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Published: February 10th 2006
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Last day in Ottawa
Walked over to Gatineau
Took lots of pictures.
Another cool one
Went to the Museum of
Civilization.
Kish asked if it would be okay if she could join me for the day. I only had the Museum of Civilization on my list of things to see today. Sure, it'd be nice to have some company. So we took our time having something for breakfast and then went back to our cell to bundle up.
In no time we were soon on our way and out the door. We walked through the Byward Market area and past the National Gallery where we snapped a few photos. There's this huge metal spider sculpture that just begs for its picture to be taken! We made a pit stop at a look out over the Ottawa River before crossing the bridge over to Quebec.
The Museum of Civilization is real close by so we bought our tickets and started out on the second level where the special exhibits area are located and worked our way up to the 3rd and 4th levels before finishing up on level 1. Kish was just whipping through everything so we went
through the museum at our own paces and eventually went our own ways and met back at the hostel in the evening.
Back to the museum, the first exhibit was about the mod 60's and some Canadian designers. It was a really interesting exhibit showing stuff from modern 60's furniture to the present day Canadian Flag to Expo '67 in Montreal. CBC had a few computers set up with old news clips that could be reviewed. It was all pretty interesting in my opinion.
Next up was the exhibit on "A Caring Profession: Centuries of Nursing in Canada." This was a pretty informative exhibit all about nursing. It's amazing how much responsibilities nurses carry on their shoulders. We really should give them more recognition!
The third special exhibits area was closed since the "Acres of Dreams: Settling the Canadian Prairies" doesn't open until October 28th. Once again missed it by a few days.
The museum is also home to the Postal Museum and the Children's Museum. The postal museum was actually pretty interesting. It covered the history of communication and had tons of stamps on display and I think because they had a contest where you
had to answer four questions to qualify, I was really paying attention. lol
I only quickly scanned and walked through the Children's Museum. If I was with kids it'd be an awesome place to visit since there seemed to be a lot of hands on stuff.
So I moved up to the third floor and onto Canada Hall. There was something like 20 rooms that flowed into one another and covered the history of Canada from the time of the Vikings to present day and went from East to West. So it started off with the Atlantic Coast, covering the Vikings and early Acadia. The next sections covered the Central Regions of Canada covering the fur trade, Métis, Timber trade, the French and British struggle and CP Rail. Next was the Canadian Prairies with an awesome grain elevator and some of the foreign settlers in the region like the Ukrainian bookshop and Chinese laundry. Then the Pacific Coast was next covering the West Coast communities from 1920 to 1970. One of the rooms was a mock up of the Vancouver Airport in the 70's which was quite interesting. It basically was telling about the influx of immigrants from
Asia. The last area covered was the Canadian North from 1970 to 2000. This area was called "Northern Visions." Canada Hall was pretty interesting to walk through since it was displayed in such a way that kept it interesting. I can't say that for some museums that I've been through!
On the fourth level the only interesting exhibit to look at to me was the "Souvenirs of Canada." They had some stuff from a Woman's house and her collections. Apparently when she passed away a few years ago she donated all of her belongs to the Museum of Civilization. Now that's one way to get your belongings put on display in a museum. haha To me it was not so interesting though.
The bottom floor was home to the Grand Hall where a lot of stuff on First Nations was on display. There were an amazing number of totem poles on display as well. Oh yeah, there was a special exhibit on the beads of Africa but I spent less than 10 minutes in this area because it simply did not interest me.
By the time I finished looking at everything I wanted to see at the
museum it was just after 3PM. I hadn't had a bite to eat since breakfast so I looked around to see if I could see Kish. Nope. So I enjoyed a muffin and drink before making my way outside to check out the Japanese Zen garden and some sculptures too. There would have been wicked views of Parliament if the Library wasn't all covered up and surrounded by scaffolding!
I then walked back over the bridge into Ottawa and walked along the Rideau Canal for a bit and walked by many statues, information placards and other monuments. It was dry out so it was great to just be outside walking.
I was going to go to the museum of Contemporary Photograph which used to be free according to the Lonely Planet but I found out you now have to pay $4 so I decided to not go in. It's now only free on Thursday evenings...like most other museums in the Ottawa area.
I headed back to the hostel to see if Kish made it back but there were no signs of her so I warmed up for a bit and then made my way back outside to look for an internet cafe. By this time I went back to the hostel a second time and Kish had just returned. Neither of us had dinner yet but Kish was gonna be "good" and make some dinner while I went the lazy and easy route again and went to the food fair. Perhaps when I get to Toronto I shouldn't be so lazy and should start making my dinners again. We'll see!
When I got back from the mall Kish was watching the “Full Monty”. Now I haven't seen that movie in ages. Kish said where this film takes place, Sheffield, it is only about 20 minutes from where she was living. Me, Kish and one other guy were the only ones laughing at the movie. I think that the others in the room were either not really watching the movie or didn't get any of the jokes!
It was a relatively early night. I packed up my bags, washed up and read for a bit before going to bed. Nothing to exciting or dramatic but apparently I just wrote home about it. HAHA.
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