Redpath Museum

Thursday, 13 December, 2007 saw a group of six home-schooling families visit Montreal’s Redpath Museum. The Redpath is a natural history museum open to the public, free of charge six days a week. It is located on the main campus of McGill, inside the Roddick Gates. The address is 859 Sherbrooke St. West. This map will help you find your way once you are on the campus.

The Redpath Museum is both a teaching facility and a gallery for public exhibitions. Having opened in 1882, it is one of Canada’s oldest freestanding museums. The museum has close to 3,000,000 items. Their web site proudly announces that they have the second largest collection of Egyptian artifacts in Canada. The collections include some wonderful fossils, shells & minerals. Several impressive skeletons, among them a beluga whale and an albertosaurus, are on display. The biodiversity exhibit emphasizes endangered and extinct species. Several very lifelike animals are scattered around the museum. Our favourites includes the lion, the gorilla and the snowy owl - which happens to be Quebec’s provincial bird! The ethnology exhibit includes three mummies. Our girls were particularly fascinated by these. The photo to the right is one of the mummies, along with an x-ray that shows the bones hidden beneath its bandages.

Another case in the ethnology collection showcased footwear from the era of Japanese foot-binding. There was a casting of a 15-year-old girl’s foot, which was barely the size of a young child’s. The display describes how the feet of girls about 8 years old were bound in tight bandages, with four of the toes bent under and the heel pulled down toward the toes. The casting shows the result of the binding, and helped the girls to see how very painful the process must have been. Dojogirl met a new friend at the museum, who asked why anyone would want to do such a thing. Seeing evidence of it made this piece of history very real for the girls, and gave us an opportunity to talk about other things people have borne for the sake of fashion or in order to appear “proper”.

Fun things to do at the museum:

At the front desk you can get a copy of the museum’s treasure hunt sheets. There are questions asked about a variety of items on exhibit. There are several sheets, and the reading level would be appropriate for either an older primary student or a joint family activity;
Check out the Redpath Museum Club’s web site. They have an “I Spy” item posted and are challenging visitors to find the item then write in to let them know what you discovered. This would be appropriate for younger kids. Print off a copy of the picture, and have them keep their eyes open to see if they can find it!

The Redpath Museum offers a number of activities for the public. Look for their Freaky Fridays series, which aim to demystify science, as well as Sunday documentary films and family activities, and a Cutting edge lecture series. A summary of upcoming activities can be found here. For those interested in attending the family activities, the winter 2008 schedule is now available. If you would like to prepare for your visit in advance, you may want to read the online description of the permanent exhibits. A good follow-up might be to look through the Quebec or Canada biodiversity web sites. Those who are doing nature study as part of their science program, or who are reading books by authors such as Burgess, Holling or William Long will no doubt find the information on these sites useful.

As a closing note, two popular children’s films are being shown at the Redpath Museum this week. Here are the details from their web site:

December 14

The Reality of Rodents
Given by Virginie Millien, Vertebrate Zoology, Redpath Museum, and special guests Jane Sorensen and Sicero (both from Small Victories Rodent Rescue).
Find out why rats, mice and beavers are really not very scary and how their amazing and evergrowing incisors are important in current ecotypic variation and climate change research. You will also learn about the myths and realities of the much-maligned urban rat. This presentation is followed by two films: the 2007 film Ratatouille
The event starts at 4 pm. FREE. No reservation necessary

SPECIAL Fundraising film event:
Night @ the Museum
This film about a chaotic night at a natural history museum will be introduced by Matthew Harrison, the Montreal-born actor who plays one of the movie’s Neanderthals. Matthew spent many inspiring and awe-filled days as a teenager at the Redpath Museum and will provide a mise-en-scène about life on the museum movie set.
The event starts at 1 pm
Suggested contribution of $5 per person, $25 per family will help to restore vitality to the Redpath Museum’s Silver-backed mountain gorilla.