The Canadian Conservation Institute (CCI) is part of the federal Department of Canadian Heritage, created to promote the preservation of Canada’s cultural heritage. Every two to three years, CCI develops and hosts in Ottawa a symposium on a conservation topic. For a week in October conservator Lisa May attended Symposium 2011 – Adhesives and Consolidants for Conservation: Research and Applications. Internationally attended, the symposium covered the newest research, techniques and…
Monthly Archives: December 2011
The Hong Kong Veterans, 1941-1945
Part II During the Battle of Hong Kong, 290 of the 1,975 Canadians defending the island were killed in battle. After the Canadians were captured by the Japanese on Christmas Day, 1941, Canadian soldiers were taken into a brutal period of captivity, first in Hong Kong and then in Japan. Deprived of food and sanitary conditions, 267 more Canadians died as Prisoners of War. In Hong Kong…
Posted in History Comments closed
Musing About Macoun
Today I got to study a plant specimen that had been collected 100 years before I was born in 1872 by one of the most famous Canadian botanists, Dr. John Macoun. Dr. Macoun accompanied the engineer Sanford Fleming to look for a railroad route through the Canadian west and determine the area’s agricultural potential. Macoun collected thousands of plant and animal specimens on his journeys, which involved travelling either by…
Posted in Botany, Collections & Research Comments closed
The Sloth’s Tale
Ever since the Museum’s Earth History Gallery opened in the early 1970s, visitors have been struck by the appearance of a giant skeleton near the end of the gallery. Many children (and perhaps more than a few adults) have thought that it is a dinosaur, but it is in fact a mammal from the much more recent past, a replica of the giant ground sloth Megatherium americanum. Megatherium was a…
Posted in Exhibit, Geology & Paleontology Tagged fossils, museum, paleontology, Pleistocene Comments closed
