For many Canadians, COVID-19 has made food security a top-of-mind concern.

Conservators Erin Secord and Jessica Lafrance-Hwang noticed a lively exchange of vintage recipes on social media and suggested we share some from Ingenium’s trade literature collection.

In celebration of International Women’s Day, we’re highlighting some historically significant items from Ingenium’s collection intrinsically linked of the incredible contributions of women in STEM.

Romantic song lyrics are not exactly what you’d expect to find in the pages of an old, agricultural catalogue. But as Ingenium staff members have learned, artifacts can be full of surprises.

The Central Experimental Farm (CEF) in Ottawa is known for agricultural ingenuity and scientific discovery, as a national historic site and urban greenspace, and for being the home of the Canada Agriculture and Food Museum. Architecture, however, is not typically the first thing people associate with this agricultural oasis in Ottawa.

It’s hard to tune out a science lesson when there’s a chicken on your desk. Thanks to a new mobile education program from the Canada Agriculture and Food Museum, teachers in the Ottawa area can bring a bit of farm life — and a lot of excitement — right into the classroom.

The Billings Estate National Historic Site is currently displaying a curious wooden bicycle. It was hand built in the late 1890s by a teenager named James Henry Blair, using materials scavenged off his father’s Gloucester farm. Artifacts at the Canada Science and Technology Museum give us a rare chance to explore the mindset of this young inventor as he puzzled through the process of how to build a bicycle with limited resources.

The production of cheap margarine was a boon to poorer consumers. Although some countries adopted it easily, other countries tried to eliminate it or limit its availability. In the 1870s, margarine began to spread (pardon the pun) to other countries.

Born and educated in Mumbai, the culturally diverse metropolis of India, I moved to Canada in 2018 as a new permanent resident to pursue my passion of making science more accessible and building trust in the brand, “Made in India.”

Shelley and Tony Spruit are going against the grain. After more than a quarter century of growing wheat, soybeans, and corn — mainly for animal feed and ethanol — the couple began experimenting with alternatives on their family owned and operated farm near Ottawa, planting seeds from corn and barley varieties not traditionally grown in Ontario. The move is reflective of their agricultural philosophy, and Shelley Spruit believes it’s critically important to educate consumers about what they’re