Western Development Museum News

Artificial limbs have been used for much of human history. The earliest known example of a prosthesis is a toe found on a 3,000-year-old Egyptian mummy. There are written records,…

Many museums, including the WDM, have collections of old taxidermy. While it may not seem so at first, taxidermy from before 1960 can actually be dangerous. This is because of…

June 20 is World Refugee Day, a day to show support for and solidarity with people fleeing violence and oppression. To mark this important day, we’re highlighting some artifacts from…

WDM-1973-S-21813: A Silverwood Springs crate used to transport bottles.   When Saskatoon was founded in the late 19th century, clean water was hard to come by in the city. There…

In our final blog about Susanna Dimsdale’s sampler, we will explore how other historical documents and sources can help provide insight about an artifact’s life. In addition to researching the…

Last time, we introduced Susanna Dimsdale’s beautiful but mysterious embroidery sampler, one of the oldest artifacts in the WDM’s 75,000+ artifact collection. In this blog series, we are examining archival,…

The textile collection in the Western Development Museum covers several centuries and has some rare pieces within its storerooms. One is a sampler made in England by a young 8-year-old…

If you stopped a random stranger on the street, and asked them to name a source of radioactivity, chances are they might respond with an international nuclear accident site like…

The Western Development Museum collection of Saskatchewan artifacts and over 9,000 of its library materials are now available for the public to search online. From pins to locomotives to a…

A lot goes on behind the scenes in a museum to maintain the health of our collections. Not only do we display and store artifacts, but we are constantly checking…