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The fun & fascinating stories of Supply Chain & Logistics.
Bryndis 0:03
Hi. My name is Bryndis Whitson, and you're listening to the Zebras to Apples podcast, the fun and fascinating stories of supply chain logistics. What I love to do is highlight what is supply chain logistics that you would not normally think about, and that's exactly what this podcast is all about. You might not think of a museum as a hub of supply chain logistics, but it totally is. Think about it, the collection, the artifact, the painting, or in this case of this podcast, the airplane had to get there somehow. It requires care and attention and precision. My guest for this episode is Alison Mercer, the senior curator of the military museums in Calgary, also referred to as TMM. Alison, was the curator of the Air Force Museum in the Cold War exhibit, and is currently overseeing its expansion with its board. This episode highlights not only a great museum, but also an area of supply chain logistics you might not have thought about, please join me and my friend Alison Mercer as we talk about how do you move a fighter jet down the highway, amongst other things. Okay, so I'm here with Alison, and we're talking about museums and the logistics and supply chain that actually is involved in curating a whole bunch of different activities. So tell me about how you got to the military museum.
Alison 1:26
So yeah, it's, I grew up with a lot of military stuff, kind of in the house, because my dad's very much sort of, like an amateur military historian. Likes a lot of, like, the material culture that comes with it. So yeah, I grew up a house full of books and, you know, here's, like, random inner tank shells and things like that, and-
Bryndis 1:43
Just random things around the house.
Alison 1:46
Yeah, like, every kid has, so, yeah, yeah. So, it was just, like, very much, like, standard part of my life, since, like, getting to the point of remembering things, and, yeah, so, and then I went into university, studied kind of a variety of different sort of fields of history. And then by I think it was the middle of undergrad, took my first kind of Canadian Military History course, and it was just like, I know all this. Like, I don't know it, know it, but like, it feels like coming home, so throughout kind of the rest of my undergrad degree, I went ahead with that, focused on that, and then for my master's degree, pursued that same topic, specifically Canadian Army in the Second World War.
Bryndis 2:23
Okay.
Alison 2:24
And just looking at sort of styles of leadership, which, again, leadership analysis, and kind of comparing some of the senior officers of the Canadian Army to each other and how they were good and how they were bad. And so yeah, that that was pretty much it, yeah. And then at one point in undergrad, I saw a job posting for an internship here, applied, got the job, came here, did it for that summer, and then went off to grad school. And then after grad school, called the museum again to say, Hey, do you have any more internships? And they said, Well, no, but the Navy Museum is looking for an assistant curator. Again, it's pretty much an internship position, but, yeah, yeah, it still was going to kind of like, you know, open a door or two. I had no intention whatsoever of actually doing this as a career. It was just like, here's a job. Okay. I know this stuff. I will do this job. And then that turned into, like, about two years later, working for the Air Force Museum here as their curator, which I've done for 14 and a half years. And then just recently, I got hired on as the senior curator for the whole military museum. And yeah, it's, it's kind of like a little bit of shell shock there. But yeah, yeah, I'm stoked anyway.
Bryndis 3:31
Which was really exciting.
Alison 3:32
Thanks. Yeah, yeah.
Bryndis 3:33
And so at the Air Force Museum, there's a lot of different displays you've had, sending up two different, like sections and stuff like that. Can you maybe talk a little bit just about what's in part of the Air Force part of the museum at the moment?
Alison 3:48
Yeah, for sure. So the way the Air Force Museum here is set up is we have two specific galleries. We have the interior gallery. We just revamped a little bit of that, added this really cool display. It's called The Great Escape Experience. I wanted something kind of experiential based there too, that wasn't just like a touch screen that was breaking all the time. And essentially, it's a facsimile of one of the prisoner war huts from Stalag Luft lll as per Great Escape moody fame, I guess. And as well, a recreated length of the tunnel. It's built to the same height and width of the original that people can actually go through themselves on a little trolley. So yeah, so that's the inside gallery. And then the outside gallery is our Cold War exhibit sponsored by Ken Lett, who unfortunately, has lately passed away, but he was a big, big benefactor there. And it is really like the only military based Cold War exhibit in the country, and very kind of fighter centric, because our board here is very full of old x fighter pilots. So they are right, they have their preferences. And okay, you guys, you're the ones doing most of the work here. You can build it the way you want. That's fine. And, yeah, it's a great space, and it has three fighter aircraft in it, and just tells pretty much the whole story of the RCAF in the Cold War. Yeah.
Bryndis 4:56
Oh, that's really good. There's so many neat aspects.That well, and also even taking the original Museum, the Interior Museum, and then reconstructing it huge, yeah,
Alison 5:09
Yeah, yeah. You know, people talk about permanent displays in the museum world, but technically, nothing should really be permanent. You know it, it'll be a fixture for probably, I guess, if you say best practice probably about 10 years and then you should change it up again too, just because it keeps things fresh and keeps visitors motivated to come back
Bryndis 5:27
Exactly. And were you, I'm trying to remember, were you there at the right at the beginning or shortly? You came shortly after?
Alison 5:33
One year later. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. It was actually Jerry Morrison who had stopped me in the hallway just as a Navy was running out of money. He's like, Hey, do you want to be our curator? Like, sure, it was, like, is the pope a Catholic? Like, totally, yeah, yeah, yeah. I would love that, yeah. And it was so cool. It's core memory, for sure, exactly.
Bryndis 5:51
And to give people just an idea, like, inside the Interior Museum, there's a Quonset hut, there's a whole bunch of interactive displays. There's the inside of a Herc. There's a whole budget. Yeah.
Alison 6:00
So when it opened in 2009 the museum was, like, very, very new at the time, and had, like, next to no artifacts in its collection. We had a few things, but not enough, really, to, like, build a big, big kind of, like museum story around these objects. So instead, it's very image heavy, text, heavy, interactive, kind of where it could be. And the interactivity that was put in at the time was solid, essentially. But yeah, a lot of it was very, like tech based, very screen based, and that some of it has still stood up fairly well to the test of time. But that stuff, you know, it gets overused by visitors, or it just has inherent flaws. It makes it break down. So, yeah. But yeah, touch screens, a couple of theaters. One is reconstructed to look a little bit like a Nissen hut from the Second World War. There's kind of a cool effect where it looks like the image for the one video is projected onto a screen, that is, the image is identical to the set dressing that's in the background. So it looks like this dude is actually coming out of this door-
It really does
and talking to you, yeah. So, yeah. But so that's cool, definitely in terms of being kind of a more immersive experience, which we're after here. And then the second theater, too, is again, kind of recreated to look like the interior of a Hercules aircraft, with bits and pieces of like seating and things like that, and some of the comms devices. And it just mainly just displays, kind of like, "What Does the Air Force Do Today?" Sort of videos,
Bryndis 7:22
And just for the people listening, can you explain a little bit about the Cold War exhibit?
Alison 7:27
Yeah, for sure, yeah, like, I kind of alluded to earlier, it's very, kind of NATO centric currently, and very fighter centric. That's due to, like, the kind of perspectives of our board, which, honestly, at the end of the day, there's, you know, you work with what you have. And those guys have a ton of experience in this regard. And it's sort of just ready made content right there, like, Hey, tell me about this thing. What's it like to fly this one aircraft? So it just kind of almost built itself, especially with their own motivation there. But in terms of the layout of the thing, it works kind of chronologically too, like there our inside space does. So you start off and you have the F 86 saber, which was sort of our prime cold war fighter in the 50s and early early 60s, and passing them through to the CF 104 starfighter, fastest aircraft Canada ever flew. Initially had a sort of a nuclear delivery role, and then switched more to conventional weaponry in the late 60s and 70s. And then onwards to the eastern hangar. There's two hangars, east and west, and then the East hangar has the CF 18 that we have, which was actually the 2009 centennial of flight air show aircraft. So it has this, like, really sexy paint job. And, yeah, the names of 100 influential Canadians in aviation kind of on around the outside of it, which is really cool.
Bryndis 8:38
That must've been really exciting when you were kind of setting that up.
Alison 8:41
Yeah, the guys wanted to build a Cold War exhibit anyway, because they felt that their history, rightly so, felt that their history wasn't reflected anywhere. And we had this, the offer initially, of the CF 18. It was getting retired. It was up in cold lake at the time, and they were looking for a home for it, because the airframe had kind of got time expired, and they said, give it to the Air Force Museum down in Calgary. The guys were like, Heck yes please. And so was I.
Bryndis 9:10
Very much so!
Alison 9:10
Yeah, don't mind if we do, yeah. And so it was initially built for that. And when the initial plans, like we initially, we wanted to put it sort of a more on, like, amidst, sort of the TMM buildings, so between the main TMM building here, and then the Navy Museum, which is part of the expansion to TMM that happened in 2007, but it turned out the flooring there, where we had planned to put it wasn't going to be strong enough to hold this aircraft. So it would then have to, like, migrate over to its own building. And part of that process was, well, what if we can get some more. And, yeah, and then they did, and then we still have more, because we're building an expansion.
Bryndis 9:45
Which is really exciting, because there's a whole bunch of new ones coming in, too
Alison 9:48
Seriously, yeah, very much. Yeah, yeah.
Bryndis 9:50
Well, and that that becomes, like, it a challenge in itself, because making sure that you've got all the right, you know, materials and stuff like that so-
Alison 10:00
Very much. Yeah, yeah, definitely. It's the space it is getting the aircraft as well to put in the space it is refurbishing the aircraft. Then once all that's done, of course, then you can build the exhibits kind of around that.
Bryndis 10:14
Figuring out lighting and figuring out all of those pieces are little things that people don't think of.
Alison 10:19
Oh, definitely, yeah. Museums, especially lighting, is a big deal because obviously over exposure to lighting will fade certain materials, fabrics, textiles and paper based artifacts are very light sensitive. So yeah, if you think about sort of something that is almost not really like non existent light, but that really is like the only light in which you can display those for any length of time whatsoever, yeah? But with metal things, aircraft, you don't really have to worry about that. So you can get these, like, cool dramatic lighting effects. And, yeah, it's neat. There's a variety of options.
Bryndis 10:53
Yeah, well, and also figuring out where to order all of those different things, like, I'm sure there's not, you know, like, one company or something.
Alison 11:00
Yeah, yeah, for sure, yeah. I know, like with our current two galleries, we've always done things kind of chronologically, and I would like for the expansion coming up. I would actually like to get away with that and go more thematically based, because chronologically is okay. It makes logical sense for the visitor. But I think too, like what we kind of miss out on, and what we fall into with the chronological approach is more just like this event happened, and then this squadron did this, and then we got this aircraft, and you kind of lose the people in that whole big picture. And because we're in the midst of a large urban center, many people coming in don't really care about how high can this plane go, and what happened to the squadron here. I mean, the guys that served did, definitely, the people that served did, but to the average visitor, like, they want to know, like, Okay, what was it like to fly this thing, yeah, and what was it like to move, like, once every two years? Yeah, right, things like that. So more like the lived experience. So that's why I'm hoping with the expansion, we can get more into building the whole concept and the concept around, like the human experience of a service, and then talk about everything else in the process.
Bryndis 12:04
Oh, really neat. Yeah, so many different, you know, aspects that you can add.
Alison 12:08
There is, yeah, yeah, for sure.
Bryndis 12:10
Well, so as we're kind of talking and stuff like that with the expansion or with all different galleries and stuff like that, you're looking at different ways that you can kind of move exhibits. You know, you recently just did the founders gallery, yeah, yeah, the 100th anniversary of the Air Force. How did that go?
Alison 12:30
Yeah, yeah. The big Centennial show that was from my own perspective, that was, like the largest show, like I've personally done yet. And it was my boss essentially handed me a blank slate, and was like, Hey, make a centennial show. So again, like, I wanted to kind of get beyond, like, the data and the airplane facts and the historical events to sort of look more about the human experience piece behind it. And so in that case, like, what I tried to do was sort of explain, like, how Air Force culture has developed out of, like, just a baseline human experience of service in the last 100 years here in Canada, and just explain how things like technology and working environment and like the lifestyle all kind of combined to create the specific Air Force culture. And so part of that too was just finding like, it's not all just human related artifacts, but artifacts that spoke to the changes in technology and artifacts that spoke to the working environment, like here is like a big, thick, First World War leather flying coat that has essentially wool blankets sewn to the inside, because they're flying open cockpit airplanes, versus, like, you know, a flight suit from the late 1980s where it's just sort of like one, sort of thin, like layer of sometimes polyester, the guys hated that, because if the thing caught a fire, like, this stuffs going to stick to your skin. Great, I love this! Yeah, so and then just how, you know, like, the technology is changing, the human experience is changing with it. So just finding artifacts that I could link directly to these three topics I was trying to talk about, yeah, it was like, actually, it wasn't hard. I thought it would be, you'd be kind of scraping the barrel. But if you just took the thing and then thought about it in that context enough, it made sense, yeah.
Bryndis 14:12
Well, and it's also, you know, for, I think for that when you were saying that this is what you use, mainly things you already had in the collection. So it's figuring out how to utilize all of those pieces.
Alison 14:23
Yeah, that's definitely, like a logistics side of things, too, because it wasn't just, I want this to be super simple and it's just stuff we already have. I don't want to have to fool around with inter museum loans and stuff like that, and shipping and receiving and all that. We have these things in the building because I'm also managing the development of The Great Escape display. I'm also managing the refloring of the interior gallery. So something in this has to be simple, and most of it has to be as simple as possible to get all of it done. So it was to use stuff that we have and as well, too, in terms of how we're going to display it. I don't know about other museums, but this one in particular has always had a bit of a chronic issue with display cases, and the ones that are typically available for that space are big, heavy, usually MDF bases you need multiple multiple people to move them, and big acrylic tops, again, that you need multiple people for. But I wanted to create instead things that essentially one person can manage. So I just got some custom acrylic tops made and designed bases for them, just built from, like, simple IKEA tables. Okay, you know, here's a basic table top. I think it costs like 10 bucks, depending on the size. And here's four legs. You can unscrew them. The whole thing collapses again for storage when you're done. And even the case tops have all been designed size wise, so that they nest and it doesn't take up a whole bunch of real estate, yeah, when you're done. Because part of our issue here, despite having the expansion and things like that, is we really, personally, don't have a lot of storage space for stuff like this. Even with our collection, we're pretty much out of space in terms of accepting new items. So yeah, part of this was, yeah, it needs to be, like, small footprint when it's done, and also cheap, and it managed to be both.
Bryndis 16:03
That's good!
Alison 16:04
Yeah, yeah. I was so pumped. Yeah, yeah.
Bryndis 16:07
Well, even just bringing in, like, the day of like, setting it up, or as you're setting it up, like, yeah, organizing the volunteers, organizing all of the different people that you need to set that up.
Alison 16:19
Yeah, yeah. The setup was infinitely longer, obviously, than the takedown.
Bryndis 16:24
That's always fascinating how it takes so much longer for that. Yeah. I find it fascinating every single time.
Alison 16:30
Yeah, yeah. It was actually just to see the sheer difference, like we were probably, like, we definitely weren't installing 5am the night before the opening. Thank goodness, because I said we're not doing that. We are not those people, but there was still lots of overtime into the evenings, and like, one or two weekend days I had to come in, but we still had enough kind of leeway before the opening that it didn't feel like we were, like, distressingly rushed or anything. Yeah, I know for the setup, it was mainly myself and my collections assistant, but then the takedown, we just killed it. It was myself and we had two volunteers on the first day, the collections assistant who was ferrying all the stuff back down to the collection on the cart, and between the four of us, like, we got the whole thing, like, de installed in like, half a day, yeah, which is insane, because usually, like, I've seen other exhibits in there that have been, you know, like two weeks, getting de installed
Bryndis 17:21
Exactly well. And you look at, yeah, just figuring out, like, okay, where does this go? Where does that go? And then bringing it all back down.
Alison 17:28
100% Yeah. And to be fair, we all kind of just rammed it into our collection area for the first like month or so, because we're all sort of just, holy cow, that was a lot of work. So you sort of just chill for a bit, and then it's just been from there, kind of piecemeal, like moving the mannequins out to our sea can, moving the nesting cases out to, like one little corner of our Cold War exhibit that we have for space, and just sort of taking our time with making sure everything has, like a place that isn't in the way.
Bryndis 17:55
Completely. And so when you talk about collections, you know, what's that process like?
Alison 18:00
Yeah, so essentially, really, like, the only way that we get new stuff is when people give it to us and shout out to our donors. Definitely, it's been great. Over the years, we've had some really, really fantastic stuff come in, and the person's like, well, I don't know what this is. Like, here just having just, like, man. It's like, this is a Maltese cross cut out at the side of, like, a Fokker DR3. Like, come on, man. Like, you're sure you don't want a tax receipt, because, anyway, yeah. So it's like, and then sometimes people come in with, like, the most mundane stuff, and they're like, I want this on display yesterday, and I would like a tax receipt. And it's like, sir, that's worth five bucks. Again, not necessarily dragging people, but you get all sorts of different types of donors, yeah. So yeah, it's essentially what people bring us. And I have noticed over the past 14 and a half years, obviously, there was a big trend towards second world war donations in the first, I would say, almost eight years here, okay, and then that kind of petered off, and there was a bit of a dead space for quite a while. And now we're starting to see the early Cold War stuff coming in, which honestly is really, really nice. And there's not a whole bunch of Cold War artifacts that people seem to hang on to, like they were either returned to, kind of stores when they, when people got out right, or it just, yeah, just less, probably because people are moving more, and there's less of a tendency to hang on to stuff. That would be my baseline assumption, and the stuff too. Like, I don't know, like these nice, stout, say, like, a wool battle dress. Sometimes the air, air force war just seems to the longevity of those objects just seems to be much greater than, like, a polyester, like, you know, service dress tunic kind of thing.
Bryndis 19:36
Completely.
Alison 19:37
Yeah, and I don't know, one's just a lot nicer than the other too. So, yeah, we are starting to see early Cold War donations now, which is really, really good.
Bryndis 19:46
And do you have, like, a catalog system or?
Alison 19:48
Yeah, yeah, we do, for sure. It's like that is, like, absolutely integral to any kind of museum collection is, yeah, there's nothing worse than, like, a room full of stuff and you have no idea where it came from. Because, if you can, and I feel deeply, specifically in terms of the people behind it, if you can't tie it back to the person that it came from, or at least sort of some aspect of human experience, like, why is it here? So a lot of my motivation there came from visiting the Australian War Memorial down in Canberra, which is a huge, huge military museum there, fantastic, highly recommended, best one I've ever been to. And every museum in that building is tied back to a person, and they won't accept anything unless, again, the provenance can be tied back to an individual, which I think is a really, really good approach. Because, like, what meaning does it have to us as people if it didn't belong to somebody else? And I understand, of course, the flip side of that, like, Okay, you have, like, say, like, a Fairburn Sykes commando knife. And there's a whole bunch of different versions of this thing. And it's cool to have every single version, like, for some people, but I think for the general people coming in, like, the general population, it's nicer to be able to be like, hey, this, this belonged to Grant Whitson right now, and it was used here, yeah, and yeah, and it just is that human connection, I think that fosters engagement with the items.
Bryndis 21:06
It totally does. You know, even that little moments, like, just as an aside, there was at the Air Force at the airport for a really long time, there was a military museum display,
Alison 21:17
Oh yes.
Bryndis 21:18
And there was a bronze statue of a whole bunch of different people, and one of them was my dad's flight suit. Oh, no way. And I had this moment where I would say to people like, well, let's go see my dad at the airport. Oh, what does he volunteer for? And then I'd be like, here's my dad.
Alison 21:34
Yeah, right. Sweet. That's cool. Yeah. That wasn't a bad display. I think the only thing weird about that was just like the bizarre children that they'd made. Yeah, we actually sort of, as an aside, all that stuff eventually came back here. And the kids, I don't know where they are now, but we would hide them throughout the galleries, so you're like, come around the corner. It's just like such a weird design.
Bryndis 21:57
Yeah, it was interesting like, there was the kid with the airplane, and there was a kid with something else.
Alison 22:02
And, yeah, that's a hot take. Yeah, I don't know if it increased visitation. Maybe not, but yeah, I
Unknown Speaker 22:08
Yeah, exactly. You never know. The rest of it was good.
Alison 22:10
Yeah, yeah. But in terms of collections, collections management, yeah, that database, kind of archival system of keeping track of your accessioned items is just crucial to like, yeah, like your A, your reputation B, your success as an institution and with us, initially, we had kept just physical records for most of the stuff. We military museums in Canada, at least, have for years been trying to use this artifact management system called CFAMS, Canadian Forces artifact management system. It initially comes from Parks Canada, and it was built for them initially, but yeah, and for some reason, I guess we're expected to use it too, but it's not very useful. The fields don't there's not much modification; you can do it all to the fields. It's not that searchable. It's just not for any kind of workflow, it's just not that good. And so I eventually just kind of rage quit about five years in, and then just went into Excel and built us our own custom spreadsheet that has three separate pages. So there's the source page, which is like the donor, the donor info, contact stuff, all that, and then sort of like the basic item description on a different page, and then the details, like, what's it made of? What conflict is it related to? What's its size, what's its condition? And so we use that now, right? And so all of our physical files are all digitized into these Excel pages now, and it's searchable.
Bryndis 23:33
Exactly and excel would be so much different than I wonder if the database is like older database
Alison 23:39
Seems to be, yeah, I would say, I can't say for certainty, but just looking at like the interface for the thing, I would say CFAMS is probably mid to late 90s,
Bryndis 23:49
Yeah, and well, and that's just as you know, as one of those things where people don't realize that a lot of the systems that are in setup, yeah, sometimes still run on DOS, let alone, yeah, let alone windows.
Alison 24:03
Yeah, dos slash, start.
Yeah, exactly. Whoa. Oh, amazing, yeah. Well, we in one of the galleries here have computers that are still using Windows XP, but that's not quite as bad as dos.
Bryndis 24:14
No, that's not quite there.
Unknown Speaker 24:15
Yeah, yeah, wow,
Bryndis 24:17
You never know, but sometimes, yeah. And so when you get the collections, and then you were talking a little bit about, you know, museum transfer, or kind of take one on loan, what's the what's involved there?
Alison 24:31
Yeah, so, because they're museum objects, and the preservation of these objects is obviously deeply important to what we do in our general work, is, if something's going to go out on loan, you want to do an outgoing condition report, sort of like, does it have any chips on it? Is it falling apart? Is it cracked, whatever. And then when the receiving institution gets it, they do their own condition report, just to see if it was damaged all in transit. And then two, when it comes back to you, when you receive it, you do a follow up condition report, just to track any changes to that. And, yeah, like, generally, it's just to make sure your stuff is surviving. But it's also useful, in sort of a longer term, to see if there's any sort of, like year to year deterioration in these objects. And then you can kind of take preventive steps to avoid that.
Bryndis 25:17
Exactly. And so if something is moving between museum to Museum, is it, you know, does it go through the mail? Like, how is it?
Alison 25:24
Oh, yeah, good question. Yeah, it totally depends. So we have had loans from the Glenbow that I've just physically drove down, picked up the thing in its box, brought it up here, and then drove it back. Yeah, usually it's courier. We haven't, I haven't personally dealt with any kind of, like crazy, like, high level loans or anything from, like the war museum. But it's a specialized courier, usually, especially for things like art pieces, and they come packed in these great big wooden crates and everything else. And, yeah, just like the process of that is super important. A big consideration too, of loaning stuff is the condition, environmental conditions of the place it's going to for example, we are in a building that is both a very modern building and part of a very, very old building. So our climate control is not the best all the time. And so you get these institutions like the war museum, potentially, we could have some cool paintings coming from them, say, First World War era stuff. But because the climate conditions aren't right for the, you know, thorough preservation of these things, we can't get them in like they won't send it. So it send them to us, which is a Okay, as far as I'm concerned, because we just, you know, it will not to be, it will be to the potential detriment I guess the things are here for any length of time, so-
Right and when you look at that, like the difference in that kind of piece, too, of those changes that could occur, especially humidity, like we're in a dry climate in Calgary, but in other areas, not so- very humid. And so how do you control those pieces?
Yeah, very much. Yeah, yeah. If you think of us versus, say, like the West Coast, for example, yeah, like, in a lot of ways, it's almost beneficial to be on the drier side of things for certain items. But generally, you have a building with a decent enough HVAC system that can be tailored like, for example, ideal relative humidity for most items is about a 45% and yeah, and then temperatures, like 20 to 22 room temperature kind of thing, again, slightly drier, slightly cooler is always preferable. Yeah, we part of my job, I guess, coming up as a senior curator is going to be working with the building maintenance guys to try and try to get, you know, track the humidity levels and the temperature, and as much as I can, like, get things a little bit more sorted out, so
Bryndis 27:41
Exactly, at least knowing all those different pieces, much as you can.
Alison 27:45
Yeah, yeah, yeah. It helps, for sure, yeah. We do have little environment monitors, and they track both of those things, and then we do generally, monthly readouts of and see what things are doing. But, yeah, the building still needs some, needs some work, but it's a D and D building, so you kind of work with what you have.
Bryndis 28:01
Well, and as you know, we're talking about moving and stuff like that, you know, there's a lot of different airplanes that you receive, so how did you know, I know you weren't like specifically, I know there's like, other people that say, Okay, well, I'll do this and I'll do that, but you still are the one officially, from the museum perspective, overseeing that.
Alison 28:26
Kind of party to this whole thing, yeah. So especially with the Cold War expansion, that's been kind of neat to see. We have a couple of our board members, specifically a gentleman called Gord Todd, who's been kind of the mover and shaker with getting the aircraft out here. And it wasn't just an issue of, Okay, bring us a CF 100. It was okay, some of our guys have to travel to essentially, like, bone yards all over your Canada to look at, okay, which one is like the least broken down, and so in the case of our CF 100 that we will eventually display, it's actually going to be an amalgamation of two, because they're both kind of screwed up in different ways. But if you take the good bits and put them all together, it makes one good one.
Bryndis 29:07
So, oh, so it's like a Lego.
Alison 29:10
Yeah, yeah, like a big ass, like Meccano CF, 100 Yeah, so it's such a hybrid. It's like Frankenstein aircraft too,
Bryndis 29:17
But it won't look like that.
Alison 29:19
No, not at all. Exactly. Yeah, it'll be so cool, yeah. But so that was an issue, because it wasn't just moving one aircraft here. It's a very sizable aircraft in itself, the CF 100 it was like, get two here. So we had to, I think it came from the same place. It was two from the same place. But the fuselages had to come separately, or just the one, I think we just have one fuselage for that dude, but it was supposed to come a certain way, but the thing ended up being literally one foot too long for the bed of the truck.
Bryndis 29:52
Of course!
Alison 29:52
Yeah, why not? Yeah. And then it ended up costing more, because then you need a bigger truck and more pilot vehicles, but we got it done eventually, which was good, yeah.
Bryndis 30:03
But you still have to take it from wherever in Ontario?
Alison 30:06
Ontario, yeah, yeah. This one came from Borden. Okay, yeah, yeah, definitely. So it was like the tail fin assemblies came and the wings, I think, came on, like one load, and then the fuselage came and one that was like six or seven months later, yeah, for sure. Yeah, in the case of the Voodoo, the Voodoo came from Edmonton and again they actually got the whole thing just on one truck, but angled again, because, yeah, it would just help, sort of, like, the length and everything. And it could just come, in this case, down the Number 2, which is, you know, double lane highway for most of it, if not triple. And there was plenty of room, yeah, to bring that down.
Bryndis 30:43
That'd be quite the scene. If you see that on that one day, that would have been, yeah, yeah.
Alison 30:47
Well, years ago, when we first got the CF 18, I was actually driving home to Strathmore, and I saw it on the number one just parked off the side. It was there on the bed of the truck with the wingtips folded up, like they do. And it's just like, woah, like, take a photo driving past Yeah. There it is. Yeah. So good. I mean, if I'd been sort of on the ball, I guess, social media wise, back then, I could have sort of turned into, like a publicity stunt, if, you know, hey, if you see this, you know, tweet us, whatever. Yeah. But next, yeah.
Bryndis 31:13
Well, and there's those kinds of neat things that are all part of, you know, being a part of a museum and stuff like that. What are some other things that you can think of that are just kind of neat moments that you've had, like, probably putting-
Alison 31:26
Yeah, yeah. I would say some of the neatest moments, actually, it hasn't necessarily even been related to, actually, I will say, like, more like a sobering like, this is, this is kind of like, why we do the things that we do, yeah, we got this really neat little like, leather travel chest, quite a few years ago, donated by a family, and I think it was their their uncle who'd gone missing in the Second World War. But the leather chest had all these like, autographs and stuff from people he trained with and people he traveled with, and like, sort of like a hand written out calendar of 1942 and airplane sketches. So we get this with all this careful work, and then we get a few photographs. And then, like this literal brick of correspondence. And this guy had flown with the RAF in North Africa in the Second World War, and Kitty Hawks doing probably air to ground stuff, and had actually gone missing. And of course, for parents, this is very, very hard. You don't have any closure, but it's like this little brick of correspondence between both of his parents and, you know, all the authorities. And eventually the Commonwealth's war grave commission, like, Hey, where's our son. Where's our son? And this goes into the 50s that they're still like, where is he? And then finally, it's talking to the War Graves Commission. They're like, he doesn't have an actual grave because he's MIA, but he's listed on, like, this monument here. You can find it at this place. So it was just, it's just so weird because you have, like, here's this chest that is almost like, it's just two seconds removed from the person that created it. And then there's just mass amounts of correspondence of these, like, grieving parents. It's just, it's quite sobering, yeah, it's Yeah. But otherwise, it's just been, really, it's been working with our board. I think something I mentioned to one of them lately was, like, I've never seen a museum before that has this much like regular, good quality input from subject matter, and it's like, it's been so cool because, you know, like the old fighter pilot stories and just the like, things unbelievable, like the one gentleman Bob Wade talking about flying like the CF 104, and because it's a very speedy, speedy aircraft with short, short little wings, turning radius, and the slowing of the aircraft is, like, something that takes a lot of time. And he's like, something that we would do is we just point the thing up, and he's like, I would take it up to 40,000 feet, and then it's like, the sky goes dark, right? Because you're kind of in the atmosphere, yeah? And he's like, yeah, you can see the curvature of the earth. And then it slows down. And you come back in and do stuff like, get out of town. This is so insane! And here you are just, like, driving, like, you know, like, red Cadillac being cool here, like, yeah, what is this?
Bryndis 34:07
Totally!
Alison 34:07
Yeah, yeah. It's just, it's mainly the people, yeah, I think that have been, like, really, really cool.
Bryndis 34:12
Well, it's such a variety of characters, too, is, yeah.
Alison 34:16
Because, like, everyone's seen Top Gun. They all have, like, a sense of, okay, this is what a fighter pilot is like, but then, like, with our guys, like, yeah, we have like the Top Gun kind of dudes, and then we have like the one guy that you know, you have no idea about his background, and you find out, Don Matthews, he was commanding officer the Desert Cats in the Cold War, or during the Gulf War. Like, oh my goodness, okay, cool, yeah, yeah. Very understated, man, yeah, yeah, so yeah. And just Yeah, you get like the bravado, and then you get like the really understated and just like the full spread of people. It's so cool, yeah, yeah.
Bryndis 34:52
And well, and actually speaking of people, because I think that's when we looked at The Great Escape exhibit. Yeah, it's really trying to focus a lot of the people, but also give that, you know, human scale and stuff like that. How was it building that?
Alison 35:07
It was really cool, because I had wanted an interactive experience based kind of piece that would give visitors a sense of what it was like. And just brain was just sort of brainstorming stuff subconsciously one day, and I thought, well, like something that's super tangible, it's not like you're going to recreate, like a World War Two, like bombing mission over Berlin, kind of scenario, but like something that's very tangible is like the tunnel from the Great Escape, like, you know, can you just build, like a box that people can go through, kind of thing, and get a sense of, like the scale. So I floated that past our chairman, and talked to the board briefly about it, and everyone's like, yeah, sweet. That sounds good. And then worked with a local design team who came up with, okay, it won't be just a tunnel, but here's a hut as well. So you get a sense of like the tunnels hidden underneath the hut/behind the hut, in a way, and the people have to engage with the items in the hut to find out where the tunnel is. And one of the funny parts actually about that display is the regular visitor complaint is we can't find the tunnel. So that's the point, right? That's why everyone got out, yeah, they couldn't find a tunnel.
Bryndis 36:11
Yeah, because it's behind the fake door.
Alison 36:13
Yeah, as you push the shower door, but yeah, so generally, that was, yeah, it's, unfortunately, there's still screens in there, and you have to watch the screens in order to find the tunnel. But we're working on that. We're going to try to get a little bit more cool notes instead of something that breaks all the time. But yeah, generally it was more just again, what was it like for these people?
Bryndis 36:33
Yeah, well, and also reorganizing the entire museum to add this extra piece.
Alison 36:40
Definitely. Yeah, it's slotted in fairly nicely with where our current Great Escape materials were. But yeah, it's also kind of this big kind of exhibit right in the midst of our current space, which is, I thought it would be tight and weird a little bit, but it's fitted, okay, yeah. And with people enjoying it, like people say, for quite a few months after we open it, like they say they came in specifically for this thing that was cool, just in terms of driving visitor numbers and generating interest. Yeah. It was really, really sweet to see the results of that.
Bryndis 37:10
Yeah. So here's one question of like, so you get, like, the massive airplanes you've got, like, that box that you were talking about, and all the different things in between, are there other ones? Is there one or two that kind of stand out, like, Oh, wow.
Alison 37:23
Okay, it's one of my favorite things. It's so stupid. But we actually have a roll of toilet paper from the Second World War. It's just It looks literally like brown paper, yeah, okay, you do what you can at the time. Cool. Anyway, it's a stamped government issue. Do not remove or something.
Bryndis 37:39
Oh, my goodness.
Alison 37:40
And then somebody was just like, hey, I'll take that, yeah. And it was just, so, yeah, this gentleman's stuff that he brought back, I guess, from the Second World War, when he was overseas, and there was just, like, this role of government issued toilet paper in there that either, hey, I'm gonna take it because it says don't take it, or B, I'm gonna take it because I might need it later on. Yeah, like, valid,
Bryndis 38:00
exactly. You never know what the real reason behind that was,
Alison 38:02
But you got it, yeah, yeah.
Bryndis 38:05
Well, yeah. Like, your Each item has it, like that story. So, like, for example, there's my dad's helmet, yeah, but it's how my dad got the helmet. So my dad wanted his helmet, and he wanted to be able to keep it okay. The military told him, No, he had to return it. Okay.
Alison 38:26
But he didn't, obviously-
Bryndis 38:27
No he did! He returns it, and years later, he's in the middle of a surplus door, joking, and there's these helmets in the back of the shop, and he picks one up, and he was like, I know that name. And then he picks up another and he's like, I know that name, and I know that. And he starts digging, yeah, and he finds his helmet,
Alison 38:47
Holy!
Bryndis 38:48
in the bottom of the pile, because Whitson, of course, so it's and he walks up, and he's like, I'm not paying for this. This is my helmet.
Alison 38:57
Oh my goodness!
Bryndis 38:57
And they're like, but you have to pay. And he's like, it's got my name on it right here. Yeah, I want you to know. So each one of those like items that you don't even know, like, what was the story behind that?
Alison 39:08
100% hey? Yeah, yeah. And so often, like, it's nice that you guys have that connection there too. But yeah, with so many of the items, like, you wish the thing could talk, yeah? Like, man, what have you seen? Yeah?
Bryndis 39:19
So many stories that they all can have.
Alison 39:21
Yeah, definitely, yeah, something actually that we have which is phenomenally interesting. What Not, not in any sort of, like, esoteric way. It's just this tiny Spitfire model that's made out of metal, and one of the sort of ground crew technicians working on the aircraft overseas Second World War, probably attached to the RACF somehow, might have been REF, because a lot of Canadians were, but he'd actually taken, like a two pence coin and pounded it out and folded it and pounded it again to make this tiny, like two scale Spitfire.
Bryndis 39:52
That's great. Wow.
Alison 39:53
It is insane. It is like the size, like the length of probably not even a quarter, but smaller than a quarter, but it just in terms of like, the details, the shape of the wings, fuselage, like the nose cone, it's all there and this tiny thing, yeah, and that right there is like, I find is, like, kind of emblematic of a like, the skill of the ground crew. And kind of part of, like, the larger issue too, is like Air Force history, historiography is traditionally really bad at, like, keeping track of the ground crew. Yeah, we always get air crew stories, of course, because they're the guys flying the planes. But yeah, like, the significance of this group and the skill, like, right there you can see that little, little aircraft.
Bryndis 40:32
Well, if you don't have the ground crew, like, they can't get up in the air.
Alison 40:37
Too bad. Yeah, yeah. Too bad pilots. Sorry, yeah, yeah. So that's been fun, actually, just within that kind of what we have had here available for history and trying to make sure that everybody's covered off in terms of getting their story told like, we still need more ground crew info, but we're getting there thankfully, big group of people doing really good work, yeah, yeah.
Bryndis 41:00
Well, and that's the thing, because all of those pieces, you know, fit into a bigger story that fit into, you know, a different side of logistics, of supply chain, like, there's different pieces that it all fits into.
Alison 41:13
Yeah, definitely, yeah. It's like, the pieces create the whole kind of thing, yeah, very, very much, yeah, yeah, and too it's like, like, a lot of the guys, even within the Air Force, say it's like, you know, like, fighter missions and stuff, especially if they're overseas. Like, sure, you can get the planes over there, but what about, you know, all the equipment, stuff required to maintain them? Like, that's the air transport side of things, you know, and the logistics side of the Air Force, we got to bring this stuff with us. So, yeah, like, it's, there's so much too that goes on behind the scenes, yeah,
Bryndis 41:43
Well, and even the little things, like, when you look at like the, you know, the huts, or the different, you know, things that you've got from material and stuff, and making sure that all of that is, you know, electronics are working, and figuring out those little things.
Alison 41:58
Yeah, yeah. I'm a little bit friends off with technology and museums, and I always have been, because it just, I mean, you can go to, like, the Metropolitan in New York City and still, like, actually, they're smart enough, they don't have a ton of tech, so it's not a ton of stuff to break. But, you know, yeah, guaranteed you see, like, any, like, here's a touch screen in a museum, it's broken, Yep, yeah. So, yeah, it's just that the maintenance of that definitely has been an ongoing, say, challenge for us here. Yeah, definitely.
Bryndis 42:26
But it is, it does, you know, change that perspective, because as much as it's interactive, it also has the tendency to-
Alison 42:34
Yeah, yeah. Very much, yeah. And I know, from my my standpoint too, it's like, Sure, I'm technically a curator, but the amount of time I spend doing actual, like history stuff, is probably like 5% of my work here, and the rest of it is, like, dealing with the IT company to make sure this stuff works. And just all this admin kind of based stuff, more like, Yeah, but again, it's more like yeah, in some way, like logistics based a little bit, just to make sure stuff is where it is, and stuff is getting kept track of and just so everything's working the way it should, to make the place stay open.
Bryndis 43:05
Right. And even when you think of, you know, ensuring that you have the right volunteers, the right like that new museums are staffed.
Alison: 43:08
Yeah, 100% Yeah, yeah, having the right people is key, like we've seen with our board. Obviously, it's been the right bunch of people altogether, which has been great for us, but especially when it comes to issues like restoration projects, we've seen, we've had excellent success in the past with our volunteers, and generally, they work really, really well together. But once you kind of get into, you know, restoration expertise and experience, and you know, you get some butting of heads as to how things should be done a certain way. But everybody brings their own experience and their own perspectives to it too. So you can have, like, a little bit of personality, people kind of rubbing a little bit, but generally, like, if everyone's on the same page, and if the leadership is good, yeah, no issue.
Bryndis 43:54
Exactly well. And you know, because you've got the two museums, at least for the Air Force side, and, you know, each one of them has to have a volunteer or staff member and stuff like that, because it can't be you there all the time.
Alison 44:07
Yeah? No, yeah, no, definitely not. We're lucky with the inside Gallery, and it's fairly standalone for the most part. But the Cold War, for example, because it's its own space across, sort of like the driveway there and two sprung shelters, it can't really be open unless there's somebody physically there. But we've had excellent luck keeping that staffed, because, again, there's a lot of veterans that have served or flown the aircraft or worked with the aircraft, and they're happy to engage with visitors, and vice versa, definitely. And so that's been okay, yeah, like our volunteer cadre over there has been, like, no issue, pretty much whatsoever.
Bryndis 44:42
Which is perfect, because it adds a whole bunch of if you didn't have that, that would be a whole bunch of other experiences for you.
Alison 44:48
Oh yeah, yeah. 100% Yeah, yeah. And it's nice because you can see like, like, the payout for that is very, very obvious, because you see it on like, visitor comment cards, like, hey, Ron gave us, like, a great tour this morning. Ron's the best, which is true, yeah? And even just like, reviews on Google and TripAdvisor and stuff like, they often go ahead and mention these guys by name, which is cool, yeah? And that is one of, like, the main positive feedback things that we get is, hey, I had a great tour with so and so in the Cold War, and learned so much. Yeah, so cool. Yeah. The guys love it, because then they get to talk about what they did too. So in terms of that, that exhibit being like a vehicle to finally share their cold war service, it's doing exactly what it needs to do. Yeah, yeah, totally Yeah. So cool, yeah.
Bryndis 45:32
And probably a lot of other fun, especially as you start to look at, you know, building into the rest of the museum and stuff like that, and just like all of the different exhibits that you have, and just figuring out, yeah, yeah, what is yours and what is alone?
Alison 45:47
And, oh, very much, yeah. Just yesterday, I went out again, I think, with the museum manager, and looked at the vehicles, the army vehicles. And, yeah, it's like, okay, what belongs to the Army Museum, which will be my new one coming up. Yeah. Then to, like, sort of, how can I, with the Army Museum, create more interactives and kind of hopefully encourage the rest of the museum to create more interactives too that really sell with visitors, yeah, yeah, yeah. It's a cool, yeah, big project, but it's worth it.
Bryndis 46:15
It'll be good.
Alison 46:16
We're getting there, yeah, yeah. We get there. Definitely, yeah.
Bryndis 46:19
Well, and also, you know, interacting with all, how all the different museums interact with each other, too.
Alison 46:25
Oh, it is. It's very interesting, yeah, yeah, actually. And there are some phenomenal Army Museum volunteers here, like the Highlander. Whoops, sorry, the Highlander. Highlander folks are, like, they've been there forever, very, very motivated, yeah, very reliably in all the time. So that's really cool. And, yeah, obviously each museum here is like its own separate entity, but all underneath the same roof. So it is generally, I feel, at the end of the day, we all have the same goal, give or take, get folks on the door and tell the history, right?And yeah, just Yeah. It's kind of just finding good quality, effective, cheap, reliable ways of doing that. Yeah, it's, it's a good challenge.
Bryndis 47:07
For sure, anything else you can think of, if you're talking to someone who's getting into this career, yeah? What would you suggest? Anything you would suggest to them, anything?
Alison 47:17
A lot of people, I think they come out of, like, their cultural resource management degrees or, like, museum studies degrees or certifications, and they think immediately they're going to go be a curator. And usually that's not the case at all. Like, usually you're going to be lucky if you get hired on, like, as a front desk person. Nothing wrong with that. Nothing wrong. I started here as an intern in 2007 and learned a lot then just basic, basic practice, stuff I still use daily, but the main thing is, is getting a foot in the door. And so I used to think that museum people are lazy, and we just hire people that we know and trust. And I mean, we still do that, but I think now we do it because it makes everybody's lives easier. Like, I know you. I know what you're capable of, and it's good stuff. I would like you as part of our team here. It saves me going out and interviewing a bunch of people that I'm not sure will be a good fit kind of thing. So, yeah, if you're looking to get into the field, absolutely even start off volunteering. Everybody says, just volunteer for what you want to do. I know, I know, but it's true. It exists for a reason. Volunteer. Get your foot in the door. And then when there's openings that come up, you know it helps if you're just kind of there already, and people know what you can do. Yeah, yeah. So that, and definitely something I've found over my pretty much, like decade and a half, give or take, has been you deeply need to be like a jack of all trades. So it's not just, I can make exhibits. Okay, great. You can make exhibits. Can you also do basic label design in Adobe Illustrator or InDesign? Can you put together, like, a donation guideline brochure for the front that's going to be really, really cool. It's already obviously a huge draw because it shows up in all of our reviews, just talking with the volunteers out there. And, honestly, like any growth is so good for museums because it's a good excuse to get into the press and to get people in the door, because they're like, Hey, I saw that in the Herald, I saw that on breakfast TV. So yeah, just constantly changing, constantly refreshing, again, especially in a place like this, is great for keeping people coming back.
Bryndis 49:21
Yeah, completely.
Alison 49:22
Yeah. So, yeah, challenges, but not, I mean, we made it this far really well, yeah, so,
Bryndis 49:29
Which is really exciting, and there's lots of things to really look forward to, too,
Alison 49:33
Yeah, definitely, yeah. And I know that like the new position, it's more, not officially an umbrella position for everyone. But it's more just like you become, like the chief herder of cats, in a way. So a lot of what you do then sort of sort of unofficially informs what other people might be thinking about, or how they approach their museums. So yeah, I'm really hoping to sort of just affect some sort of like, really like, high end change on that higher level. So fingers crossed, yeah, yeah,
Bryndis 50:02
It's really exciting.
Alison 50:03
Yeah, I'm pumped.
Bryndis 50:05
Exactly. So I think they'll, they'll be really good. I think there's so many different pieces that really have showcased how supply chain and logistics is really in everything. And like, when you look at everything you've been doing here, yeah, it really has that aspect.
Alison 50:21
Keeping track of old stuff for sure. Yeah, definitely, yeah, yeah. It's keeping track of stuff, moving stuff, and keeping track of it, and then just making sure it gets into good spots once it comes back. Definitely huge. Yeah.
Bryndis 50:35
So I really appreciate you taking the time today. Thanks, Bryndis, thanks. That was fun.
Thanks.
Thank you for listening to this Zebras to Apples podcast episode. I hope you enjoyed the showcase of the fun and fascinating stories of supply chain logistics. If you liked this episode, I would love it if you could give it a rating and review. For more information about this topic, you can go to zebrastoapples.com or follow Zebras to Apples on the social media platform of your choosing, whether that's Instagram, Facebook, Twitter/X, Bluesky or LinkedIn. You can support the show on Patreon. Also check out the show notes below. Please join me again for another episode of Zebras to Apples. Have a wonderful day.