Last week, we dealt with the opening of the National Exhibition Centre, as we recalled the origins of the Timmins Museum.
The Exhibition Centre came first, in 1975 in South Porcupine.
Museum director-curator Karen Bachmann says the community museum was opened there in 1980.
“So the exhibition there talked about the development of the City of Timmins, the Porcupine area, but it also allowed them to start collecting seriously in terms of artifacts and archival material related to the community,” she recounts.
Major structural issues with the building on Legion Drive forced it to close in 2007.
“So we were sort of vagabonds for a number of years,” says Bachmann, “but finally reopened at our current site in 2012, all part of the 100th anniversary of the city of Timmins because they thought my gosh, it would be really awful if we didn’t have a museum when we’re celebrating 100 years.”
Next week: some of the volunteers and professional staff in the museum’s early days.