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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Museum Chat Live! E302 – International Women’s Day 2018

Listen International Women’s Day is about raising women up, celebrating their accomplishments and contributions, and recognizing that there is still  […]

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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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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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Fire Insurance Plans Print Series

The plans continue to remain an important resource in my work as a public historian at the Museum today. I often find myself considering research questions by first checking the city’s business directories spanning the last 150 years, and the fire insurance plans. They aren’t perfect – they are static and only cover certain geography – but the visuals are priceless. 

And that’s why we just couldn’t keep these plans to ourselves.

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One Dominion: On the Path to Confederation

In our research, we found a handful of St. Catharines politicians and businessmen whom were adamantly against Confederation. These men were part of a movement usually referred to as the Anti-Confederate movement. Plenty of politicians across the new Dominion, now vilified by time and memory, were against a political union for a surprisingly wide variety of reasons.

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Books & Brews 150

Our Fall 2017 Books & Brews series opens space for the voices of Indigenous, female, and French-Canadian authors to consider the impacts of colonization on what it means to be Canadian. The books we have selected explore Canadian-ness and the Canadian experience through the intersections of race, class, culture and identity.

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Museum Chat Live E108 – The Fallen Workers

A staggering 137 men lost their lives as a result of accidents that occurred during the construction of the Welland Ship Canal. This number is shockingly high. To our knowledge, it is the largest loss of life in the history of Canadian government infrastructure projects.

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#VintageSTCM: 50 Years of the St. Catharines Museum

The Museum’s vision and mission are a bit different than it was 50 years ago. Our community’s identity, how we study and present history, and the nature of museum-going have changed drastically over the last 50 years. And the Museum has changed with it. We now focus on an inclusive narrative for all those who live in our diverse city. The exhibit serves as a reminder of where we have come from and where we hope to go.

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aMUSE 5 – The Fifth and Final Series

The series was created in response to the idea that the Museum is viewed by many in the community as important but not a part of their daily lives. Many believe we are an important institution in the community but can’t identify what we do or what kinds of objects we have in the collection. We think its vitally important to get our collection out and seen by the people for whom we steward those very objects.

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History InSite 2017

If you’re a history keener (like us) and are interested in taking a guided walking tour, you can meet Museum historians at the Festival Hub/Interactive Village on James Street on the hour between 11 am and 4 pm on Saturday and Sunday, April 29 and 30, 2017

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Narratives of Fugitive Slaves – Part 4

“I think slavery is the worst and meanest thing to be thought of. It appears to me that God cannot receive into the kingdom of heaven, those who deal in slaves. God made all men – He is no respecter of persons – and it is impossible that he should, on account of my colour, intend that I should be the slave of a man because he is of brighter skin than I am.” – Henry Atkinson, (pp 94).

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Narratives of Fugitive Slaves – Part 3

“Rents and provisions are dear here, and it takes all I can earn to support myself and my children. I could have one of my children well brought up and taken care of, by some friends in Massachusetts, which would much relieve me, but I cannot have my child go there on account of the laws, which would not protect her. This is a hardship: but had I to struggle much harder than at present, I would prefer it to being a slave. Now I can lie down at night in peace – there I had no peace even at night, on account of my master’s conduct.” – Mrs. Ellis (pp 63-64).

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Narratives of Fugitive Slaves – Part 2

I have seen hundreds of escaped slaves, but I never saw one who was willing to go back and be a slave. I have no opportunity to see my friends in my native land. We would rather stay in our native land, if we could be as free there as we are here. I think slavery is the next thing to hell. If a person would end another into bondage, he would, it appears to me, be bad enough to send him into hell, if he could.

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Narratives of Fugitive Slaves – Part 1

St. Catharines played an important part in the success of the Underground Railroad. In railroad speak, the city was a destination, or terminal for refugee slaves. Many who made it to Canada settled in the city, which for reasons associated with the success of the Welland Canal, was, by mid-19th century standards, a thriving and bustling city rivaling Hamilton and London in population and industrial activity.

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