BMO Financial Group Announces $650,000 Gift To Support New Canadian Canoe Museum

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BMO Financial Group has announced a $650,000 investment in The Canadian Canoe Museum’s new 85,000 square-foot-facility at the water’s edge.

This generous gift is the $65 million capital campaign’s first from a financial institution and in recognition, the new museum’s archives and archives workroom will be named the BMO Financial Group Research and Knowledge Centre.

To be built alongside the Peterborough Lift Lock on the Trent-Severn Waterway, the new museum will feature a dedicated space for the organization’s growing collection of rare books, maps and archival materials, as well as film, video and recorded oral histories.

This space, which doesn’t exist in the current museum, will be built to a Class A controlled environment standard that is designed for the materials it will house. Guests using this space will be surrounded by a unique reference library with access to individual study spaces and large work surfaces, along with a comfortable environment for knowledge sharing and the digital documentation of new stories.

”BMO is proud to support The Canadian Canoe Museum,” says Sheri Griffiths, Regional President, Business Banking, Greater Ontario Division, BMO Bank of Montreal. “The new BMO Financial Group Research and Knowledge Centre will offer a unique opportunity for visitors to connect with—and gain a deeper understanding of our country’s history.”

The new museum has been designed by the award-winning team of heneghan peng (Dublin, Ireland) and Kearns Mancini Architects (Toronto, Canada). The building, purpose-built for the world’s largest collection of canoes, kayaks and paddled watercraft, will blend almost seamlessly into its landscape, emerging from the drumlin and complementing the waterway.

“The Research and Knowledge Centre is an integral space in the new museum—one that will offer opportunities to learn and collaborate that right now, we can only imagine,” says Carolyn Hyslop, Executive Director. “The Centre will be an inclusive and safe space for First Peoples, Métis and Inuit, Indigenous Knowledge Holders, and academics to share, encourage understanding and conduct cultural and ceremonial practices.”

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