Seven-millionth visitor gets lucky at the Canadian Children’s Museum

Seven-millionth visitor gets lucky at the Canadian Children’s Museum

The seven-million visitor milestone caps a year of record-breaking attendance at the Canadian Children’s Museum. Last year, 617,708 people visited during the year ending March 31, 2006.

Dr. Victor Rabinovitch, President and CEO of the Canadian Museum of Civilization Corporation, is thrilled about the Children’s Museum’s success. “The Canadian Children’s Museum gives young visitors an exceptional learning experience. It is a fun place where families can enjoy time together and where young eyes and minds open up to the world’s cultures and history, building a foundation for lifelong learning and citizenship,” he said.

Many families buy annual museum memberships that give them free admission to the Canadian Museum of Civilization and the Canadian War Museum. This also gives them unlimited access to the Children’s and Postal Museums.

The Children’s Museum is hugely popular. It has consistently drawn about half a million visitors yearly since it opened in 1989, and is the largest exhibition designed for children in Canada. Attendance is strong locally as well as with visitors coming from everywhere to the National Capital Region. Its 2,000-square-metre space includes an international village where children from one to 14 years can learn by doing. Exhibitions created by the Canadian Children’s Museum tour regularly across Canada and internationally and the Museum is the only Canadian member of a North America-wide Youth Museums Exhibit Collaborative (YMEC).

A significant renovation is currently underway at the Children’s Museum that will expand the temporary gallery space, called the Kaleidoscope Gallery, enhance the Theatre, and include several new permanent exhibits on Canadian themes.

The Canadian Children’s Museum has a permanent collection of over 15,000 artifacts, props and hands-on items for use in its exhibitions and programs. This unique collection includes toys, games, clothing, art, photographs and objects that testify to historic and contemporary aspects of children’s lives.

Young visitors can take on the role of a ship captain and load cargo into port, shop for food and goods in the cosmopolitan marketplace, join in the preparations for a wedding in the Northern Indian home and experiment with drum beats in the Nigerian home. At other stops, children can design and learn about clothing from around the world, play chess with an authentic Arabic set, serve tea in a Bedouin tent, write in hieroglyphics, make an Indonesian shadow puppet and perform with it, do origami at the Japanese house or engage in an endless variety of creative activities that teach children about themselves and the world. Kids can travel by tuk-tuk, motorcycle, bike-taxi or camel, or climb aboard the spectacular Pakistani bus that was one of the first artifacts installed in the Museum and is a favorite of more than one generation of visitors.

As the seven-millionth visitor to the Museum, Liam was surprised and delighted as he unwrapped his prize containing: a tee shirt, knapsack, lunchbox, hat, yoyo, mug and a family membership to the Canadian Museum of Civilization.

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