I love it when a fun coincidence makes me appear knowledgable, or answers a
question that has bugged me for awhile; at the Museum and in my personal
life.  So I'm not alone.

Jerrie

Jerrie Clarke
Curator of Collections
Valdez Museum
http://www.alaska.net/~vldzmuse/index.html


>From: Colin Macgregor Stevens <[log in to unmask]>
>Reply-To: Museum discussion list <[log in to unmask]>
>To: [log in to unmask]
>Subject: Re: Amazing coincidence in museums
>Date: Wed, 22 Mar 2000 15:26:30 -0800
>
>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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