Day 51, 7.17.18 Museums in Kingston

Tuesday brings another day off. We don't even visit Eclipse. Kingston is known for it's museums, and they are many and varied. We'll start off with the historic Belleview house, once home to Canada's first prime minister, Sir John A. MacDonald. We chat with the gardener (who thinks he's a beekeeper) and learn much of the founding of Canada from a British colony. MacDonald was a driving force behind unification of the provinces, and with the threat from the Fenians (see our page on visiting Fort Oswego) the maritime provinces joined. 

Writing our own sign of what Canada (and the rest of the world's countries) needs.

  Respect for all individuals!

Queens University has a physics department, and a Nobel Prize winner, Arthur B. McDonald, who measured the spin on a neutrino and, in so doing, determined that neutrinos have mass. They have a nice display of current and older work, and a sand table to play with. Make a depression in the sand, or a mound, or ridges, and set a virtual particle moving across it. Contour lines are projected on the sand and the particle follows the laws of gravity.

We found the Agnes Etherington Art Museum next, walking through their spacious halls. Two rooms displayed flat monochrome woven panels. We didn't get it. But we commented on the color and vibrancy of a row of children's backpacks hung on pegs in the coat room.

Then on to the Miller Geology museum. Much of the displays here are very old-school. Wood and glass cases of colorful, oddly shaped, rare and valuable rocks, minerals, ores etc. A room of dinosaurs and fossils, including a display of the Mistaken Point fossils on the coast of Newfoundland. These are some of the oldest known fossils at 560 to 580 million years ago, well into the Precambrian age. It is not known how these animals relate to Cambrian ones.