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Lights! Camera! Locomotives! Science and Tech Museum reopens after three-year reconstruction

Tom Spears, Ottawa Citizen
November 16, 2017

Something old, something new, even some things that are borrowed. That’s the rebuilt, $80-million Canada Science and Technology Museum for you.

It looks different from way across the parking lot and the lawn beyond — a colourful glow of moving pictures that surround the entrance, telling visitors to buckle up for a new experience.

And yet it will feel familiar, in places. Given three years to re-make everything from the ground up after demolishing the decrepit old building, management struck a balance between preserving the old and striking out in new directions.

The Crazy Kitchen and locomotive are back, with some tweaks but very familiar. But the main attraction in terms of old things is Artifact Alley, the long corridor running diagonally across the entire building. It now shows more than 700 historical artifacts of all kinds — bicycles and an amphibious car and a fishing dory and telescopes and woodworking tools, on and on.

Crucially, that is double the number of artifacts that were on display in the old museum. One of the criticism of the old build was exactly that: It kept too much good stuffed locked away in storage buildings out back. No more.

“It almost feels like a cabinet of curiosities but modernized, more interactive,” said Christina Tessier, the museum’s director general. She calls the artifacts “the wealth of the museum.”

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