Nice synopsis of what you can find in the Transportation Discovery Centre and the renovated Moncton Museum.
New Resurgo Place pays tribute to Moncton’s history
Tuesday, August 12, 2014
Times and Transcript
By: Alan Cochrane
http://22864.vws.magma.ca/index.php?&article_id=13547
Sometimes I wonder if the men who spent their days and nights building ships for Joseph Salter ever thought their tools would one day be on display at the Moncton Museum.
And what about the countless number of machinists, pipefitters and car-men who spent their careers fixing and rebuilding locomotives and railway cars at the Moncton repair shops? Or the hundreds of young aviators who came to Moncton from all over the world during the Second World War under the British Commonwealth Air Training Plan.
The shipyards, the CN Shops and most of the buildings associated with the air training plan are but a distant memory for most, and a footnote in Metro Moncton’s history. But at the time, they were the life blood of our local economy and a major source of jobs in this place that grew out of a bend in the Petitcodiac River.
So it is fitting that interactive exhibits at the new Resurgo Place help visitors understand these important chapters in Metro Moncton’s history, and how much life has changed since Mr. Salter set up his shipbuilding shops back in 1847.
Last Wednesday, members of the media were given a sneak peek at Resurgo Place, the re-branded name for what previously was known as the Moncton Museum. The facility opened its doors to the public on Friday. For staff members, the media tour was a chance to show how much work they have been doing over the last couple of years and generate fresh excitement for the facility.
James Upham, Heritage Development Officer for Programming, was like a kid showing off his new candy store as he led reporters through the new main-floor gallery that hosts travelling exhibits. From now until Aug. 24, the gallery features The Canoe - a Canadian Cultural Icon exhibit from the Canadian Canoe Museum in Peterborough, Ont. During the tour, he noted that these travelling exhibits come and go with regularity, so there is always something new to see at the museum.
Upstairs, the new permanent exhibit is the Heritage Collection which features many artifacts from local history. Here you can see military uniforms, firefighter equipment, ancient police pistols and cameras used by the pioneers of television broadcasting in Moncton.
Then, Mr. Upham gleefully showed us the new interactive floor map. There, printed on the floor is a map of Moncton city streets. It’s designed so you can push around a little cart (kind of like a shopping cart) equipped with a video screen. When you stop on certain parts of the map, the screen will light up and show you film clips and/or photos of the history of that spot.
And then, Mr. Upham led us into the jewel of the new Resurgo Place, the Transportation Discovery Centre. As we passed through an arched doorway covered with ancient wheels from bikes, automobiles and railroad cars, we entered the new glass section of the museum designed by Moncton architect Raven Spanier.
The Transportation Discovery Centre is loaded with interactive exhibits designed for people of all ages, but they will no doubt capture the imagination of youngsters. Here, you can launch a foam rocket, pilot a miniature plane in a wind tunnel, control a miniature submarine to hit a target, and experiment with making your own flying craft with such everyday items as paper cups and coffee filters. I really enjoyed the wind tunnel exhibit, where you use hand controls to“drive” the model plane as it“flies”in the wind tunnel.
The TDC also has interactive pods that look like a ship’s compass, but are fitted out with video screens and headphones, so you can watch narrated film clips about pieces of Moncton’s history.
And the TDC has become the final resting place for one of Moncton’s most famous trains, the model locomotive built by hobbyist Reg Ward.
I was actually present when the locomotive rolled into the museum last winter. I remember seeing the train as a kid, since Ward’s workshop was located not far from our old Sunny-side School. Mr. Ward, worked as a CN carman from 1944 until his retirement in 1982 and built the steam-powered miniature locomotive in his home workshop, where he had a collection of belt-driven machines and tools. For Mr. Ward, building the miniature steam-powered locomotive was a labour of love. He scrounged metal and parts, and made moulds out of wood to handcast the wheels and other parts from wrought iron. The locomotive worked just like the real thing, burning coal to produce steam. In the 1980s, Ward would take the train to Main Street or Victoria Park and set it up to give people rides during the Railroad Days summer festival.
Mr. Ward suffered from Parkinson’s disease and spent the last years of his life in a nursing home. He died in 2007 at the age of 80, and left his beloved steam locomotive to the museum in his will.
Last year, I interviewed Mr. Ward’s longtime friend, Pierre Boudreau, who restored the locomotive and brought it to the museum. He told me:“When we were building this train back in 1980, we often said that one day it would be a museum piece, and he would be happy to know that it is finally here.”
In the newspaper business, it seems like we are writing history as it happens, day by day. But as Mr. Upham said during our tour, our world and our technology has changed so much in the last 100 years that we need ways to reflect upon it to understand where we’ve been and perhaps chart a course to where we are going.
I enjoy museums because they offer a chance to learn about the past and how things were made. But at the same time, you can’t really appreciate the work and lifestyle of the past by looking at artifacts that have been meticulously cleaned, polished and mounted in a glass case. I think the ultimate exhibit would be one where you could walk into a room that truly replicates the shipyard or the workshop, where you could hear the tools and smell the freshly-chopped wood.
This new museum is clean, bright and full of information designed to educate those who come to experience it. Now that it has reopened, Resurgo Place is a great place for people of all ages to visit and learn about the history of our city.
As director Brenda Orr told me, the museum is always working with groups, individuals and organizations to acquire new collections and improve its programming. The museum also works with other facilities to share artifacts and information.
And they are always looking for new artifacts that have a story and are historically significant to Moncton. Who knows what treasures may still be hidden away in someone’s attic or basement waiting to be discovered and put on display to help tell more of the stories of Metro Moncton?