Science North and Dynamic Earth

On the basis of what I saw in Toronto, Ontario Science Centre is a world-class facility for science communication. The trouble with the world, however, is that it is extremely large and if one wanted to get to The Ontario Science Centre from, say, Sudbury, it’s a 5-hour drive there and a similar one back, which isn’t that great for northern Ontario – and as you live further and further north, that 5 hours can increase up to 12 or so. No, northern Ontario needs its own science centre and it is the often overlooked city of Sudbury that has stepped up to that plate.

Science North and Dynamic Earth

Originally merely a staging post between East and West, or a stopover point when travelling by coach from Toronto to Vancouver, Sudbury is an extremely important geological area in its own right. Mined since the late 19th century for its nickel reserves and recognised as the site of an ancient meteorite impact, the city was an ideal choice for northern Ontario’s science centres. In fact, the centres rely heavily and play well with the ideal of the ‘local’ centre.

INCO, the mining company most recently in charge of mining in Sudbury, were at the heart of getting the centres up and running. Whilst it was being built the public were allowed to come in and see the site at weekends, to see how construction was faring. After all, Dynamic Earth is all about mining and Science North uses tunnels to get from one building to the next, and this was a great way for INCO to give the all-important feeling of ownership onto the local community. Once opened in 1984, the centre went from strength to strength, keeping that ‘local’ idea.

The staff, just as in Toronto, are friendly and helpful; dependent on training, they can be anywhere from doing public shows (such as lighting methane bubbles and dropping potassium in water – I was assured that a bigger public programme occurred at weekends) to the more specialised areas or in the planetarium. Some are found on the animal level, demonstrating the local fauna for northern Ontario along with the various climate changes you find there. All the animals housed within the centre are rescue animals that couldn’t survive in the wild.

One excellent idea I found was that the local university, Laurentian, collaborates with the centre to offer the science communication course, on which students learn about how best to work in that environment and design new exhibits which are then used in the centre. There are also more staff hired specifically to make new exhibits, but this is not done in a back room; it is done on the floors where the public can interact with the prototypes and the staff, which I think is an excellent idea. Once again this demonstrates a great deal of passion, enthusiasm and ownership from the staff and a trust of those people who work there.

This trust that gives a lot of autonomy to the presenters also translates to the visitors. For example, whereas in some centres microscopes can only be used with ‘official’ slides, here anything can be put under the lens. That kind of trust in the public is rare and achieves good results, as far as I can see, despite the risks. In fact, another of my favourite exhibits from Science North was the erosion table, where you can build hills and channels to take the rain when it falls heavily upstream (see photos). It was designed so that children could work together and create something together, though apparently more adults than children use it! There is also the ‘cyberzone’ where children can play with telephones and a Nintendo Wii if needs be.

The team behind the centres trade well on their ‘Object Theatres’, from the Nickel City Stories and Refining Theatres at the Dynamic Earth site to the Great Lakes and Club Génome at Science North. These multimedia exhibits combine music, narration, acting and video with objects placed and variously lit throughout the audience’s space, right down to the seats. In the Great Lakes show we sat on pinewood benches and Club Génome was a cheesy, colourful 70s bar complete with appropriate stools. The simple addition of objects really transforms a video into much more of an experience; I’m just sorry I won’t be there to see the Dark Matter one which will open in June.

Science North has a 36-seater planetarium running Digistar 3; I was surprised to see that they had downloaded the Autumn Little List of Constellations from the Digistar Users Group so could enjoy hearing myself sing through the angled dome. It has two projectors and they run a mixture of live and automated shows, with new shows being worked on as the summer progresses.

As I said earlier, whilst Science North trades heavily on the idea of the ‘local’ science centre, they do send a lot of things out on tour to remote places in northern Ontario, from where students cannot get down easily. They have a 6m mobile planetarium and various web resources for teachers and the public. Obviously it is best to get to see how well the designers have used the landscape around them and its uniqueness to create centres that have a real feel of ownership and friendliness. Dynamic Earth, for instance, uses old mining tunnels to show how mining used to be 100 years and 50 years ago. A lot of good thought has gone into them.

My only problems with the centres was the lack of a shuttle bus between the two, although given that no-one would really use public transport to get to either, I can understand that. It is also difficult to see both centres in one day – I would have loved to see a lot more of the Science North centre, but time was pressing to see the mines. Also, I’m not unfit, or at least I don’t think so, but I found that all the attainment scores for the fitness tests in the Body Zone must have been created for androids or similar. Each time I was well subnormal, fitness-wise. Maybe I just am!

Sudbury is a city that has moved from a more mining-based economy to one of science, but in terms of the centres and of the Sudbury Neutrino Observatory. The mining has not gone away from the town, however much the striking workers try to push it, but has now been taken up and given a new lease of life for the public to see what has been going on beneath their city. Long may it continue. This is a city in which Ontario can feel a lot of pride.

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