A GEM OF AN OFFER
Judah Tyreman, the 14-year-old operator of sesula Mineral And Gem Museum in Radisson, is rebuilding his collection after items were stolen during a break-in. on tuesday, he met with Ryan Mckellar of the Royal Saskatchewan Museum to pick out replacement items. As it turns out, the museum has duplicates it no longer needs.
After having thousands of dollars worth of items stolen from his Radisson mineral and gem museum in March, Jonah Tyreman got a boost to help rebuild his collection.
On Tuesday afternoon, the Royal Saskatchewan Museum let Tyreman , 14, pick what he wanted from among the museum’s duplicate mineral and gem specimens, and Tyreman was delighted at the opportunity.
“It will expand the collection quite a decent amount so I can display more, show everyone different pieces from the Royal (Saskatchewan) Museum,” he said.
Tyreman curates his museum, the Sesula Mineral and Gem Museum, and has been doing so since he was 11 years old. He lost between $6,000 and $8,000 worth of items when the museum was broken into, and he has been working on rebuilding his collection since then.
Ryan McKellar, curator of invertebrate paleontology at the Royal Saskatchewan Museum, said the timing worked out that the museum could make this donation.
“We were in the midst of cleaning up our geology collection and eliminating some of the duplicates and it turned out the timing was perfect. Some of these duplicates could go to a good home.”
The specimen duplicates are specific to Saskatchewan or Canada, which excited Tyreman.
“It’s a bunch of different things that I can add to the museum and everything, and it’s nice to get some Saskatchewan minerals in,” he said.
McKellar said these specimens are ones for which the Royal Saskatchewan Museum has no purpose. “A lot of these are historical donations to the museum where we have in some cases six pieces of obsidian but, really, in terms of a teaching collection, we only need one or two.”
Tyreman said he hopes to expand his museum past its main floor by updating the upstairs of the current building and then eventually the basement as well.