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.
I have seen hundreds of cases where families were separated. I have seen them in droves 150-200 together – men, women, and children – linked side by side. There used to be two drivers to a drove, one driver in front and one behind. I have seen them from eight or nine years old up to 45 and 50; and when the mothers were sold, I have seen young babes, torn from the cradle in these gangs. I have seen this, many and many a time, and heard them cry fit to break their hearts.
Black history is a part of Canadian history and that history includes racism. It’s difficult to come to terms with, I know. I love sharing the exciting story of Harriet Tubman and others who found freedom and refuge in St. Catharines. I have difficulty coming to terms with the idea that even though Freedom Seekers were welcome and supported in the community, they (and other minority or immigrant groups) were treated poorly, were openly disrespected, and experienced racism.
Kathleen welcomes St. Catharines Mayor Walter Sendzik to the podcast to discuss telephones. They have a great history-based conversation about this ever-changing technology.
In the era of the Ed Sullivan Show, student variety shows were a staple production in high schools. Though variety shows first gained their popularity on the radio, live television brought a new immediacy and intimacy between the viewers at home and the stars on stage. As variety shows saturated pop culture, it was only natural for the sensation to make its way into the high school auditorium. Variety shows became a fun opportunity for teenagers to showcase their talents among their peers, and emulate the celebrities they adored on television.
On this episode of One Hour in the Past, Kathleen and Adrian look at the history of shopping. The rabbit holes and tangential side-bars abound in this hilarious discussion of shopping carts, catalogues, and shopping malls.
Ho ho ho, Santa Claus is coming to….high school! As the holidays season gets into full swing and St. Catharines decks its halls, it’s always fun to look back and reminisce on holidays past – including the festive spirit that filled the halls of St. Catharines’ high schools in our youth. This time on Yearbook Flip, we’ll look back to the 1960s and consider how the baby boomer generation got into the holiday spirit in their high schools.
On this episode of One Hour in the Past, we welcome Manager of Programs and Cultural Services Lori Mambella to the podcast to discuss cross letters. It’s a great conversation that leads down some interesting rabbit holes and Kathleen and Lori even consider the future of letter writing.
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.
November 11th marked Remembrance Day, the 101st anniversary of the end of the Great War. When I was told that the St. Catharines Museum Collection had over 250 yearbooks spanning back to 1913, I was immediately curious as to what the St. Catharines Collegiate Institute yearbook would look like in the war years. So, I flipped through the Christmas 1917 edition of the Vox Collegiensis.
Are you just as excited as us for the winter holidays?! To kick off the holiday season, the St. Catharines […]
In honour of ooky-spooky Halloween time, this Museum Chat Live! episode explores local obituaries in St. Catharines newspapers. Obituaries can be incredibly valuable sources for understanding the nuances of society at a particular moment in time.
While the 1930s is certainly characterized by The Great Depression, it also marked a move toward historical site reconstruction and the growth of heritage tourism. As historian Shannon Ricketts claims, it was the economic downturn that provided public works funding for serious conservation works. Depression relief funds granted by provincial agencies led to the restoration of various historic sites in Ontario; including Niagara.
September 2019 marks the 80th anniversary of the Second World War. In the midst of the 1930s and Great Depression, political tensions in Europe grew strong enough for Canadians to feel the tremors. Adolf Hitler and the Nazis had been in power in Germany since 1933 and European powers, still recovering from the devastation of the Great War only two decades earlier, were willing to do whatever they could to avoid the outbreak of another war. The murmurings of impending conflict in Europe heard by the ears of St. Catharines’ youth?
September 14th, 2019 marked the 90th anniversary of a plane crash tragedy that occurred in St. Catharines. It was supposed […]
In 2016, I attended the Guided Spirit Walk production “Keep the Home Fires Burning: Stories and Music from the First […]
Beep, beep! Get on the bus, everyone. On this episode of Museum Chat Live! we are celebrating the first anniversary of the 337 Crosstown bus route that ends here at the Museum.
This year’s Guided Spirit Walk research process started with general themes that could be explored. This year’s theme “Glimpses of […]
We are officially in Guided Spirit Walks rehearsal season! With our first week of rehearsals over, it’s time to do […]
Kathleen and Adrian welcome Tisha and Carolyn from the St. Catharines Downtown Association for a discussion about sidewalks. Spoiler alert: there are approximately 500 kms of sidewalks in St. Catharines!
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!
At the beginning of June, the St. Catharines Museum put out a call out to our online followers to send […]
June is Pride Month. The St. Catharines Museum cares for artifacts of all colours of the rainbow but, like many […]
On this episode of Museum Chat Live!, we discuss the latest venture of the St. Catharines Museum – undertaking a new Interpretive Plan. We explore what an Interpretive Plan is, what it means for the Museum, and why it matters.
Museum Week is a global online campaign celebrating the impact of museums and cultural institutions. The campaign kicks off today […]
Nurses Week, and International Nurses Day (May 12), celebrates the roles nurses play in saving lives and improving the health […]
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?
How did teenagers in St. Catharines respond to the social and cultural revolution of the Sixties? Student yearbooks are a great way to explore how students reacted to the world around them.
On this episode of Museum Chat Live!, we dig into the history of the B.M.E. Church in St. Catharines and […]
Museum Collections vaults are naturally very curious and intriguing places. You could spend hours wandering through our vaults, examining the […]
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…
The St. Catharines Museum currently has 259 yearbooks catalogued in its archival collection. The yearbooks span the years 1913 to […]
This is Part 5 in a Museum Chat Live! podcast mini-series detailing the Fallen Workers of the Welland Canal. Click […]
Our very popular WWI exhibition, Doing Our Bit: St. Catharines to the Western Front is officially closing its doors at […]
This is the sixth and final installment of the We Did Our Bit WWI exhibit-closing series. This post was contributed by […]
This is the fifth installment of the We Did Our Bit WWI exhibit-closing series. This post was contributed by Adrian […]
This is the fourth installment of the We Did Our Bit WWI exhibit-closing series. Click to read the earlier posts in […]
This is Part 4 in a Museum Chat Live! podcast mini-series detailing the Fallen Workers of the Welland Canal. Click […]
Morningstar Mill remembers the Black Watch. This token is hammered into one of wooden flour elevator shafts in Wilson Morningstar’s […]
This is the third installment of the We Did Our Bit series. Click to read earlier posts in the series here. This post […]
