I was on the fence about the risks of going to an indoor museum. I have great childhood memories of going to the Royal BC Museum (each provincial capital has their own) and I wanted to share that with Oscar. But ugh COVID and few masks in sight. When the day came, rain was forecast and we needed something to do while Delilah napped. Oscar and I both have elastomeric masks, so using those I hoped the risk were minimal and that the museum wouldn’t be too busy on a Monday afternoon. The entrance fee was by donation, so worst case scenario we’d just leave if it didn’t seem worth it.
Oscar was initially quite resistant to going. He of course doesn’t have any memory of museums! However, once we entered and met Megamunch, the mechanical T-Rex, Oscar was game. The museum was unfortunately busier than I’d have liked. By the time we arrived there were at least two schools groups there, which we kept dodging. Luckily, the attention span of a 5-year-old isn’t that long anyway, so we really only stayed about an hour.
The bottom floor was dinosaurs with real skeletons to show scale (eg a t-Rex foot, a triceratops skull). The hall also had a full-sized T-Rex skeleton.
The top floor was natural history focused on the different landscapes of the prairies. I saw what I hoped were previews of what we would see in Grasslands National Park. You could tell the creators of the different biome scenes didn’t have much to work with in terms of exotic species and certainly very few large animals. Instead, they created subtle displays that revealed more detail the longer you looked at them, with small birds and butterflies half-hidden throughout. It was quite compelling! There were also some semi-submerged scenes where you could see both the above and below water views. And there was a room that would switch between day and night in a forested space, which Oscar particularly enjoyed.
There were also some displays on indigenous culture, but they were less elaborate than the animal displays and mostly focused on clothing and jewelry, far less exciting to Oscar.
I’m glad I took Oscar and that David encouraged that decision. His excitement in the museum makes me a little sad that he’s missing out on those same experiences he could be having at home. But he’s still young to really be getting much out of these spaces. There’s still time for the world to figure itself out.