Northern Life Museum

Last updated
Northern Life Museum and Cultural Centre
NWT All Region Locator.svg
Red pog.svg
Location within Northwest Territories
Established1964
Location110 King Street, Fort Smith Northwest Territories, Canada
Coordinates 60°00′19″N111°53′16″W / 60.0053°N 111.8877°W / 60.0053; -111.8877
TypeRural history museum
DirectorDaniel Stewart
Website Official Northern Life Museum Website

The Northern Life Museum is in Fort Smith, Northwest Territories, Canada. The museum has a collection of over 13,000 artifacts representing the peoples and history of the North. [1] [2] Many of the artifacts were collected by the Oblate Fathers and the Grey Nuns during their missionary work in the North.

Contents

History

The artifacts were first displayed in 1964 in the basement of Grandin College. In 1972, the Northern Anthropological and Cultural Society was formed in Fort Smith with the purpose of promoting, building and maintaining a museum. The Northern Life Museum is the oldest museum in the Northwest Territories.[ citation needed ]

Collection

The outside gallery is home to a collection of agriculture equipment and machinery that was used in and around Fort Smith. This exhibit includes a Holt tractor that was brought north in 1919 to work the portage route between Fort Fitzgerald and Fort Smith. It also includes the Radium King, a vessel used first to haul uranium and radium ore and then later to push barges.

The Northern Life Museum displays are built around 5 themes. It hosts displays of an authentic northern trading post, a typical northern kitchen from the 1940s, 2 mounted adult bison, a traditional trapper's cabin, a 1965 Polaris Sno-Traveler, and a river bank scene featuring a birch bark canoe.

The Northern Life Museum also hosts a whooping crane display. The last remaining natural migratory flock of whooping cranes in the world nest in and around Wood Buffalo National Park. Canus was discovered as an injured chick by researchers in 1964. Unable to be released back into the wild, Canus (named after the joint CANadian/US effort) took up residence at Patuxent Wildlife Refuge in Maryland as the first participant in their new captive breeding program. The program enjoyed great success and Canus' contribution brought him international recognition. Canus was welcomed in 2004 as a part of the Northern Life Museum's permanent exhibits.[ citation needed ]

The museum also hosts an outdoor aboriginal cultural Centre that showcases Canada's first peoples' ways of traditional living before European contact occurred in the early 1800s. It host as functional cold cache, smokehouse and tipi for public use.

There is a virtual tour that can be found online, though the displays have changed significantly since this tour was posted. [3]

Affiliations

The Museum is affiliated with: CMA, CHIN, and Virtual Museum of Canada.

Related Research Articles

Canadian Museum of History Canadas national museum on anthropology, ethnology, and history

The Canadian Museum of History is a national museum on anthropology, Canadian history, cultural studies, and ethnology in Gatineau, Quebec, Canada. The purpose of the museum is to promote the heritage of Canada, as well as support related research. The museum is based in a 75,000-square-metre-building (810,000 sq ft) designed by Douglas Cardinal.

Fort William Historical Park Historical site in Thunder Bay, Ontario

Fort William Historical Park is a Canadian historical site located in Thunder Bay, Ontario, that contains a reconstruction of the Fort William fur trade post as it existed in 1816. It officially opened on July 3, 1973.

Portage la Prairie City in Manitoba, Canada

Portage la Prairie is a small city in the Central Plains Region of Manitoba, Canada. As of 2016, the population was 13,304 and the land area of the city was 24.68 square kilometres (9.53 sq mi).

Fort Smith, Northwest Territories Town in Northwest Territories, Canada

Fort Smith is a town in the South Slave Region of the Northwest Territories (NWT), Canada. It is located in the southeastern portion of the Northwest Territories, on the Slave River and adjacent to the Northwest Territories / Alberta border.

Royal British Columbia Museum Provincial history museum and archives in Victoria, British Columbia

Founded in 1886, the Royal British Columbia Museum consists of The Province of British Columbia's natural and human history museum as well as the British Columbia Provincial Archives. The museum is located in Victoria, British Columbia, Canada. The "Royal" title was approved by Queen Elizabeth II and bestowed by HRH Prince Philip in 1987, to coincide with a Royal tour of that year. The museum merged with the British Columbia Provincial Archives in 2003.

Slave River River in Alberta and Northwest Territories, Canada

The Slave River is a Canadian river that flows from the confluence of the Rivière des Rochers and Peace River in northeastern Alberta and empties into Great Slave Lake in the Northwest Territories. The river's name is thought to derive from the name for the Slavey group of the Dene First Nations, Deh Gah Got'ine, in the Athabaskan language. The Chipewyan had displaced other native people from this region.

Radium King

The Radium King was built in 1937 to haul ore on the Mackenzie River, and her tributaries. This included uranium used in the US atom bombs of World War II. Later in her active career she hauled barges on Great Slave Lake.

Fort Whoop-Up Human settlement in Lethbridge County, Alberta, Canada

Fort Whoop-Up was the nickname given to a whisky trading post, originally Fort Hamilton, near what is now Lethbridge, Alberta. During the late 19th century, the post served as a centre for trading activities, including the illegal whisky trade. The sale of whisky was outlawed but, due to the lack of law enforcement in the region prior to 1874, many whisky traders had settled in the area and taken to charging unusually high prices for their goods.

Sierra Nevada Logging Museum History museum in Arnold, California

The Sierra Nevada Logging Museum is a museum dedicated to preserving the history of logging in the Sierra Nevada region. The museum is located on California State Route 4 in the Stanislaus National Forest, near Arnold, in Calaveras County, California, United States.

Denver Museum of Nature and Science

The Denver Museum of Nature & Science is a municipal natural history and science museum in Denver, Colorado. It is a resource for informal science education in the Rocky Mountain region. A variety of exhibitions, programs, and activities help museum visitors learn about the natural history of Colorado, Earth, and the universe. The 716,000-square-foot (66,519 m2) building houses more than one million objects in its collections including natural history and anthropological materials, as well as archival and library resources.

Mennonite Heritage Village Museum in Canada

Mennonite Heritage Village is a museum in Steinbach, Manitoba, Canada telling the story of the Russian Mennonites in Canada. The museum contains both an open-air museum open seasonally, and indoor galleries open year-round. Opened in 1967 and expanded significantly since then, the Mennonite Heritage Village is a major tourist attraction in the area and officially designated as a Manitoba Signature Museum and Star Attraction. Approximately 47,000 visitors visit the museum each year.

North West River Town in Newfoundland and Labrador, Canada

North West River is a small town located in central Labrador. Established in 1743 as a trading post by French Fur Trader Louis Fornel, the community later went on to become a hub for the Hudson's Bay Company and home to a hospital and school serving the needs of coastal Labrador. North West River is the oldest modern settlement in Labrador.

Exhibitions of artifacts from the tomb of Tutankhamun

Exhibitions of artifacts from the tomb of Tutankhamun have been held at museums in several countries, notably the United Kingdom, Soviet Union, United States, Canada, Japan, and France etc.

The Manitoba Agricultural Museum is dedicated to collecting vintage farm machinery and buildings from 1900 and before. Located on 50 acres (200,000 m2) near Austin, Manitoba in the Municipality of North Norfolk, to date they have amassed over 500 pieces of machinery and a pioneer village consisting of more than 20 buildings complete with artifacts. This is Canada’s largest collection of vintage equipment. The facilities include a camping and picnic grounds and a souvenir shop.

Collier Memorial State Park

Collier Memorial State Park is a state park in southern Oregon. The park is operated and maintained by the Oregon Parks and Recreation Department. It is located on U.S. Highway 97, approximately 30 miles (48 km) north of Klamath Falls and 105 miles (169 km) south of Bend. The park covers 146 acres (59 ha) along the Williamson River.

Marine Transportation Services Former Canadian marine transportation company

Marine Transportation Services (MTS) formerly Northern Transportation Company Limited (NTCL) is a marine transportation company operating primarily in the Mackenzie River watershed of the Northwest Territories and northern Alberta, and the Arctic Ocean using a fleet of diesel tug boats and shallow-draft barges. NTCL filed for bankruptcy in 2016 and its assets were acquired by the Government of the Northwest Territories later that year.

Minnesota History Center

The Minnesota History Center is a museum and library that serves as the headquarters of the Minnesota Historical Society. It is near downtown Saint Paul, Minnesota, and is considered one of Minnesota's finest public buildings.

Northern Ontario Railroad Museum

The Northern Ontario Railroad Museum and Heritage Centre is a rail transport museum located in the community of Capreol in Greater Sudbury, Ontario, Canada. The museum's mandate states it is, "focused on the preservation of historical artifacts that pay tribute to the heritage of Northern Ontario and the history of the lumber, mining and railroading industries."

<i>Radium Cruiser</i>

The Radium Cruiser was a Russel Brothers tugboat operated on the Mackenzie River system for the "Radium Line". She was constructed in Owen Sound, Ontario, in 1939, then disassembled and shipped by rail to Waterways, Alberta. Waterways is a river port, and was then the northern terminus of the North American railway grid. Waterways is on the Clearwater River, not far upstream from where the river empties into Lake Athabasca. The waters of Lake Athabasca flow into Great Slave Lake down the Slave River, and then down the Mackenzie River to the Arctic Ocean.

<i>Radium Gilbert</i> Canadian tugboat

The Radium Gilbert was a tugboat built for transporting supplies to, and ore from, the radium and uranium mines in Canada's Northwest Territories. Like the other tugs in the Radium Line she was steel-hulled.

References

  1. "Early Artifacts To Be Organized". Leader Post. 1971-11-17. p. 50. Retrieved 2012-05-31. The 12,000 items would go on display in the proposed $300,000 building while larger exhibits such as the early freight ship the Radium King, and ancient German tractors used to portage ships around the dangerous 16 miles of rapids of the Slave River, would be displayed outside.
  2. "North Life Preserved". Leader Post. 1972-06-14. p. 2. Retrieved 2012-05-31. The outdoor display area will contain: the Radium King, the first steel boat built in Fort Smith in 1937, for the discoverers of the Radium Mines on Great Bear Lake;
  3. virtual tour