A Paper Trail That Speaks Volumes

What can a piece of paper reveal about a life? In May, in honour of Asian Heritage Month, the Manitoba Museum invites you to discover how fragile documents—certificates, photos, and government records—reveal powerful stories of tragedy, loss, survival, adaptation, and triumph.

Continue learning with the accompanying book, The Paper Trail to the 1923 Chinese Exclusion Act, by award-winning curator and author Catherine Clement, available in the Manitoba Museum Shop. Expanding beyond the exhibition, this landmark book delves deeper into the human experiences of the exclusion years, revealing the lived realities behind one of the most consequential yet often overlooked chapters in Canadian history.

Come see The Paper Trail to the 1923 Chinese Exclusion Act, now on exhibition at the Manitoba Museum.

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By Mike Jensen, Science Programs Specialist

Every year on April 22, people around the world celebrate Earth Day, a moment to appreciate the wondrous planet we call home. Earth supplies the air we breathe, the water we drink, and the ecosystems that support a mind-blowing diversity of life.

It’s easy to take these systems for granted because they quietly work behind the scenes every day. Forests and wetlands help clean our air and water, oceans and lakes support countless species, and the atmosphere protects life on Earth.

Here are a few simple ways to celebrate Earth Day at home this Spring:

• Plant pollinator-friendly flowers or native plants.
• Pick up litter in a local park or along the river.
• Take shorter showers and turn off lights in empty rooms.
• Take a hike in a natural space near your community.

By learning more about our world and making thoughtful choices in our daily lives, each of us can help keep Earth happy for generations to come.

After all, when it comes to our home planet, every day is a good day to celebrate it.

You can also celebrate Earth Days at the Manitoba Museum on April 18 and 19! Explore the Museum Galleries on an Earth Day scavenger hunt. Become a Climate Hero at our Ocean Adventure workshop in the Science Gallery. And take in one of three Planetarium shows, all showcasing our planet.

Learn more about Earth Days programming

Tracking frogs and toads to monitor environmental change.

March doesn’t seem the ideal month to think about looking for frogs and toads; ponds are frozen and amphibians are hibernating underwater or underground. But at the Museum, we are well into planning spring fieldwork that will map where frogs live, discover any changes in occurrence, and explore what that means for our environment.  Along with scientists at other institutions, Museum curators work to understand past and present distributions of frogs and toads, providing clues about Manitoba’s future.

Scientists and conservation managers often have surprisingly limited information on many Manitoban animals, sometimes even including where they can be found! Museum collections are valuable because they retain physical records of the occurrence of species over many years, providing data to build distribution maps of less frequently encountered groups, like frogs and toads. Researchers, including those at the Museum, have applied these data to plan surveys to search for undiscovered populations with great success.  The known ranges of some of our frogs have been extended by hundreds of kilometres! Knowing where species live is a critical first step for any conservation strategy.

The Manitoba Museum is thrilled to introduce Curator Conversations, an exciting new speaker series that brings you face-to-face with the experts who uncover the stories of our province—and beyond.

Join us as our passionate curators share fascinating insights into the realms of palaeontology, astronomy, botany, history, and zoology. Each session offers a rare opportunity to explore the science, history, and intrigue behind the Museum’s collections and research.

Explore ground-breaking fossil discoveries that reveal life’s earliest chapters; find out how we “curate” the mysteries of the universe in the Planetarium; follow along in the painstaking process of documenting Manitoba’s flora; learn the truth behind cold war preparations in Churchill, Manitoba; and find out the “What, Why, and How” of some of the 125,000 animal specimens in our zoology collection.

Curator Conversations will connect you to the stories that shape our understanding of the natural and cultural world. Don’t miss your chance to engage, ask questions, and see the Manitoba Museum like never before!

Click the links above to learn more about upcoming sessions.

Temporary display features remarkable fossils and new research from the Burgess Shale.

When we think of fossils, dinosaur bones, mammoth tusks, or the corals and shells seen in Winnipeg Tyndall stone building blocks might come to mind. These creatures had hard, mineralized body parts which are resistant to decay and can be readily preserved. However, under rare circumstances, traces of the soft tissues of organisms, such as eyes, guts, and nervous systems, can be fossilized too!

The exhibit “Weird wonders from the dawn of complex life” is on display in the Museum foyer and is FREE to view! While you’re visiting, come and check out other new additions to the Galleries, such as our Ice Age mural, a brand-new installation in the Earth History Gallery.

Plan your visit

The holiday season is upon us once again! Are you looking for unique ideas for loved ones in your life? For gifts ranging from STEM kits for young learners to unique Manitoban-made jewelry, look no further than the Manitoba Museum Shop! We’ve gathered a few of our favourite things for everyone on your list!

Our Favourites for Book Lovers

Did you know that the Manitoba Museum has a collection of publications for every reader on your list? For your budding botanist, check out the newly released Manitoba Flora, a guide to our province’s plant-life compiled by Museum Curator Dr. Diana Bizecki Robson; for the younger language learners, be sure to check out the “Do’s and Don’ts of Anishinaabe” colouring book; and for those who love historical non-fiction, learn the remarkable story of the Nonsuch, the ship that launched an empire – available in both paperback and hard cover.

Buy Manitoba Flora: $35.99

Buy Do’s and Don’ts of Anishinaabe: $8.95

Buy The Nonsuch: Paperback: $14.95; buy The Nonsuch: Hard cover: $19.95

Be sure to stop by the Manitoba Museum Shop before December 24 to take advantage of our annual Holiday Sale – 15% off everything in store, 25% off for Museum Members! Our Pop-Up Shop is located next to our temporary Box Office in Festival Hall.

You can also find our full stock of gifts online at ManitobaMuseumShop.ca. Happy Shopping!

Manitoban Emily A. Parker served as a Nursing Sister during the First World War; the recent discovery of her nursing cape in the Manitoba Museum collection is bringing her story back to life through careful conservation efforts.

Silk is a particularly tricky textile to repair because not all manufacturers used the same process to create the fabric. The weighted feeling of silk as you hold it in your hands is a result of adding metallic salts during the manufacturing process which can contain undesirable chlorides. The chlorides, in addition to poor storage, accelerate the damage with time and can create a shattered appearance in the fabric.

Despite the finnicky nature of silk, I recently undertook the treatment of the cape in the conservation lab for display in November 2026. Silk crepeline netting was carefully stitched overtop of the damaged areas, the hemline was stitched back into position using the original needle holes, and a support backing was used to stabilize areas of loss.

As stewards of the belongings found in our collections, it is important to preserve objects like Emily Parker’s cape, as they offer insights into the story of an individual or time that could otherwise be lost to the past.

Manitoba has over 1,700 species of wildflowers, ferns, shrubs and trees. But identifying them is not easy.  

The original Flora of Manitoba book, published in 1957, is missing more than 300 species known to grow here, including 13 ferns and 10 orchids. For the last two decades, staff at the Manitoba Museum, along with a team of volunteer botanists, have been working on an updated edition of Manitoba Flora to replace the old one.

This team spent years conducting field surveys to search for new species and relocate rare plant populations. Close examination of the Museum’s preserved specimens was also conducted to verify and update the plants’ names. The new publication will contain all the ‘missing’ species, making it easier for scientists to track the rarity of the provinces’ plants.   

Volume 1 of the Manitoba Flora will cover 614 species of spore-producing plants (i.e. clubmosses, ferns, horsetails, quillworts, and spikemosses), conifers, and flowering monocots (i.e. orchids, irises, lilies, grasses, etc.).  Volume 2, available in a few years, will cover the dicots (e.g. broad-leaved trees, asters, roses, etc.). 

In addition to detailed descriptions of the plants, the book will also contain: 

• A foreward by elder Mukaday Animikii/Black Thunderbird/Shirli Ewanchuk on Indigenous worldviews and relationships with the plant world;
• A history of scientific and common plant names;
• An illustrated guide to vascular plant terminology;
• Hundreds of species illustrations;
• Indigenous names of culturally important plants integrated throughout the book;
• Species’ rarity, ecological zones, habitats, and flowering periods; and
• An extensive glossary of botanical terms.

It is the Manitoba Museum’s hope that this new publication will make it easier for students, professional botanists, landowners, ranchers, foresters, gardeners and native plant enthusiasts to identify the plants of the province. 

You can pre-order your copy of Volume 1 of the Manitoba Flora, available this fall, by visiting the online Museum Shop at ManitobaMuseumShop.ca!

By Dorota Blumczyńska, Manitoba Museum CEO, and Dr. Amelia Fay, Curator of Anthropology & HBC Museum Collection

Repatriation means returning belongings—including ceremonial or sacred items—to the First Nations, Inuit, or Métis communities they came from. These may have been taken without consent, acquired under duress, or have limited provenance information regarding how they came into the Museum. Returning them is not just the right thing to do—it is essential to healing.

So, how do we know who items belong to?

The Museum works with Elders, Knowledge Keepers, and Community Leaders, and closely reviews archives and donor records to try to learn the origins of each item. The Museum is responsible for gathering the necessary information to support the repatriation

What happens to the items when they are returned?

Once returned to their rightful community, items are often welcomed home through ceremony. The First Nations, Inuit, or Métis community will decide if they are placed in cultural centres or returned to active use. It is not up to the Museum to dictate the future of these belongings once they have been returned.

Repatriation acknowledges past wrongs, respects First Nations, Inuit, and Métis laws, and begins to repair harm. It reminds us that reconciliation is not a destination—it’s an ongoing responsibility. By returning what was never ours to keep, we take a small but meaningful step toward justice.

By Amelia Fay, Curator of Anthropology and HBC Museum Collections

Summertime is when many folks travel to visit family and friends, or just to have a nice vacation away from their regular routine. If you’re like me, when planning a trip you make time to check out the local museums, but even when you travel far, you might still see some belongings, artifacts, or specimens from your Manitoba Museum. Like many museums, we have a robust loans program where our collection travels across Canada (and even internationally!) for community engagement, research, or to be featured in exhibitions at other museums.

Summertime is when many folks travel to visit family and friends, or just to have a nice vacation away from their regular routine. If you’re like me, when planning a trip you make time to check out the local museums, but even when you travel far, you might still see some belongings, artifacts, or specimens from your Manitoba Museum. Like many museums, we have a robust loans program where our collection travels across Canada (and even internationally!) for community engagement, research, or to be featured in exhibitions at other museums.

From the collections I curate, Anthropology and HBC, some very significant belongings are currently on display in two exhibitions at the Museum of Anthropology (MOA) in Vancouver.

In A Different Light: Reflecting on Northwest Coast Art includes two rattles made by Haida and Nuu-chah-nulth artists.

Nuxalk Strong: Dancing Down the Eyelashes of the Sun includes a potlatch hat that was on permanent display in the HBC Gallery and a speaker’s staff that belonged to Helen Housty, a prominent woman from the Heiltsuk Nation who married Staltmc Samson Schooner of the Nuxalk Nation.

I had the honour of attending the opening of the Nuxalk Strong exhibition back in February and it was incredible to witness visitors reconnecting with their belongings from other institutions like ours.

Wherever you’re headed this summer, I hope you make museums part of your trip. If you see any belongings, artifacts, or specimens from the Manitoba Museum, share a picture with us on social media. We love seeing our collections reach new audiences near and far!

Staycation with us! Plan your Summer @ the Manitoba Museum visit today.