Whitehorse's Beringia Centre reopens after 5-month renovation
CBC
Whitehorse's Beringia Interpretive Centre re-opens its doors this weekend after a five-month closure for renovations — and visitors are being promised a more engaging and interactive experience of Yukon's Ice Age history.
"Change was a constant thing in the Yukon in the past," said territorial government paleontologist Grant Zazula, who was involved in the facility's overhaul.
"Extinction, survival and change through time was really what we wanted to get across."
The centre, just off the Alaska Highway, is home to skeletons, fossils, and other exhibits that aim to tell the story of life in the Yukon through the ages. Beringia refers to the land bridge that once connected Alaska and Siberia, over which humans and wildlife migrated into North America tens of thousands of years ago.
Zazula said the centre's renovations, with new murals, displays and interactive exhibits, have aimed to "bring the place to life."
"Instead of this being an Ice Age graveyard, we want it to be an Ice Age savannah and get colour and imagery and real stories and real fossils, from the Yukon."
Zazula said that when the centre was built in the late 1990s, Yukon did not yet have a paleontology program and so there was no collection of local fossils in the territory. Now the territory has built up an impressive collection of fossils and bones, many of them dug up over the years by miners in the Klondike region. Those finds allow the Beringia Centre to better tell the story of the evolution of life in the region, Zazula said.
Christie Grekul, who manages the centre, says many of the fossils now on display were being held at the Canadian Museum of Nature in Ottawa.
"There are definitely ones that have not been exhibited before ... So it's really great to see them come back to the Yukon and be exhibited for all Yukoners and visitors," Grekul said, as the final work was being done ahead of this weekend's reopening.
"Seeing the fossils go into the cases today was a bit emotional because we've spent so much time reviewing and thinking and choosing and swapping."
Zazula says some of the highlights include a 1.5-million-year-old caribou bone — the oldest in the Arctic — and the only fossil whitefish in the world.
He's also excited by the fact that the display tags on exhibits include the local Indigenous names for animals.
"None of this, none of these fossils would be possible without the cooperation and the partnerships with First Nations, and the Yukon placer gold mining community," he said.
"Everyone should be really proud of the fact that this is all fossils from their backyard, and these are all stories that were generated by Yukoners, and work in the Yukon."
Fort William First Nation is opposing a planned redevelopment of the Ontario Power Generation's (OPG) 117 year old Kakabeka Falls Generating Station, which is located in their traditional territory.
A building that sits at the corner of Sussex Street and Brunswick Avenue has had many lives over the last century — being a church, a school and offices. Now it's set to become housing, at a time when the city sorely needs it.
A Waterloo, Ont., elementary school principal will be sentenced in the new year after pleading guilty to child sexual exploitation charges following a joint investigation that involved the London, Toronto and Waterloo police services.
Students at UPEI have let their student union know what they want from the province this fiscal year, and those priorities are reflected in a 2024-2025 advocacy document brought to the legislature on Wednesday.
Larger communities in the N.W.T. will soon see a boost in their territorial funding to maintain infrastructure and deliver services — like water and waste management — but the increase still falls short of what communities need.
The toxic drug crisis has taken more than 47,000 lives in Canada since 2016 and the synthetic opioid fentanyl has become a household name. But now, what's believed to be an even more potent class of synthetic drugs is showing up in drug busts across the country: nitazenes.
The Liberal government and the NDP have agreed to introduce a two-month GST vacation on certain items before the holiday season, Radio-Canada has learned.
Veterinarians are warning Londoners to make sure their dogs are vaccinated and keeping clean after a deadly virus outbreak was declared in London this week.
Registered nurses rallied in St. John's Wednesday as part of a week-long convention, again calling on the Newfoundland and Labrador government to create permanent solutions to staff shortages and workplace violence.
New poll results released by Narrative Research suggest the Progressive Conservatives are heading into Tuesday's provincial election with a commanding lead over their political rivals.
A measles outbreak in New Brunswick is set to push Canada's annual case count to the highest it's been in five years, highlighting how infectious the disease is and how low vaccination rates have allowed it to take hold, says an immunologist.