A biochemist, avid cross-country skier, and former science budget analyst speaks on the joys of collecting, the lessons learned, and the importance of preserving material culture.

Ottawa resident Elaine Wolfe was undoubtedly thinking about her late father, Clifford Wolfe, as she visited the Moving Stories exhibition at the Canada Science and Technology Museum last week. The temporary exhibition – which showcases some rarely-seen artifacts from the museum’s transportation collection – includes Elaine’s 1988 Chevy Blazer, outfitted with an innovative wheelchair lift that was invented by her dad when she was a young adult. “Calling my first truck an artifact is making me

Through the course of a project spanning nine years, two Ingenium conservators — Tony Missio and David Elliott — had the chance to work on the complete restoration and preservation of the 6” Cooke & Sons refracting telescope, bought by the Meteorological Service of Canada in 1882. The telescope was in service for over 100 years; it was donated to the museum by its last owner, the University of Toronto, in 1984. The telescope was dismantled and brought to the national collection storage. On

By William Knight and Bruce Dudley Some museum artifacts are mysterious. They lack provenance, or history, so we don’t know who made or used them, or why. Occasionally, however, objects acquire stories. Such is the case with a bobsled exhibited in Artifact Alley in the Canada Science and Technology Museum in Ottawa. The bobsled, it turns out, has a rich history that connects winter fun, Ottawa’s transportation history, and the Great Depression—and memories of a beloved father. As lead curator of

When a museum lends one of its precious artifacts to another institution, it’s a little bit like sending your kid off to summer camp. That’s the clever analogy conservator Erin Secord uses to explain the condition reports she’s required to send back to the Museo Galileo in Florence, Italy – about an early telescope that’s on display at the Canada Science and Technology Museum for the next few months. “It’s a little like sending your kid to summer camp; you send them with a bunch of instructions

A 3D scanner, a pair of hackers, and a whole lot of creativity is bringing a unique artifact from the Canada Science and Technology Museum to life in Canadian classrooms. It all started last year, when a zoetrope – a pre-film animation device that produces the illusion of motion – was selected as one of several artifacts to be scanned for educational purposes.