Camp Day 2013

For the last three years now at the Steam Museum, we've been running a summer event called "Free Camp Day" - it's a special day where we invite kids from subsidized day camps in Hamilton to come and enjoy a full day of fun stuff: free lunch, free transportation, relay races, art activities, train rides, puppet shows, snacks, and of course, museum tours!

This is all made possible by donations from people and companies in the community, and this year I got to organize the event. It ended up being a lot of fun, despite being the hottest day of the year so far (35 degrees!) 

We beat the heat with lots of cool water (which the kids got to drink from fancy reusable bottles, c/o Hamilton Water), freezies, and this cool new contraption, built by our resident grand wizard of making things, Nancy!

We haven't really come up with a name for it yet....so for now we'll just call it the PVC pipe sprinkler waterfall run-through thingy. I found the idea on Pinterest, which came from Instructables.com, and Nancy used her magic ways to make it happen. Everyone loved running through the water to cool down.

instructables.com

There were lots of other excellent activities too, including a Puppet Show also sponsored by Hamilton Water/Waste Water:

Puppet show sponsored by the Water Treatment Plant will obviously have lots of poop jokes

Train rides from the Golden Horseshoe Live Steamers:

Fun activities hosted by staff from Battlefield House Museum and Park, and Westfield Heritage Village: 

A delicious, halal-hotdog lunch, cooked up by the lovely ladies of CUPE Local 5167:

Chalk and bubbles just for kicks:

A "Trip of the Drip" relay race:

(more poop jokes here) 

And a quick tour of the Museum!

Julia explaining how Steam Engines work 

Really, really, a fun day - I hope for all the kids, as well as for me. Thanks to all of our awesome sponsors and partners, and to Caillin Kowalczyk who took all these lovely pictures! 

Seen and Heard

Little boy to mom, walking into the museum:
"It this a McDonalds?!" 

...

...we DO have the arches...

Overheard this past Sunday during Golden Horseshoe Live Steamer Day at the museum.

FISHIES!

At the Steam Museum, we have ventured into the realm of live exhibits. This Summer, we are installing our new and improved water-themed exhibition, Slippery When Wet. It's a fun, interactive exhibit all about the wonderful ways we, and other creatures, use water to live.

While learning a bit about wise water use and ecosystems,  kids (and curious adults too, of course) can try one of the many interactive activities - giant game of snakes and ladders perhaps? Or maybe try pumping water with a Waterloo Pump, or discovering how a toilet works? All sorts of fun things in store. Including a gigantic outhouse.  

A waterloo pump

The reading nook 

Giant outhouse

But, this time around we've got something extra special - two live water ecosystems to observe. The first has little darting silvery fish and live plants, and the second has slow, slimy snails.

Live ecosystems! 

Does this make us a zoo, then? I remember a while back, the ROM hosted it's own WATER exhibition, and the most memorable part was their live collection of fish, crustaceans, and (most fascinating/disturbing of all) a tank full of blood-sucking lampreys. I have to say I'm glad we will NOT be having any lampreys.

I have tentatively named the fish we DO have Inky, Blinky, and Stinky - but it's pretty hard to remember who is who. The snails are all nameless; perhaps we should have a voting area to determine their names, or a visitor suggestion box?

The exhibit officially opens June 21, 2013.

Pop-Up Exhibit

In the office at the Museum of Steam and Technology, someone has posted a comic from the funny pages:

And it's funny because it is true. Most museums I have worked at have gigantic collections that have been amassed over many years (and many different collections policies), but only a small percent is actually on display.

This is the case with Steam. Not seen by the public is a huge collection of material culture from Hamilton's industrial and manufacturing history. A giant steam roller (badly rusted out); a wooden canoe; a Westinghouse fridge from the 50's; an ammonia compressor; among other big, (occasionally rusty) treasures. 

This past week, we got a call from the elderly donor of one such item. 

The artefact in question was a massive, solid wood, hand-crafted bedroom set. Yes, we know. An odd thing to have in a museum about water-pumping steam engines. But part of our mandate is to interpret the manufacturing history of the city, and it just so happens that this furniture set is a rare surviving example of one made by the Malcolm and Souter Furniture Company of Hamilton, founded c. 1885

Although it is a very nice set, I don't think it has ever actually been on display. 

This donor still felt a very strong connection to the pieces she gave to the museum, and expressed her great hope that one day the bedroom set would be exhibited, because she really wanted her family to see it. 

Not wanting to disappoint her, on Friday the curator, assistant curator, and I took it upon ourselves to bring the bed out of storage, put it back together (it was stored in several pieces to save space), and display it for one exclusive week in the back of the Woodshed building so the donor and her family could come and admire it on the weekend. 

Deb even had a brass plaque made up recognizing the donors 

Not a bad little exhibit by any means! We really hope the donor and her family will be pleased with our effort to give her treasure the attention it deserves.

**UPDATE**

They were. Apparently there were some tears. :*-) 

Children's Water Festival

The Children's Water Festival happens once a year down at Pier 4 Park in Hamilton, and us staff from the Steam & Technology Museum participated this year by offering free educational water-themed activities for hundreds of kids. Possibly thousands. It was crazy, non-stop action. Crazy. Non-stop. Action. But fun. 

I had no idea how huge this event was until I actually got to go participate this past Thursday - there were dozens of other organizations - rowing clubs, Royal Botanical Gardens, Hamilton Water/Waste Water division team, EcoHouse, etc. etc. who came out to provide activity stations for the busloads of Grade 4's visiting throughout the week.  

The Steam Museum activity was two-fold: learning about the history of the Hamilton Waterworks and the importance of testing and filtering our drinking water; and then participating in a relay race called "The Trip of the Drip:" kids pretend they are a drop of water starting in Lake Ontario, and by crawling through pipes, pumping water, and jumping off the 'reservoir,' the drops eventually get to your facilities at home. Kids celebrate their successful water system travels by popping up through an oversized toilet and yelling "FLUSH!!" at the top of their lungs. Good, silly fun.  

I think our station probably was the loudest, with so many kids yelling and giggling as their friends rush through the relay. All of the groups of kids, their teachers and helpers, were happy and excited to learn and try new things at this event. I had three wonderful volunteer helpers on Thursday, and honestly running our activities wouldn't have been possible without them. 

By the end of the day, I'm pretty sure everyone on site had lost their voices - myself included. But it was worth it for a fun, beautiful, educational day learning about the importance of water! Added bonus: everyone now has a snazzy new t-shirt and reusable water bottle! 

Swag

These Things Happen

Stuff happens sometimes at a museum. Stuff like being infiltrated by birds crashing through windows.  This morning at the Steam Museum, we made the unfortunate discovery that some kind of bird of prey – a hawk or falcon – had crashed through a window pane in the Pumphouse. The bird unfortunately did not survive, however, staff were very quick to address the problem and new glass has already been ordered.

But that’s not the weirdest part. In the morning, it was the hawk. In the afternoon just before closing, it was a blackbird. That’s right – we had not one, but TWO bird-related issues this day. As we closed up the Woodshed for the evening, I found that a blackbird had somehow flew inside the building.

Could this beautiful weather be making our birds act a little crazy?  

Staff Field Trip

Every few months, we have a staff meeting at the Museum of Steam and Technology. I realize this sounds boring - but our staff meetings are actually just big potlucks, where we happen to discuss museum business.

Not an exaggeration

But in April, we upped the fun factor of our staff meeting, and went on a field trip. First stop was to Taylor's Tea Room in Dundas, where we had some lovely tea and scones and discussed museum things. Second stop was to visit the old Gartshore Foundry on Hatt Street.

The 1859 walking-beam steam engines at the Museum of Steam and Technology were built in this building in Dundas, which originally housed the iron and brass foundry of one John Gartshore. The building changed hands many times since, and currently has a few new offices for rent inside; but the original workshop area is vacant.

Through her other job with the local theatre, one of our historical interpreters made the connection with the current owners, who graciously took us on a tour of the buildings where our beloved engines were born. 

Usually we receive groups for field trips; this time, it was really fun (and educational!) to be the ones actually going on the field trip!

I definitely did not make Joe and Nancy pretend to be reading something really interesting for this picture. 

The Bug Building

At the Museum of Steam and Technology, we usually cook up some activities for kids on Family Day. This year, the theme was ‘Building Cities’ – one of the activities was to recycle old cartons, cardboard, paper, tubes, etc. and add a building to our 3D model city.

The activity area is not always staffed, and because it was quite a busy day with tours, I didn’t get a chance to see the city building in action. In a way, that made it even more impressive when I walked into the Woodshed at the end of the day and saw this awesome recycled city that had grown in just a few hours.

There were not one, but TWO versions of the Museum of Steam and Technology, recreated with cereal boxes and toilet paper tubes.

My favourite was the mysteriously labelled “Bug Building” that was still under construction at the end of the day. When I asked the little girl who had made the “Bug Building” with her Dad what a Bug Building was used for, she gave me an odd look and said very matter-of-factly, “It’s for Bugs.”  Makes sense. 

Oiling Engines with Dessert

During Christmas Break at the Museum of Steam and Technology, we held a drop-in program for kids exploring the Science of Ice and Snow. One of the activities included making ice cream in a ziplock bag. So before taking a tour of the 45 foot tall steam engines in the museum, one little boy visiting with his sister and parents had frozen desserts on the brain.

On the packing deck of the Pumphouse, I started discussing some of the jobs that had to be done to make the engine work – one of which was to oil the engine. For little kids, I explain the process in this way: First, to illustrate the concept of friction, I get kids to rub the palms of their hands together quickly, creating heat. Then I tell them that when the engine is turned on, all the big metal parts moving creates friction. If there is too much friction, the engine might break down. So, they fixed the problem by putting something slippery on the moving parts, to reduce the amount of friction. 

Then I asked them what kinds of things they might use to make the engine parts slippery. The little boy on this tour very earnestly and enthusiastically suggested “ICE CREAM?!”  

Now, the oilers at the Hamilton Waterworks originally used things like lamp black and melted down sheep’s fat (mutton tallow) to make the engine slippery. But I think ice cream could work. This kid is on to something.