Couldn’t have gone better
After four years of plans, worries, setbacks, successes and sheer hard work, the Bank of Canada Museum opened its doors—on Canada Day, right on schedule. Whew! Our future began with a ribbon cutting. And no, the deed was not done by the Prince of Wales and the Duchess of Cornwall. The Bank has its own in-house ribbon cutting team, thank you very much, in the form of Governor Stephen S. Poloz with Senior Deputy Governor Carolyn A. Wilkins. They may not be royalty, but it’s nice that our ribbon cutters are both Canadian VIPs and friends.
We are officially open and really wet. Not as wet as our photographer, though.
Since we were expecting around 2,000 visitors, it was an “all hands on deck” day for the opening event. Nearly the entire Museum staff was there, helping kids at the craft tables, working the door, assisting with the interactives or just strolling around and lending a hand where needed. Fortunately, there was no need to employ another nautical term: “all hands to the pumps.” At no time did our opening day resemble a sinking ship—just a crowded one. In fact, keeping the crowds down to our maximum capacity required a fair amount of management in itself but fortunately we did not require a bouncer. To keep the folks in line happy, our roving entertainer was on the plaza, helping the wait times seem as brief as possible.
People cheerfully stood for half an hour in the rain awaiting entry to the Museum.
Our first public visitor! Welcome, Mr. Pat Brophey.
Somewhere near that tent are two clowns making balloon sculptures for the kids.
In fact, a number of things were happening on the plaza where our rather unmissable welcome tent was set up. From under it (a relief for staff no matter what the weather) we distributed our swag: bookmarks, balloons, hand fans, temporary tattoos and cookies—all very popular. The cookie supply actually lasted a surprising amount of time. (about 20 minutes) To be honest, anything longer than fifteen minutes was surprising and it didn’t matter whether the cookie consumers visited the Museum or not. The cookies were simply clever advertising and a whole lot tastier than a brochure or button.
Our swag booth was swarmed for much of the day.
We gave away thousands of these cheery hand fans. Many got used as impromptu umbrellas.
Hundreds of visitors were more than happy to have our logo stuck to their arms—or their faces.
Even though the Museum has a legal capacity of 400 visitors, there are only so many digital label stations or interactive units. We needed a little supplemental labelling of the human variety for this contingency, so our team of guides got a major verbal workout. For the very curious, two of our curators were on hand to explain the significance and history of the artifacts in greater detail. It’s not every day they get to talk to the public about their subject —and they really like their subject. Fortunately, nobody got our Chief Curator going on Japanese Hansatsu paper money or they’d still be there.
Some of the guides were quite hoarse by the end of the day—some by the middle.
Keeping inflation stable. Flying the 2 per cent rocket.
Making your own bank note was one of the most popular stations in the Museum.
The Museum team was joined by a few members of the Bank’s Currency Department. They were promoting the Canada 150 commemorative bank note and along with an information kiosk, had a table where visitors could get a fresh, new commemorative $10 bill. Of course the staff weren’t giving the notes away—visitors had to exchange their old $10 bills for new ones—but it proved a popular feature anyway.
Rain or shine, the C150 photo booth was busy all day long.
All of our videos are rated “G.”
In all, 2,823 people walked through our doors this Canada Day. That’s a major crowd and they sure seemed to have a good time—especially the kids. I doubt that even half our visitors got a chance to fly the 2 per cent rocket and the digital labels proved a bit too popular for most visitors to get a close-up of their favourite artifact, but that was never the point. The point was for people to wander around, learn what we’re about and want to come back and explore the Museum at their leisure. It was really just a big “Hello” to Canadians and there couldn’t have been a better time than when so many thousands of them were in the neighbourhood and in a mood to celebrate.
Bye-bye! Thanks for making our day.
And now we’d like to thank you for visiting us. It was our pleasure and we hope to see you again, soon. Just not all at once, please.
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
The Museum Blog
January 14, 2015
The Adventure of Exhibit Planning VII
An exhibition fabrication company was finally selected by the Museum to produce the upcoming “Voices from the Engraver” travelling exhibition. It’s all very exciting.
Content type(s):
Blog posts
December 15, 2014
New Acquisitions
By: Raewyn Passmore
The recent additions to the National Currency Collection described below are from very different parts of the world and are between 1500 and 2500 years old.
Content type(s):
Blog posts
November 28, 2014
The Big Nickel
By: Paul S. Berry
The commemorative 1951 5 cent piece was issued to mark the 200th anniversary of the naming of nickel and its isolation as an element. Recently, I had the great pleasure to participate in the Big Nickel anniversary festivities and give a talk about the design competition for the 1951 5 cent coin.
Content type(s):
Blog posts
November 6, 2014
The Adventure of Exhibit Planning VI
By: Graham Iddon
This is not the time for ‘nay sayers’. Basically, we planned a luxury car knowing that when all was said and done, it was going to be a very nice family sedan (maybe with the big engine?).
Content type(s):
Blog posts
September 29, 2014
The Adventure of Exhibit Planning V
By: Graham Iddon
Now the writer takes a deep breath and attempts to take a subject like the ‘representation of 75 years of national identity as depicted on stamps and bank notes’ from 50 pages of research and squash it into 65 words.
Content type(s):
Blog posts
August 6, 2014
The Senior Deputy Governor’s Signature
By: Graham Iddon
For much of their history, Canadian bank notes have represented a promise, a guarantee that they could be redeemed for “specie” (gold and silver coins) at their parent institution.
Content type(s):
Blog posts
July 28, 2014
Becoming a Collector V
By: Graham Iddon
Suppose you walk into a bar frequented by currency collectors and in an attempt to join in you refer to a ‘planchette’ as a ‘rosette’ (beer mugs hit the tables and the pianist stops playing). This could be pretty humiliating and you’ll probably never be able to go to that bar again, at least not on numismatic night.
Content type(s):
Blog posts
July 21, 2014
Becoming a Collector IV
By: Graham Iddon
Now that you have a grasp of preservation techniques for coins, you might want to familiarize yourself with the finer points of their anatomy. It is all part of your numismatic education and besides, you need to be informed and sound informed when you are buying coins at flea markets or coin fairs.
Content type(s):
Blog posts
July 7, 2014
Museum Reconstruction - Part 3
By: Graham Iddon
Though naturally we are aware that the former Museum space is being gutted, the reality of seeing it empty is still pretty strange for most of us here. In the last blog of this series we showed you the empty cafeteria space that will become the new Museum, as well as some images of the old Museum as it was at the time: stuffed with odds and ends of exhibit cases, the occasional display still on the walls.
Content type(s):
Blog posts
June 23, 2014
CENTimental Journey
By: Graham Iddon
With all the blogging we’ve been doing for Voices from the Engraver, you’d think we had nothing else on our exhibition plate. We do, actually, and it’s called CENTimental Journey. This temporary exhibition, hosted at the Canadian Museum of History, walks you through more than 150 years of the Canadian 1 cent piece.
Content type(s):
Blog posts
