensure enjoyment for all your students learning from home.
Museum Chat Live! E503 – Learning from the 1918 Influenza Pandemic
In early 2019, the St. Catharines Museum opened a temporary exhibition called Outbreak. The exhibit explores the 1918 Spanish Influenza pandemic and tells a larger story about public health and disease in St. Catharines and Canada. We opened Outbreak to commemorate 100 years since the influenza pandemic, but we could have never guessed just how relevant this exhibit would become in light of the global pandemic we are currently facing.
Remembering Tom Hopkins
The St. Catharines Museum is mourning the loss of a wonderful and dedicated volunteer, Tom Hopkins. Tom passed away on Thursday, February 6, and will be greatly missed by everyone here at the Museum.
As a tribute to Tom, we would like to share sound clips of two of the many stories he loved to tell here at the Museum. Tom contributed these stories as part of our People and Places Exhibition Audio Guide in 2018.
‘Tis the Season at Merritt’s Mercantile
Visit Merritt’s Mercantile this holiday season for great gift ideas. We have a wide variety of Canadian gifts and souvenirs, nautical décor, books, jewelry, maple syrup products, children’s toys and more.
90th Anniversary of Plane Crash Tragedy
September 14th, 2019 marked the 90th anniversary of a plane crash tragedy that occurred in St. Catharines. It was supposed […]
Guided Spirit Walks 2019 Behind-the-Scenes: COSTUMES
In 2016, I attended the Guided Spirit Walk production “Keep the Home Fires Burning: Stories and Music from the First […]
Guided Spirit Walks 2019 Behind-the-Scenes: STORIES THAT DIDN’T MAKE IT
This year’s Guided Spirit Walk research process started with general themes that could be explored. This year’s theme “Glimpses of […]
Guided Spirit Walks 2019 Behind-the-Scenes: REHEARSALS
We are officially in Guided Spirit Walks rehearsal season! With our first week of rehearsals over, it’s time to do […]
Guided Spirit Walks 2019 Behind-the-Scenes: RESEARCH
Welcome to a behind-the-scenes look at our research and writing process, rehearsals, costumes, and much more for this year’s Guided Spirit Walks, with some sneak peeks of what is coming in September!
#WomenInCulture: The Foundations of our Community
Museum Week is a global online campaign celebrating the impact of museums and cultural institutions. The campaign kicks off today […]
Yearbook Flip: Nursing a Voice to Lead
Nurses Week, and International Nurses Day (May 12), celebrates the roles nurses play in saving lives and improving the health […]
Yearbook Flip: Girls Athletics
In reflecting on International Women’s Day last month, and the theme of #BalanceforBetter, I wanted to explore how female teenagers were represented in the sports pages of St. Catharines High School yearbooks. Due to traditional ideas of gender roles, athletics in North America have a long history of being male-centered and male-dominated. How did students work to address this imbalance in St. Catharines high schools in the twentieth century?
Objects Legacies: Leg Shackles
Museum Collections vaults are naturally very curious and intriguing places. You could spend hours wandering through our vaults, examining the […]
Object Legacies: Slave Memoir
arefully wrapped in acid-free paper and stored inconspicuously among other artifacts of its kind, is an 1856 edition copy of Solomon Northup’s memoir, 12 Years A Slave. It is part of the Museum’s Rare Book Collection. Materially, this artifact is catalogued with the following description…
Yearbook Flip: High School History Lesson
The St. Catharines Museum currently has 259 yearbooks catalogued in its archival collection. The yearbooks span the years 1913 to […]
Museum Chat Live! E309 – We Did Our Bit: Closing our WWI Exhibit
Our very popular WWI exhibition, Doing Our Bit: St. Catharines to the Western Front is officially closing its doors at […]
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 […]
We Did Our Bit: WWI Exhibition Favourites Part 5 – Olive Weller’s Travel Diary
This is the fifth installment of the We Did Our Bit WWI exhibit-closing series. This post was contributed by Adrian […]
We Did Our Bit: WWI Exhibition Favourites Part 4 – Local Impact
This is the fourth installment of the We Did Our Bit WWI exhibit-closing series. Click to read the earlier posts in […]
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 […]
We Did Our Bit: WWI Exhibition Favourites Part 2 – The Trenches
This is the second installment of the We Did Our Bit series. Please see read the first post in series […]
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 […]
Museum Chat Live! E307 – The Fallen Workers Part 3
This is Part 3 in a Museum Chat Live! podcast mini-series detailing the Fallen Workers of the Welland Canal. Click […]
At War’s End: Behind-the-Scenes Part 5
Part 5 of a five-part series. When one thinks about a tour, the image of a man or woman dressed […]
At War’s End: Behind-the-Scenes Part 4
Part 4 of a five-part series. Costumes Costumes are a big part of the process behind the scenes of the […]