By Lindsey Cooke
PETERBOROUGH- The Peterborough and Archives Museum celebrated its 50th anniversary recently and with that they created an in house exhibit titled, Made in Canada-Really! The exhibit is based on objects manufactured in Peterborough that contributed to Canada’s industrial economy.
“We knew our 50th anniversary was coming up and Canada’s 150 was coming up and we hadn’t booked anything into the exhibit space at that point because it was a year and a half ago. I was at Canadian Tire and I picked up a box of material that I was looking for and it said ‘Made in Canada, Really!’ and I thought well how clever is that?” explained one of the curators Kim Reid.
The community engagement coordinator Dustin Mcilwain said that 95% of the objects that are in their permanent collection were donated from citizens or businesses within the community.“It’s so rare to find anything that’s made in Canada” he said.
One of the more extraordinary things on display that McIlwain explained to Kawartha 411 in better detail was the monopoly board.“Fisher Gage which is still running was given a contract to produce die-cast pieces for the monopoly board game. All the classic tokens from the game were once made here in Peterborough” said Mcilwain.
The oldest piece within the exhibit is an Adam Hall stove which dates back to 1870. Reid said that a colleague had found this piece in an auction for $10.
She mentioned that the exhibit has been a hit so far. On opening weekend they had about 500 people through, with it still getting busy on the weekends.
The exhibit will run until Oct. 1 and following that there will be an exhibit from the Canadian Currency Museum titled, Voices from the Engravers. It is going to be about the art of creating currency and the images on bills and coins.
