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The Adventure of Exhibit Planning IX

By: Graham Iddon


April 6, 2015
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Voices from the Engraver is launched!

Museum panels

Introductory panels, including a full printing plate of stamps and a sheet of $1000 bills.

It’s was an exciting and anxious time: a sort of combination of Christmas morning and a doctor’s appointment. Our little team from the Museum stood in the education space of the Sherbrooke Nature and Science Museum on a chill November morning while the exhibition technicians assembled our finished exhibition. Yes, finished. It was the first time we’d seen the panels with artifacts attached, sat in the photo booth, tried the physical interactive or even seen how the exhibition zones related to one another. For months we’d been accustomed to seeing the exhibition as a white board scribble or a rendering on a computer monitor. To walk through the full-scale exhibition was at once surreal and giddily exciting.

Exhibition panels in a museum

The main panel units are 8 feet tall and 4 feet along each side.

Museum display case

Each “exhiblet” is an offshoot of the main exhibit story and is housed in a case designed to look like a drafting table.

Exhibition panels in a museum

Voices is comprised of 14 separate display units including interactives.

Prior to their first assembly, travelling exhibitions can harbour any number of nasty surprises that are just waiting to jump out and yell “Boo!”. Things just don’t always work as well in practice as they do in the imagination - that’s life. So when you see four exhibit builders standing in a circle scratching their chins and staring at a hinge assembly, you know something said “boo”. In the case of Voices from the Engraver, there was no such chin scratching. There were some expected minor glitches with the timeline touch screen and some adjustments needed to the way the panels fit together, but it was remarkably (dare I say, amazingly) trouble-free. We were so very pleased.

A machine for drawing patterns

This works just like the old Spirograph® game; you can move one paper from station to station to create a highly complex pattern.

Bank notes and stamps in cases

These are real stamps and notes, all relating to how Canadians represent themselves on stamps and bills.

Children operating a touch panel

Visitors place their photos into a variety of changeable graphic features and colours to make their own stamps and bills.

Part of making this exhibit as trouble-free as possible comes from the very traditional nature of the basic assembly. Not that there isn’t a lot of high technology, but it is all housed in frameworks that wouldn’t surprise any cabinet maker from the last century. Why use vacuum assisted, electromagnetic torque inducing titanium fasteners (OK, I made that up) when a simple wooden gate latch will do? Seriously, though, keeping things simple is a good practice in this business, especially when your exhibit is likely to be 2500 kilometres from the nearest titanium electromagnetic vacuum fastener supplier.

So, here it is. What do you think? We think it’s beautiful, but we’re a bit biased.

A computer monitor showing dates

The history of engraving timeline includes historical contexts; most of the items are illustrated with Canadian stamps.

Engraving tools

Most of these tools were used by Canadian engravers in the engraving of our bank notes and stamps.

Stamps and images of stamps

Where references were made to specific stamps, enlargements were printed to aid the viewing of such tiny artifacts.

As of publication, Voices will be at its 3rd venue, the Galt Museum & Archives in Lethbridge, AB. Its second run was at the Musée régional de Kamouraska, north of Québec City, where it was set up without a hitch. Please see the travelling exhibitions page on this website for more info. Thanks to the exhibitions staff at the Sherbrooke Nature and Science Museum and, of course, our hard-working curatorial and exhibition teams.

We want to hear from you! Do you have an idea for a blog post you’d like to see?
Content type(s): Blog posts

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The Museum Blog

February 26, 2025

New acquisitions—2024 edition

By: David Bergeron, Krista Broeckx


Bank of Canada Museum’s acquisitions in 2024 highlight the relationships that shape the National Currency Collection.
Content type(s): Blog posts
February 11, 2025

Money’s metaphors

By: Phillipe Audet-Cayer, Graham Iddon, Patricia Marando


Buck, broke, greenback, loonie, toonie, dough, flush, gravy train, born with a silver spoon in your mouth… No matter how common the expression for money, many of us haven’t the faintest idea where these terms come from.
Content type(s): Blog posts
August 6, 2024

Treaties, money and art

By: Krista Broeckx, Frank Shebageget


Photo, collage, a photograph and a drawing of an elderly White man in a high collar and old-fashioned suit.
The Bank of Canada Museum’s collection has a new addition: an artwork called Free Ride by Frank Shebageget. But why would a museum about the economy buy art?
Content type(s): Blog posts Subject(s): Arts, History
July 16, 2024

Rai: big money

By: Graham Iddon


An item is said to have cultural value when it can be directly associated with the history, people, beliefs or rituals important to a society. It’s the same with a rai—its value can be greater depending upon who authorized it, who carved it and who subsequently owned it.
Content type(s): Blog posts Subject(s): Economy, Geography, History Grade level(s): Grades 11 and 12 / Secondary 5 and CEGEP
April 18, 2024

Lessons from the Great Depression

By: Graham Iddon


A welfare coupon and piece of stock ticker tape over a 1930s black and white photo of unemployed men gathering to protest.
What the stock market crash of 1929 did was starkly reveal the weaknesses of economic systems that had evolved from the unregulated capitalism of the late 19th century.
Content type(s): Blog posts Subject(s): Financial literacy, History Grade level(s): Grade 09 / Secondary 3, Grade 10 / Secondary 4, Grades 11 and 12 / Secondary 5 and CEGEP
March 25, 2024

Welcoming Newfoundland to Canada

By: David Bergeron


Newfoundland’s entry into Confederation marked the end of an era when Canadian provinces issued their own coins and paper money.
Content type(s): Blog posts
December 19, 2023

New Acquisitions—2023 Edition

By: David Bergeron, Krista Broeckx


It’s that time of the year again—the wrap-up of the Bank of Canada Museum’s annual acquisition program. Here are a few highlights of the latest additions to the National Currency Collection.
Content type(s): Blog posts
November 27, 2023

Mo’ money, mo’ questions

By: Heather Montgomery


But what do you do with money once you have it? That’s for you to decide. A budget can really help. It will allow you to keep track of what you earn (income) and what you spend (expenses).
Content type(s): Blog posts Subject(s): Financial literacy Grade level(s): Grade 04, Grade 05, Grade 06, Grade 07 / Secondary 1, Grade 08 / Secondary 2, Grade 09 / Secondary 3, Grade 10 / Secondary 4, Grades 11 and 12 / Secondary 5 and CEGEP
November 16, 2023

Understanding cryptocurrencies

By: Graham Iddon


Un circuit imprimé d’un ordinateur avec des dizaines de circuits et un ventilateur.
Most of us are aware of them, but how much do we really understand about cryptocurrencies?
Content type(s): Blog posts Subject(s): Economy, Financial literacy Grade level(s): Grade 08 / Secondary 2, Grade 09 / Secondary 3, Grade 10 / Secondary 4, Grades 11 and 12 / Secondary 5 and CEGEP
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A checkup on cheques

By: David Bergeron


Photo, a tabletop with several printed paper forms and hand-written documents plus a bank card.  
With the continuing rise of e-transfers and electronic payments, people have been predicting the death of the humble cheque for decades. But it hasn’t happened yet.
Content type(s): Blog posts
July 31, 2023

The Scenes of Canada series $100 bill

By: Graham Iddon


Few of us ever get a chance to see a Scenes of Canada $100 bill. Which is a pity, because it is an example of great bank note design with even greater imagery by a master engraver.
Content type(s): Blog posts Subject(s): History

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