“The Beaty Biodiversity Museum has long been favourite for us. My boys like imaging all the ways each creature/organism met it’s death. While that’s a bit macabre, as my mom would say, ‘such is life.’

When I was asked to help Beaty celebrate UBC’s 100th birthday, and choose one of 100 ‘treasures’ to write about I knew right away that I had to choose the passenger pigeon.

This past week, we visited the museum to meet the pigeon in person. We were brought into an underground room adjacent to the actual museum, and watched as the pigeon drawer was pulled out. Pigeons (and their wings), some as old as two-hundred years, were laid out in front of us. My kids were treating this occasion as if it’s commonplace for us, which it completely is not. We learned that the passenger pigeon is extinct, and the one we saw was from the 1800’s. My kids even got to touch some of the birds in the drawer — a definite highlight of the day.

Bree Galbraith, Blogger, Designer and Author.