The Cobalt Mining Museum lives in a rather non-descript brick commercial building in downtown Cobalt, Ontario. Tucked between a government services office and an LCBO, one would be forgiven for not paying it the slightest attention. If you’ve seen one small, forgotten town’s museum, you’ve seen them all. That would be a mistake, because Cobalt … Read more
On February 13, 1947, Leduc No. 1 struck Devonian reef oil kicking off a transformation of Alberta, and Canada. The Canadian Energy Museum started as an homage to this major event and has since grown to conserve and educate the public on the entirety of the Canadian energy industry. Located on a plot of rural … Read more
Queen’s University in Kingston, Ontario may be better known for it’s business school but it also has a quality geology program. Fitting, then, that the campus is home to an earth science museum, the Miller Museum of Geology. Geology museums on university campuses are far more common than I realized. Several schools host quality museums … Read more
Coal and Cape Breton go together like lobster and butter. The Carboniferous period left tremendous coal deposits on Nova Scotia’s northeastern island resulting in a close, historical bond between the black rock and the people. But coal was not the only treasure left behind hundreds of millions of years ago. Fossils, evidence of the ancient … Read more
On the eastern coast of Cape Breton lies the town of Glace Bay. Rich in coal mining history, Glace Bay was formed in 1901 by the amalgamation of multiple small communities situated around the various mines. At its peak, there were twelve collieries. Today, there are none with the last closing in 2001. The Cape … Read more
Few things encapsulate the idiom “good things come in small packages” better than small town museums. The Princeton and District Museum in southern British Columbia is no exception. As fun as small town museums can be, it’s rare for them to house a quality earth science exhibit of any kind. This is where Princeton differs, … Read more
It’s only fitting that a place lovingly referred to as The Rock should have a geology-focused science centre. Memorial University’s Johnson Geo Centre is exactly that. Located on famed Signal Hill, the centre is part of Memorial University’s new Signal Hill Campus. That’s roughly 4 km due east of the main campus in St. John’s. … Read more
The Faculty of Environment, Earth, and Resources at the University of Manitoba in Winnipeg is home to the Ed Leith Cretaceous Menagerie. This modest museum is home to four “dinosaur” skeletons, though only one is a genuine dinosaur. The other three are a mosasaur, a bony fish, and a giant sea turtle. Alongside these magnificent … Read more
The University of Waterloo is globally renowned for its computer science, engineering, and mathematics programs and deservedly so. But there’s far more to this Southern Ontario university as evidenced by the University of Waterloo Earth Sciences Museum. As my alma mater, I fondly remember hanging out with friends between classes at the Peter Russell Rock … Read more
Warner is a small, prairie town located approximately 70 km southeast of Lethbridge in southern Alberta. About 20 km west of this unassuming town something remarkable was found. The first dinosaur nesting site ever found in Canada. The Devil’s Coulee Dinosaur Museum allows visitors to explore this amazing palaeontological discovery. The initial discovery was made … Read more