Beaded Metis Buffalo Hunter's Saddle

Mr. Rick Cuthbertson recently donated to The Manitoba Museum a beaded Métis pad saddle.  His maternal grandfather, Constable Joseph Alexander Blackburn, bought the saddle when he was in what is now Saskatchewan at the time of the Riel Rebellion.  He was stationed at Maple Creek and Medicine Hat from May of 1885 to April 1890 and was among the officers who formed the guard for the Riel trial.

Photo courtesy of Rick Cuthbertson family. Used with permission. 

The saddle is typical of those used by members of the Métis buffalo brigades and illustrated in the paintings of Paul Kane.  The beading is the work of an expert artist.  The beads are small and sewn with very fine sinew rather than linen or cotton thread and although it impossible to say for sure, it was probably made in the early 1800s.

Afghanistan Memorial Fragment

A plaque featuring a fragment of the marble base of the Memorial of the Fallen in Afghanistan was presented to The Manitoba Museum in April by the Commanding Officer of the Winnipeg Infantry Tactical Grouping (Royal Winnipeg Rifles and Queen’s Own Cameron Highlanders). It will be on display in the museum’s foyer from November 9 to November 30.

Memorial Plaque. Photograph by Hans Thater.

The original memorial was erected at Kandahar Airfield, Afghanistan in 2006 and grew in symbolic importance over time as it evolved with the pace of operations. At the end of the Canadian combat operations, in June 2011, it contained plaques honouring all of the fallen in the Afghan theatre of Operations, including:

Canadian soldiers;

Allied soldiers serving under Canadian Command;

Members of the Canadian Government; and

One member of the Canadian Press Corps.

It was a living memorial that changed and expanded, and when families of the fallen started to visit Kandahar Airfield in 2009 for Remembrance Day, this cenotaph was a focal point of the ceremonies.

Memorial of the Fallen, Kandahar Airfield

The Memorial of the Fallen has attained national significance, and in early December, 2011, it was repatriated to Canada. It is scheduled to be unveiled in its new permanent home in Ottawa in 2014.

Lieutenant Colonel B.W. Takeuchi wrote in a letter to the museum, “This simple piece [of the cenotaph] represents the essence of Canada’s effort and sacrifice in maintaining world peace and helping the citizens of Afghanistan.”

Marvellous Molluscs

(photo by Hans Thater)

Gastropods (snails and their relatives) are the most diverse molluscs, so it seemed appropriate that the gastropod case should hold the greatest variety of specimens!

This has been a year rich in exhibit work, and we are finishing off with a bit of a bang. About a week ago we finished installation of our latest Discovery Room exhibit, a collaboration between Zoology and Paleontology entitled The World is Their Oyster: Marvellous Molluscs. As with the other D-Room exhibits we have produced (such as Jaws and Teeth and Colours in Nature), this was a collaborative effort. It was a pleasure to again work with Randy Mooi on selecting suitable specimens and preparing copy, and to collaborate with our superb collections and exhibit staff to produce the finished exhibit.

The idea for this exhibit was quite straightforward: to select suitable specimens from our permanent collection, which would depict the wonderful diversity and variability of molluscs. We also wished to give visitors a bit of information about the long fossil record of molluscs, their evolution, and a few “case studies” of particular molluscs or features.


This seemed like a simple sort of thing to do, but of course the view on the ground is never the same as that from 30,000 feet. Most of our issues were associated with the sheer number of mollusc specimens housed in our collections. We knew that there would be many excellent examples to choose from, but we did not appreciate quite how difficult this would be. There were so many to consider that, whenever we chose one beautiful snail for the gastropod case, it seemed there were at least 10 other good ones that could not be included.

The other issue was that molluscs are just so darned interesting, weird, and complicated in their life stories, dietary habits, and evolution. We kept discovering unusual things that we had not been aware of (or at least, I did; I suspect that Randy already knew some of these things). As a result, more and more new ideas came forward, and it was very hard to decide what we could include in the modest panel copy that accompanies the specimens. We were grateful that Stephanie Whitehouse, the designer, was so clear in telling us exactly how much space we had!

As issues and problems go, these were obviously good ones to have. And as these photos show, we were able to share a great variety of beautiful and appealing mollusc material. You will just have to imagine what the cases might have looked like if we had been able to include every single specimen we considered worthy of exhibit!

The cephalopod case

A variety of abalones

The Mineral Exhibit 2: Installation

With the front glass ready to install, Bert Valentin does some final work inside the big case.

The past week we have been very busy installing our temporary exhibit on molluscs (The World is Their Oyster: Marvellous Molluscs), which will open in a few days. While thinking about this exhibit process, I remembered that there are some splendid photos of the installation of our mineral exhibit, courtesy of our designer, Stephanie Whitehouse. So as a follow-up to the post about that exhibit a few months back, here are a few images of the complicated process of assembling specimens and cases!

Janis Klapecki aligns one of the pyrite specimens from the Snow Lake area.

The amethyst, with a weight of about one-half tonne, was somewhat problematic to install! Using the loading dock hoist, it had been placed on a purpose-built steel platform. Now, Marc Hebert and Bob Peacock make sure it stays straight, while Bert Valentin cranks the modified engine hoist that will lift it to case level. The rest of us serve as ballast on the hoist.

The raised amethyst is gently lowered into place in the case. VERY gently.

I vacuum the amethyst before the case is moved into place. Hans Thater holds a light so that every bit of lint can be seen.

Marc and Bert connect the lighting power, while Bob waits to roll the amethyst case into final position.

Botanist Blown Away

This September I was thrilled to be able to go on a tour of southern Manitoba with my colleagues here at the Museum. Our mission: to learn more about the people, places and wildlife that calls this part of the province home to generate ideas for new gallery exhibits.

Fruiting Dotted Blazingstar in the prairie near Miniota.

Hawk's-beard in fruit.

One of the most memorable things about our trip was neither a person, nor a place, nor an organism. In fact, it wasn’t even an animate object-it was a force: the wind. For anyone who has spent time on the treeless prairies you know what I mean when I say that the wind has an almost tangible physical presence. Standing on the Assiniboine River valley slope on a lovely patch of mixed grass prairie near Minota, I almost felt that I would get blown away along with the Dotted Blazingstar and Hairy Golden Aster seeds. On a windy day such as that, it was easy to understand why so many prairie plants evolved wind-dispersed seeds. Plants in the Aster family are particularly adept at becoming windborne due to the extreme modification of their sepals.

Cocklebur has animal-dispersed fruits.

In most plants, the sepals are tiny leaves that simply dry up as the fruit develops. But plants in the Aster family have sepals that are highly modified into special structures called pappi. In some species, like beggarticks, the pappus consists of spines that help the fruits catch onto the fur of passing animals; cocklebur fruits have hooked prickles to achieve the same goal. In most of the prairie Asters however, the pappus is a ring or puff of feathery hairs that act like a parachute. Under very windy conditions, Aster fruits can travel many kilometres away from the parent plant. This adaptation enables plants with wind dispersed fruits to more readily colonize bare areas of soil and maintain greater genetic variability.

Most of us have picked a dandelion and blown the fruits away but we rarely examine them closely or truly appreciate their beauty and functionality. Next time you see a dandelion look a little closer before you blow and admire one of the innovations of nature.

Goat's beard has the largest wind-dispersed seeds in Manitoba