Synchronicity (see Jung). This message is to see if many others have
experienced this phenomenon in museums. I don't think I am the only one.

Have you ever been looking through an old catalogue one day in the
collection, paused to look at an interesting strange object in it that you
have never seen before, and then the next day a donor brings in one of these
'unidentified' items and you, lo and behold, know exactly what it is? 48
hours earlier and you would not have had a clue of what it was, what it was
used for, or even where to look for information.

I visited a donor who had offered an almost complete 1877 Canadian army
Captain's uniform and accoutrements in along with a photo of his grandfather
wearing the uniform. I went to the one reference book I had for Canadian
uniforms of that period, and lo and behold (there is that phrase again!)
there was the SAME photograph! It was the Canadian shooting team that went
to Wimbledon in England in 1877. Not only that, the author of the book,
David Ross, was a friend and fellow curator and was able to tell me that the
Captain whose uniform it was had served with the Kildonan Infantry Company
(Winnipeg, Manitoba area) which was perpetuated by the Royal Winnipeg
Rifles. The Assistant-Curator of the Royal Winnipeg Rifles' museum was also
an old friend of mine and had just been out west visiting me! I forwarded
the uniform to that museum in Winnipeg, Manitoba where it would be more
appreciated. I got the feeling that 'Fate' wanted it that way!

Perhaps the most moving experience I have had with synchronicity (i.e.
incredible coincidence beyond reasonable explanation) was a cannon from the
French munitions ship "Mont Blanc". This ship blew up in Halifax Harbour in
Nova Scotia during World War I on Thursday Dec 6, 1917 at 09:05 after
colliding with the Belgian ship "Imo" in what has been called "the biggest
man-made explosion before the nuclear age". Windows broke 50 miles away and
the shock wave was felt 270 miles away. The "Mont Blanc" probably flew into
a million pieces and flattened much of the city of Halifax. The heavy cannon
barrel flew about three and a half miles (!) inland and as I recall was
found on the shore of Albro Lake. A large triangular section of the barrel
at the muzzle (front) was missing. The bent cannon barrel was (and probably
still is) mounted out in front of the Dartmouth Heritage Museum - upside
down! One day about 1967 I was working as a student volunteer in the
museum's storage and came across a large triangular chunk of metal (weighing
about 20 pounds as I recall) with cannon rifling on one side. We checked the
history and it too had come from the Halifax Explosion and had fallen
through the roof of a woman's house in Dartmouth. I asked the Museum
Director Bob Frame, if I could try test fitting it into the cannon barrel on
the lawn. He agreed. It was a perfect fit! Fifty years later, two pieces out
of a million piece jigsaw which was literally blown to the winds were
reunited, albeit briefly. For more information on the Halifax explosion see:
http://www.region.halifax.ns.ca/community/explode.html

There are more synchronicity stories involving museums but this message is
now long enough.

Anyone else have stories of amazing coincidence in museums - so strange that
they seem to go beyond ordinary coincidence?

Colin Macgregor Stevens,
Curator,
Burnaby Village Museum,
Burnaby, BC, CANADA

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