A clear sign of our reopening
Until 2013, a large stone ring stood amongst the tropical foliage in the Garden Court of the Bank of Canada’s head office. It wasn’t a sculpture—it was a Yap stone, giant stone money from the island of Yap in the Federated States of Micronesia. Our Yap stone has been with the Bank for 38 years, longer than all but a handful of employees—12 at last count. I had been at the Currency Museum for barely three months myself before a flatbed truck, a huge crane and a dozen men in helmets and safety vests took the Yap stone away. For us, its removal from the Garden Court dramatically marked the Currency Museum’s closing. The big stone’s return now performs the opposite role for the new Bank of Canada Museum—heralding its opening.
For nearly 40 years, our Yap stone stood in the Garden Court of the Bank’s Ottawa head office complex.
The stone is poised above the truck that would take it to Gatineau for its four-year sleep.
For those of you unfamiliar with our Yap stone, or for that matter, any Yap stone, below is the artifact’s exhibition label as it appears in the Museum.
This impressive stone disc is actually money from the Pacific island of Yap. “Rai,” as these stones are called, range from a few centimetres high to four metres high. This is the largest-known rai outside of Yap. It likely stood upright in the ground outside its first owner’s house. When traded, a rai did not move—it simply changed ownership. Rai were quarried on the island of Palau and taken to Yap on rafts, crossing 500 kilometres of open water. The difficulties of this journey contributed to the rai’s value. Although rai are still occasionally used for culturally significant exchanges, the official currency of Yap is now the US dollar—a somewhat more portable currency.
The Museum’s Yap stone is one of the few rai that actually did move (several times, as it happens) and on 3 June 2017, made what we hope will be its last journey for a very long time. It came home to the Bank.
In the last week of May, two of the great curtain windows were removed from the side of the Museum entrance pyramid to allow the Yap stone to be lowered onto its place: a small pedestal just below street level beside the stairs leading down to the Museum. When I arrived early on the Saturday morning of installation, the window frames had been removed but there was no sign of the stone. I quickly discovered that what was adequate clothing for a morning bicycle ride was inadequate for standing around waiting for a truck to arrive. Your stalwart correspondent then resorted to hopping around to maintain circulation until a big, red flatbed truck rumbled up to the curb. Occupying one half of the trailer was a tall, wooden crate: the guest of honour. On the other half was a curious machine: a cross between a crane and a forklift. It looked entirely inadequate for the task at hand, but proved itself admirably when it swung into action an hour later. First, though, the flatbed trailer did this amazingly graceful transformation. The bed split in half and the end section slid forward and tilted back while the wheels were pulled towards the truck. It wasn’t as if it turned into a giant robot on rollerblades, but the effect was pretty cool, nonetheless. After the crane rolled onto the sidewalk and the trailer returned to its regular shape, three or four burly men began pulling the crate and its supporting frame apart. And there it was, our Yap stone.
We couldn’t imagine how this funny contraption was going to do the job, but it turned out to be just the right machine.
A number of us observed the flatbed trailer do this trick and I, for one, had to stop myself from applauding.
This was the first time our “rai” had seen daylight in four years. It remained wrapped up until the windows were replaced.
Although the big stone’s final placement was a subject of much debate, the entrance pyramid was always designed with the installation of the Yap stone in mind. Because of an awkwardly placed lamp post, however, the process of placing the stone had to be done in two stages. The crane couldn’t operate directly in front of the stone’s pedestal, so the stone had to be inserted through one frame of the window and temporarily placed on the top stair landing. Then the crane turned itself around and hooked up to the stone through the neighbouring window frame to allow the big disc to be swung into place without hitting any support columns.
Follow me carefully, here:
The crane gently lifted the stone from the truck and backed it carefully up Wellington Street.
Having backed up Wellington Street, the crane did a slow u-turn and then backed down Wellington, returning to the windows.
Because the lamppost is directly in line with the pedestal, the stone had to be inserted through the windows from the opposite angle.
With only a little wiggle room, the stone was inserted ever so gently through the window.
The stone was temporarily placed on the first landing of the Museum’s stair case and the crane unhooked.
The stone was re-hooked to the crane and lifted for its final manoeuvre onto its pedestal. Note the crane has been moved to the far side of the window frame.
As the Yap stone is lifted over the stair railing to its pedestal, the top of the crane was roughly 15 centimetres from the ceiling.
Almost there! The stone was suspended millimetres from its pedestal as the securing bolts were inserted.
The stone will be strapped in place until the window frames and a proper supporting arm are installed. It will remain wrapped until this time.
So smooth and quick was the whole installation process, that a lot of planning had clearly gone into it. It appeared as if it had been rehearsed, in fact. As a spectator sport, it was worth getting up at 7:00 on a Saturday morning to watch.
The Yap stone fixed in place, wrappers removed and ready to welcome visitors.
Like the robins of spring, the return of the Yap stone to the Bank heralds a new beginning: the opening of the new Bank of Canada Museum. The big stone disc has been placed at the top of the stairs as a sort of welcoming gate keeper that will again become as familiar as any Ottawa landmark. For us it is like the return of a long-lost friend.
Welcome home.
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The Museum Blog
June 16, 2014
Museum Reconstruction - Part 2
By: Graham Iddon
We are coming up on a year since we closed the doors on the physical museum. During that year, we’ve worked very hard to make sure everybody knows that we are still a functioning museum and one that will be opening its doors again in a few years on a beautiful new space, with an expanded mission and mandate.
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June 6, 2014
Becoming a Collector III
By: Graham Iddon
For you as the steward of your collection, your aim is to preserve the items as best as you can by protecting them from further deterioration. The pros call this preservation.
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May 26, 2014
The Adventure of Exhibit Planning IV
By: Graham Iddon
This exhibition is about engravers, production processes and the beauty of postage stamps and bank notes. In the previous episode of this series we talked about the process surrounding securing the bank notes for this exhibition and how it had to take into account both the needs of the exhibition team and the concerns of the collections department.
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May 20, 2014
Becoming a Collector II
By: Graham Iddon
So now you’ve decided that collecting currency is far more fascinating than collecting 14th Century Flemish altar paintings and have begun to accumulate some items. Good for you, those paintings are a bother to dust and currency is far easier to take care of.
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May 12, 2014
Becoming a Collector I
By: Graham Iddon
Collecting things is a very common human urge. Be they matchbooks, pop bottles or 17th century Flemish altar paintings, owning large numbers of the same type of thing is a fascinating pastime for many of us.
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May 2, 2014
The Adventure of Exhibit Planning III
By: Graham Iddon
During the planning stages stamping the word ‘final’ on any given aspect of a travelling exhibition can seem less of a directive and more of an overly optimistic suggestion.
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April 22, 2014
Notes from the Collection: Recent Acquisitions II
By: Paul S. Berry
This month’s selections highlight various areas of Collection development. These include what are called financial instruments: items such as stocks, bonds shares and other articles that represent a contract to deliver money in some manner.
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April 3, 2014
Museum Reconstruction - Part 1
By: Graham Iddon
In early February, a small group from the Bank’s Communications Department booked a brief tour of the main floor and first basement at the Wellington Street head office. It’s still in the demolition phase of the renovation.
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March 28, 2014
Notgeld, emergency money from interwar Europe
Notgeld, German for emergency money, first appeared at the beginning of World War One and was issued until 1924. Through these notes we can see the entire story of Germany’s experience with out-of-control inflation between the wars.
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February 27, 2014
Notes From the Collection: Recent Acquisitions
By: Paul S. Berry
Before the Museum closed, and the Collection moved to Gatineau, the curators regularly hosted a show and tell session for staff to see new acquisitions. With the help of the Museum’s new blog, that tradition will continue; only now, you too will be able to see and learn about some of the brilliant new stars in the Collection. Get out your sunglasses!
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February 14, 2014
We’re the Currency Museum, not the Mint
By: Graham Iddon
If we had a nickel for every time people asked questions like that, we’d have… Well, I suppose we have roughly that number of nickels already; we have a long history as a currency museum after all. When the museum was open, somebody would ask a similar question several times a week.
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February 7, 2014
Notes from the Collection: Moving Forward
By: Raewyn Passmore
After four months in our new digs the Collections Team is starting to settle in. But even though most of the boxes have been unpacked there is still a lot of work to do. In 2014 we will be collaborating with the Exhibitions Team on travelling exhibits and coming up with ideas for the new museum space.
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November 18, 2013
Notes from the Collection: A Buying Trip to Toronto
By: Paul S. Berry
Recently, from October 3 to 5th, collections staff were at the Toronto Coin Expo, held at the Toronto Reference Library on Yonge Street. The show boasts informative lectures, a large auction of coins, tokens and paper money as well as a showroom, called a bourse, where dealers greet clients and buy and sell material.
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October 28, 2013
Director’s chair : A little help from our friends
By: Ken Ross
In one of my favourite cinematic moments, the 11 year-old chess prodigy, Josh Waitzkin, imagines sweeping the pieces off a chess board in order to help him think more clearly about an important game of chess. It is a championship game and he is on the brink of winning it all.
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