Shovels, snowshoes and skates
Museum exhibit celebrates snow in all its very Canadian glory
Former prime minister Jean Chrétien famously compared governing this country to extracting a car from a snowbank. It made for a vivid image and was widely quoted, in part because it is a most Canadian metaphor and it involves something we all love/hate — snow. That omnipresent snowbank is with us still.
Now the Canadian Museum of Civilization has taken snow and made an exhibition out of it. The white stuff is with us six, seven, eight months a year, and it helps define our society.
Starting Friday and running until Sept. 28, 2014, the museum will feature artifacts such as skis, skates and snowmobiles, artworks and photographs of snow, what we do with it and how we cope with it.
The show has been put together with the J. Armand Bombardier Museum in Valcourt, where a version will be on exhibition in 2015.
The show is what the museum calls a “testament to our long-standing fascination with snow, as well as our love (and sometimes hate) of it. A source of passion, creativity and ingenuity, snow, like many other aspects of our Canadian identity, means something special to each one of us.”
The exhibition begins with a display of more than 400 photos contributed by Canadians.
These are displayed digitally and will evoke a lot of memories for any viewer, the museum expects.
Canadians have been making clothing and implements to cope with winter weather since — well, since forever. This exhibition will feature many of these, from boots to shovels, mittens, sleds and snow tires. Some of these artifacts were made hundreds of years ago, some today.
Visitors will see boots made out of sealskin and caribou hide; snowshoes and clothing designed to be warm and waterproof; and glasses made from walrus ivory by Nunavut’s Thule Inuit and dating back to around the year 1300. The glasses have narrow slits in the lenses to protect the wearer from the cold and snow blindness.
Perhaps the man who did the most to innovate ways around the winter wonderland that is Canada was the inventor and businessman Joseph-Armand Bombardier, who designed a tracked vehicle that travelled on snow. One of his original models, on loan from the J. Armand Bombardier Museum, is on display.
Winter sports are a key part of the show, with skis, skates and sleds on view.
Those interested in the art inspired by snow will be able to view films and artworks, including Kananginak Pootoogook’s lithograph Building a Snow House.
Exhibition curator Bianca Gendreau points out: “The exhibition doesn’t paint a perfect picture of snow; it shows the challenging side, as well. It’ll get visitors to think about their relationship with snow and to share their experiences with members of other generations.”