Bright yellow crop celebrates its Golden anniversary with a travelling museum
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LETHBRIDGE – The Canada Agriculture and Food Museum in Ottawa has opened an exhibition that marks the 50th anniversary of canola as a made-in-Canada crop.
“Canola! Seeds of Innovation” explores the ingenuity of Canadian plant researchers, who took on the challenge of creating a healthy vegetable oil from rapeseed, which at the time was a little-known plant that grew well on the Prairies. Following decades of collaboration, they succeeded in developing one of Canada’s most important crops.
While rapeseed is one of the oldest cultivated crops and has been around for centuries, canola is fairly young at the age of 50. As for where the name came from? In the early 1970s, the Rapeseed Association of Canada selected the name ‘canola’, which stands for “Can” for Canada and “ola” for oil.
A travelling exhibition has been touring the country and will next be on display at the Calgary Stampede.
The exhibit’s elements are all bilingual, and include two bright yellow “C” shaped pods, that offer hands-on interactive elements and video content that includes a canola field and a processing plant.
The “made in Canada crop” exhibit looks at the science behind the development, cultivation and future of the canola crops. It also delves into canola’s uses in everything from food processing (oil) to transportation (bio diesel).
Groups and organizations have the opportunity to host the travelling museum. More information can be found on the Canada Agriculture and Food Museum website.
