Sunday, July 18, 2004

Where The World Meets The West

I took Mom to Glenbow museum today. Glenbow is the most important museum of Calgary and one of the most important ones across Canada as that's where the world meets the West. I was going to the museum last winter when we had stat. holiday but I was lazy and didn't.
We entered the museum from the gift shop. Great stuff and of course most of them expensive. Things you can't find anywhere else. The museum, itself, has 5 floors. The main floor is administration, gift shop and theatre. The second floor was prepared for two American artists, painters and I'd say sculpture artists. All about Cowboys and Indians (native Americans). There's also one department for Asian art and most of them are sculpture from India, Japan, Tibet, and other countries in Asia. Gods and Goddesses including Buddha and Shiva. Iran of course is not an Asian country in North American point of view! They know it as a Middle-Eastern country! There was a big map on the wall. The map shows that Asia begins from Pakistan and Afghanistan in the west and ends to Japan in the east! In fact an Asian is an Oriental in North American view.
Anyways the 3rd floor is about native people and the first people who migrated to Canada more than 100 years ago. How they lived, What they used, etc. Also there were everything that Indians (native people from different tribes) used to use in their daily life. From canoes and kaiak to different customs, their language, locations, dishes, everything. It was very interesting but there were too many things to see and I was tired. Mom was fine and liked it very much. The first agricultural and oil industry were another part of this section of museum.
4th floor was departed to 3 major section: Western African, minerals and military. We passed through the first 2 parts quickly but spent more time on military. One thing that I found there very interesting was a Persian armour. Every part of the armour was named in Persian and of course in English and was translated.
As I said, because of my tiredness we returned to the main floor and Mom bought a very cute beaver doll from the shop and we left.
I promised me to go there and see, photograph and read more. There are many things to learn. The admission is $12 for each but I used a coupon to get a %15 off of one of them. I found the coupon in Avis, last summer when I rented a car to go to Royal Tyrrell.
(Photo: This photo taken in the museum shows probably a horse accessory shop. Where saddle, spur and other stuff is being sold and repairs and services are provided)

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