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Not to be Read! “It seems strange and useless that I should have to die for this,” Canadian Spitfire Pilot William Fortt said in a heartfelt letter to his parents 16 months before he died in a fiery plane crash in Essex, England, on 12 April 1942. Dale Murray donated the military medals of Pilot […]

Camp Hughes During the First World War, the Canadian Militia established a network of military training sites across Canada to train six hundred thousand recruits for the Canadian Expeditionary Force going overseas to fight on the Western Front.  One of the seventeen training sites was Camp Hughes near Carberry, Manitoba, 132 kilometres west of Winnipeg,

Deciphering Cyphers Upon entering the museum’s Artillery Gallery, visitors pass two small cannons standing guard solemnly. If they examine the pair, they will notice some elegant-looking crests decorating the barrels. These markings, called monograms or cyphers, hold information about the ownership, the manufacturing, and the date of the cannons. Guns crafted after the late 1600s

Air OP Squadrons in WW2 You may be surprised that Canada had three Air Observation Post (Air OP) squadrons under the Royal Air Force’s (RAF) command during the Second World War. The first two squadrons, No. 664 and No. 665, participated in Air OP missions in the Netherlands and Germany starting in 1945. Their primary

Izzy Doll Labelling Artifact labelling helps visitors to understand museum artifacts.  In many cases, without a clear storyline or narrative, a visitor cannot determine the meaning or value of an artifact.  In our current Canadian peacekeeping exhibit, curators display three pocket-sized dolls (Izzy dolls), measuring approximately 15 centimetres, that require a written description to explain