By: Melissa Gruber
Ingenium - Canada's Museums of Science and Innovation
Behind the scenes: Celebrity artifacts
Emmy won by the Hermes satellite.
Ingenium’s collection includes a lot of intriguing artifacts — and some of them even have star power!
Photo Credit
Ingenium
Main camera used by a prominent Canadian photographer Yousuf Karsh.
For example, we have Yousuf Karsh’s photographic equipment — including the lens he used to take his famous photo of Winston Churchill in 1941. Reportedly, Churchill liked to be photographed smiling. As Karsh tells it, he captured Churchill scowling by ‘plucking the cigar out of his mouth.’
Photo Credit
Yousuf Karsh
Famous photo of Winston Churchill, taken by Yousuf Karsh.
Photo Credit
Ingenium
McLaughlin-Buick convertible from the 1939 royal tour.
There is also the McLaughlin-Buick convertible used by King George VI and Queen Elizabeth on their 1939 royal visit. The cars were built in Oshawa from 90 series McLaughlin-Buick limited four-door limousine sedan bodies, which were cut down to convertible styling with a special folding top.
Photo Credit
Ingenium
Hermes satellite model.
How about some Emmy award-winning technology? Built in Toronto in the mid-1970s, Hermes allowed several television programs to be simultaneously broadcast to different parts of the country, giving northerners the same access to telephone and television enjoyed in the rest of Canada. Ingenium owns both the Hermes satellite model and the Emmy it won.
Used by the Pope for outdoor public visits at the Vatican or elsewhere in the world, the Popemobile for John Paul II’s 1984 visit to Canada was made by a fire truck manufacturer, Camions Pierre Thibault. Built after an assassination attempt, the vehicle allowed the Pope to greet the crowds while being protected by the bulletproof glass.
Photo Credit
Ingenium
The Popemobile.
Minimoog used by rock star Paul Hoffert.
Lastly, there’s the synthesizer used by Paul Hoffert of the jazz-rock band, Lighthouse. The Minimoog Model D was one of the first portable keyboard synthesizers. Hoffert used it in recording sessions for a number of film scores and commercials through the 1970s and early 1980s.
The big building going up next to the Canada Science and Technology Museum will be the new home for Canada’s national science and technology collection. The Collections Conservation Centre will be a state-of-the-art facility, designed to protect 85,000 artifacts of different shapes and sizes including locomotives, tractors, porcelain plates, seeds, radioactive satellite debris, and household objects.
This is your collection; each and every object in this collection tell your stories.
Learn more about the Collections Conservation Centre.
Author(s)
Melissa Gruber
Melissa Gruber is a Communications and Marketing Officer at Ingenium - Canada's Museums of Science and Innovation. She’s worked for national advocacy, funding and programming organisations across the public, private and nonprofit sectors. Melissa is driven by her passion for the power of cultural institutions to improve social outcomes but also to allow us to imagine the world as it could be.
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