The Manitoba Museum

This morning the four of us drove into town to visit The Manitoba Museum. The entrance fee for seniors was $6.50 CAD including tax. We started our tour in the Orientation Gallery depicting the relationship of humans with the natural environment - which is the theme of the Museum.

From Manitoba

Our next stop was the Earth History Gallery showing the geologic history of Manitoba and some of the earliest inhabitants including a replica of the world's largest trilobite and the 14-foot Giant Sloth and a replica of the world's largest trilobite.

From Manitoba

The Arctic/Sub-Arctic Gallery was our next stop. We saw displays of wildlife that inhabit the arctic and sub-arctic regions. We learned about the lives of the Caribou Inuit who hunted and fished this area.

From Manitoba

We "travelled" next to the Boreal Forest Gallery. This forest covers almost one-third of Manitoba. There was a life-sized display of an Algonquin Encampment showing their everyday life. The display included many of the wildlife that inhabits the boreal forest.

From Manitoba

The next gallery was the Nonsuch Gallery. We were able to walk aboard a replica of the Nonsuch "anchored" at a recreation of a 17th century English waterfront. The replica was built in England in 1970 to celebrate the tricentennial of the Hudson' Bay Company and was sailed over 14,000 kilometres from England before ending up at the Museum. The original Nonsuch sailed into Hudson Bay in 1668 in search of furs. This voyage lead to the founding of the Hudson's Bay Company and was instrumental in established commerce in western Canada.

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Hudson's Bay Gallery spans over 300 years of the Company's history. Besides learning about the Company's history, we learned that Hudson's Bay Company is still in business and is Canada's largest diversified general merchandise retailer.

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In the Parklands/Mixed Woods Gallery is a transition from teh Boreal Forest to the Grasslands showing a larger diversity of wildlife and a 27-metre mural depicting an Ukrainian Rye Farm.

From Manitoba

In the Grasslands Gallery we learned that the great grasslands had been home to enormous herds of bison, but with the settlement of the Red River region the herds disappeared. Here were displays of a sod house and a log cabin.

From Manitoba

Our final stop was at the Urban Gallery where we walked the wooden boardwalks of 1920's Winnipeg. Here we entered the various businesses and homes of Winnipeg during it's boom time.

From Manitoba

The Manitoba Museum also has a Science Gallery and Planetarium, but we didn't visit them.

After leaving the Museum we stopped at a Wendy's for lunch before heading over to Costco.
Al and Symphony have a Garmin GPS and we have been using it for our sightseeing trips. We found one at Costco and decided to buy it for ourselves. We use Microsoft's Streets and Trips for our route planning and a Delorme USB GPS on our laptop in the RV. We have used our laptop in the car with the USB GPS, but it isn't as convenient as having a smaller GPS. There were 2 Garmin GPS' at Costco and the one we bought has lifetime traffic updates included and it was only $30 more than the GPS where we would have to pay a subscription for the traffic updates.

We then headed back to the campground to get ready for our departure tomorrow. I'm looking forward to using our Garmin GPS tomorrow on our trip and see how it compares to the one on our laptop