~ Passport to the Past: Celebrating Museum Month Across Ontario!” ~

May is Museum Month, thirty-one days set aside each year to celebrate every gallery, heritage site, science centre, and living-history village that keeps our collective story alive. Across Ontario, more than seven hundred institutions mark the occasion with special tours, pop-up workshops, passport challenges, reduced admission, and, on International Museum Day (May 18)—a province-wide call to “discover, learn, and share.” The spirit is simple: if history is a vast library, museums are its most inviting reading rooms, each one curating a chapter you can see, touch, and sometimes even taste. (Museum Month Museums)

But what exactly is a museum? At heart, it’s a place where objects, ideas, and experiences are gathered, cared for, and interpreted so we can understand the world, and ourselves, just a little better. Some museums house priceless art; others preserve pioneer barns, vintage bushplanes, dinosaur fossils, or Cold-War bunkers. Whether the stories are told through glass cases or costumed interpreters hammering hot iron in a blacksmith shop, every museum serves the same mission: to bridge past, present, and future by turning memory into something you can walk through. (Museum Month Museums)

That mission makes Museum Month the perfect backdrop for the adventure that follows, a whirlwind journey across Ontario during which one family collects stamps, stories, and a lifetime of “remember-when” moments inside some of the province’s most remarkable museums. Buckle up: history is about to get hands-on. (Museum Month Museums)

May Is Museum Month: The Raposo Family’s Ontario Odyssey

The Ontario Museum Association’s “May Is Museum Month” campaign turns the whole province into one big treasure hunt, and the Raposo family, parents Lisa and Mark, tech-mad teen Sam (15), and wildlife-loving Ella (11), decide to spend the entire month sampling seven very different museums. With a carefully plotted route, a well-stocked minivan, and a hashtag of their own (RaposoRoadTrip), they set off on a whirlwind that will fill every dinner-table story for years to come. (Museum Month Museums)

Huron County Museum, Goderich – Friday May 2

School’s out for a PA Day, so the Raposos begin in Goderich, where the PA Day Camps run 9 a.m.–4 p.m. and a family-friendly movie rolls at 10:30 in the heritage theatre. Sam tinkers with a telegraph in the Communications Gallery while Ella tries on a vintage nurse’s cape for a selfie. After the “Jane’s Walk” preview of the historic gaol yard, Mark admits this stop has already wrecked his carefully curated schedule, because nobody wants to leave. (Museum Month Museums)

 Science North, Sudbury – Thursday May 8

Four hours north, Sudbury’s iconic “big snowflake” doors open at 10 a.m., and the family is ushered into four levels of live-animal handlers, touch-tables, and the brand-new IMAX Blue Whales 3D film. The center’s 10 a.m.–4 p.m. daily schedule leaves them just enough time to ride the glass elevator beside the thundering fin-whale skeleton, launch paper copters in the Flight Lab, and watch Ella coax a butterfly onto her finger in the F. Jean MacLeod Butterfly Gallery. (Museum Month Museums)

 Cochrane Polar Bear Habitat – Saturday May 10

Past granite outcrops and spruce bogs, they reach Cochrane, home to the world’s only facility dedicated solely to polar bears. There are no fixed feeding times, keepers scatter fish or hidden carrots at random to keep resident bears Ganuk and Henry guessing, so the Raposos drift between the underwater viewing tunnel and the on-site Heritage Village until, at last, Ganuk belly-flops into his lake with a fish in his jaws. Ella squeals; Sam’s slow-motion phone video earns hundreds of likes before they even reach the parking lot. (Museum Month Museums)

 Royal Ontario Museum, Toronto – Tuesday May 20

Back in the big city, the family times their visit for “Third Tuesday Nights Free,” when doors stay open until 8:30 p.m. and admission costs exactly zero. They start with the blockbuster exhibition Auschwitz: Not Long Ago. Not Far Away, then plunge into the colour-drenched world of Nature in Brilliant Colour and the interactive “Cloudscape” installation. By 8 p.m. they’re sprawled on couches in the ROM Café comparing souvenir patches, Sam’s features an ammonite, Ella’s a monarch butterfly, before strolling into the summer twilight along Philosopher’s Walk. (Museum Month Museums)

 Canadian Museum of Nature, Ottawa – Monday May 26

Ottawa greets them with bright lilac blooms and a brand-new special exhibition: The Man Who Planted Trees: An Immersive Tale, which opened on May 16. In a 360-degree forest of projection art, Lisa swears she can smell cedar. Upstairs, Sam races through the Earth Gallery’s earthquake simulator, while Ella kneels eye-to-eye with live leaf-cutter ants in Bugs Alive. The museum’s generous 9:30 a.m.–5 p.m. hours mean they can linger over trilobites until Mark drags everyone out for BeaverTails on Elgin Street. (Museum Month Museums)

 Canada Aviation and Space Museum, Ottawa – Saturday May 24

(Yes, the Raposos reverse-commute in Ottawa, because nobody is missing “Zoom to the Moon,” a family program running May 24–25.) After story time, a guide “launches” the kids past cardboard planets; Sam gets Mars dust on his sneakers, Ella salutes beneath a mock lunar lander, and Lisa volunteers for the ejection-seat demonstration that runs all spring. Between hangars they climb into a Sea King helicopter, then watch a Reserve Hangar tour roll past rows of engines still smelling faintly of avgas. Closing time, 5 p.m., comes far too soon. (Museum Month Museums)

 Dundurn National Historic Site, Hamilton – Thursday May 29

The finale is pure Victorian charm. Dundurn Castle’s gardens open early today for “Extended Morning Garden Hours” (10 a.m.–noon), so the Raposos start among heirloom beans and rhubarb before donning booties for a guided castle tour. Costumed interpreters demonstrate early-19th-century cooking; Sam tries (and instantly abandons) butter churning, while Ella samples herb-infused lemonade. Outside, preparations are already underway for Saturday’s Heirloom Plant Sale, and Mark regrets they don’t have space in the van for a potted heritage tomato. (Museum Month Museums)

Epilogue: A Month in a Minivan

Thirty-one days, 2 600 kilometres, and seven museums later, the Raposos return home with a trunk full of ticket stubs, pressed-penny souvenirs, and a fresh appreciation for just how varied “museum” can be, art and archaeology, living bears and vintage bombers, heirloom beans and Jurassic bones. As Lisa uploads the last photos, she notices the Ontario Museum Association’s social-media challenge: “Show us your favourite May Is Museum Month moment.” (Museum Month Museums)

How to choose? Sam votes for the moonwalk in Ottawa; Ella, for Ganuk’s cannonball splash; Mark, for the quiet dignity of Dundurn’s dining room. Lisa simply posts their jam-packed itinerary with the note: “We couldn’t pick, so we picked them all.”

And somewhere across Ontario, seven museums smile back at the memory of one family’s epic month-long love letter to history, science, nature, and flight. (Museum Month Museums)

Ontario Museum Highlights — Quick Guide

• Diefenbunker: Canada’s Cold War Museum (Carp, Ottawa) – Descend four storeys into a 1960 s nuclear bunker: blast tunnels, de-contamination showers, the PM’s war room and spy-craft escape games bring the Cold War chillingly to life.

• Bata Shoe Museum (Toronto) – Housed in a striking “shoebox” at Bloor & University, this gallery of 15 000 artifacts walks you from ancient Egyptian sandals to Elton-John platforms.

• Canada Science and Technology Museum (Ottawa) – Re-imagined in 2017, the capital’s hands-on science hub features locomotive giants, interactive STEAM labs and the mind-bending Crazy Kitchen.

• Macaulay Heritage Park (Picton, Prince Edward County) – An 1830 stone rectory, historic church, carriage house and heritage gardens paint a vivid portrait of early County life.

• Mariners Park Museum (South Bay, Prince Edward County) – On a Lake Ontario bluff, explore lighthouse lore, rum-running tales and Great Lakes ship-building, complete with a relocated 1876 tower.

• Grey Roots Museum & Archives (Owen Sound, Grey County) – Changing galleries plus the on-site Moreston Heritage Village trace stories from Saugeen Ojibway roots to 20th-century industry.

• Canadian Warplane Heritage Museum (Mount Hope, Hamilton) – A working hangar with 40 + vintage aircraft, including a flight-ready Lancaster bomber you can actually book a ride in.

• Fieldcote Memorial Park & Museum (Ancaster, Hamilton) – Local-history exhibits sit within landscaped arboretum grounds that double as an outdoor concert and sculpture park.

• Hamilton Children’s Museum (Gage Park, Hamilton) – Play-based discovery inside a Victorian mansion; note the site is closed for major renovations until late 2025.

• Canadian Bushplane Heritage Centre (Sault Ste. Marie) – Climb aboard classic bushplanes, battle a virtual forest fire and trace 100 years of northern aviation along the St. Marys River.

• Dryden & District Museum (Dryden, Kenora District) – Showcases Indigenous beadwork, pulp-and-paper heritage and Ice-Age fossils in Northwestern Ontario’s heartland.

• Canada Agriculture and Food Museum (Central Experimental Farm, Ottawa) – The world’s only working demonstration farm in a G7 capital, meet heritage livestock and follow grain from field to fork.

• Canadian Museum of History (Gatineau, across from Parliament Hill) – Iconic curved architecture houses the soaring Grand Hall of totem poles and the story-rich Canadian History Hall.

• Thunder Bay Museum (Thunder Bay, Northwestern Ontario) – Housed in the 1910 Fort William Police Station and Court House, this three-storey museum packs regional stories, from fur trade to ship-building, plus travelling exhibits and downtown walking-tour programs.

• Sault Ste. Marie Museum (Downtown Sault Ste. Marie) – Set in the 1902 Old Post Office, three floors of galleries spotlight Indigenous heritage, fur trade, shipping and military history beneath the building’s skylight tower.