I was feeling pretty nostalgic for museums after going through some digital archives today. I worked in a few places in the 2000s, and I used to think that’s where I was headed too, but it’s a hard knock museum life and everyone knows cartoonists wear entire outfits made of gems and eat money for breakfast.
But here are *my* museums, because I love them so, and I hope you’ll drop by one if you get the chance. And maybe you’re thinking of working in museums yourself. And maybe you do already, and can relate.
An Drochaid, Mabou, Nova Scotia
Every little village has one, the building that services as a museum, local records depository, meeting place, fundraising area, etc. An Drochaid (gaelic for “the Bridge”) is in my hometown of Mabou, Cape Breton Island. For two summers I was one of those teenagers these places get grants to hire. I would talk to people about local history, teach them a bit of gaelic, and help them trace their family trees. I taught myself some gaelic too by going through their books and comparing the gaelic to the english translation.
I remember going through the burial records they had, which were written on those index cards you write recipes on, and looking at the computer, which took 10 minutes to boot up and three hours of beeping and choking to start a program, and realizing that maybe museums don’t ever get much money. One time I found in the attic a suitcase full of old letters from the early 1900s and it is still maybe the most exciting thing that has ever happened, like finding buried treasure. The letters were completely boring but that doesn’t matter. Someone once tried to steal music awards that we had on display, and it was very bizarre. Why would you even want those? Sometimes, the retired high school history teacher would drop in, and tell me about something he had been reading.
Green Apple Mister Clean makes me think of this place, because I mopped it with that and thought it was pretty dandy. Somehow that detail remains important, because when you’re a summer student at a place like this, it’s really like you have your own museum for a little while, because you’re the only one there all day and you open and close it. Your little baby. One more neat thing about it, the building itself was partly constructed from an old ships hull, and you can tell when you’re inside, and there are parts where there are no nails, but wooden pegs instead. Anyway.
Shearwater Aviation Museum, Halifax, Nova Scotia
I guess technically, it’s not in Halifax, it’s in Shearwater. But I lived in Halifax. Here I was an archivist assistant, which meant that I spent a lot of time doing the very, very boring work of data entry. Not that the stuff wasn’t interesting, but plugging information into a computer is ohhh so tedious, which is why when I now see a well done online archive, I am very impressed. The program that we were entering the data into was surely to be outdated in no time, if it wasn’t already, and it didn’t seem like easily transferable stuff. Shearwater’s website hasn’t changed much (at all?) since I was there either. But the librarian was sharp, she did keep everything that was analog in order.
That said, we had cool things. We had planes! A Fairey Swordfish! Planes are awesome. Google “Grumman FF,” it’s the cutest, fattest little biplane you ever saw. Too bad for the kids who visited, all they wanted to do was get in the planes, touch the planes, play on the planes (duh), but, alas for them, it is not allowed (duh). I could tell them the library was full of interesting books, but hey, kids. They could get pretty bored. Now when I see museums that put a lot of work into kids’ learning areas, I am really interested. Things they can touch! All they want to do is touch all the things. Maybe learn something, but mostly touch all the things.
We were a little far out of the way, as far as visiting Halifax goes, and we didn’t see the traffic other places did. I hope that Pixar movie did something about that.
The Maritime Museum of British Columbia, Victoria, BC
I was an administrative assistant here. I was so sure I was going to get this job that I applied first, and then moved to Victoria. I just wanted to work in a museum, it didn’t matter that they couldn’t give me full time or that I was poor or anything like that, and I had stacked my resume for this job. Me and my fancy History/Anthro BA, and through university I had also worked as a research assistant with the Sociology Department. In hindsight I was actually really lucky to get this job, because museum jobs are hard to get. And I loved the Maritime Museum.
The MMBC is in Victoria’s most historic district, it’s located in an old courthouse. One place I had to go for old boxes of files was a hidden room that used to be a jail cell, and it felt like it. The building is hella haunted, which, you know, even if you don’t believe in that stuff, is still cool. If you ask about ghosts, people rhyme off a good half dozen at least. It’s like Ghost Club in there. It has the oldest birdcage elevator in North America, and some people came just to see that. We were big enough to be a big deal within the city, and small enough to have just a handful of staff. As admin assistant, I was put wherever I was needed, so I got to have a finger in all the pies.
If you’ve never gotten to wander a museum’s back rooms where they keep all the stuff that’s not on display, boy, you haven’t lived. They had great things. Shipwreck pieces, diving suits, WWII items, personal items, model ships, figureheads, naval art, an endless list. Things so precious it would make you emotional to hold them. And yet, the museum, like all museums, struggled with funding and public interest. The dedicated staff worked to bail it out every time something else broke, which was all the time. I helped piece together a lot of grant applications, took minutes at a lot of meetings where they wondered what the solutions were going to be, this year. Still, if everyone was under the hammer every year, it was because they wanted to be. People who work in museums really love what they fight for. History dorks are a special breed. I didn’t make much money, and I had to leave this job to pay my student loans elsewhere, but I miss this place.
And I miss the volunteers, mostly old retirees, the lifeblood of a museum like this. You go into a museum, thank a volunteer.
I also met Emily Horne here, and the rest is comics history. She was the programs director, and I doodled in my downtime, and she said “you should put those online, like I do. I think you’d do well.”