Northern Life Museum facts for kids
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| Established | 1964 |
|---|---|
| Location | 110 King Street, Fort Smith Northwest Territories, Canada |
| Type | Rural history museum |
The Northern Life Museum is located in Fort Smith, Northwest Territories, Canada. This museum is a special place that holds more than 13,000 items. These items tell the stories of the people and history of Canada's North. Many of these historical objects were collected by religious groups like the Oblate Fathers and the Grey Nuns. They gathered these items while doing their missionary work in the North.
Contents
Discovering the Museum's History
The museum's collection first went on display in 1964. It was shown in the basement of Grandin College. A few years later, in 1972, a group called the Northern Anthropological and Cultural Society was formed in Fort Smith. Their goal was to help create and keep a museum. The Northern Life Museum is actually the oldest museum in the entire Northwest Territories.
Exploring the Museum's Collections
The Northern Life Museum has many interesting things to see, both inside and outside.
Outdoor Exhibits and Old Machines
Outside the museum, you can find a collection of old farm equipment and machines. These were once used in and around Fort Smith. One cool item is a Holt tractor that arrived in the North in 1919. It helped move things along a special route called a portage. This route connected Fort Fitzgerald and Fort Smith. You can also see the Radium King, a boat that first carried important mining materials. Later, it was used to push barges, which are flat-bottomed boats for carrying goods.
Inside the Museum: Themed Displays
Inside, the Northern Life Museum has displays built around five main themes. You can step back in time and see:
- An authentic northern trading post, where people used to trade goods.
- A typical northern kitchen from the 1940s, showing how families lived.
- Two mounted adult bison, which are large, powerful animals.
- A traditional trapper's cabin, showing how trappers lived and worked.
- A 1965 Polaris Sno-Traveler, an early type of snowmobile.
- A river bank scene featuring a birch bark canoe, a traditional boat.
The Whooping Crane Story
The museum also has a special display about whooping cranes. These are very rare birds. The last natural group of these cranes that migrate (travel long distances) nests near Wood Buffalo National Park. One famous crane, named Canus, was found injured as a chick in 1964. Because he couldn't go back to the wild, Canus became part of a special program. This program aimed to help whooping cranes have babies in captivity. Canus was named after the joint CANadian and US effort to save these birds. His contribution helped the program become very successful. Canus became a permanent exhibit at the Northern Life Museum in 2004.
Outdoor Cultural Centre
The museum also has an outdoor Aboriginal Cultural Centre. This area shows how Canada's First Peoples lived traditionally. It shows their ways of life before Europeans arrived in the early 1800s. You can see a working cold cache (a type of outdoor refrigerator), a smokehouse, and a tipi. These are all available for visitors to learn about.
Museum Connections
The Northern Life Museum works with several important organizations. These include the CMA, the CHIN, and the Virtual Museum of Canada. These connections help the museum share its stories and collections with more people.
