North Bay Museum to mark city's Centennial anniversary with exhibition on different aspects of its history

Desmond Brown · CBC News

· Posted: Apr 14, 2025 4:14 AM EDT | Last Updated: 9 hours ago

The City of North Bay volition connected Monday people the 100th day of its incorporation arsenic a metropolis and the North Bay Museum has enactment unneurotic an accumulation — North Bay astatine 100, a people's past — arsenic portion of the year-long Centennial celebrations.

The museum's director, Naomi Hehn, said the accumulation provides a wide look astatine antithetic aspects of North Bay's history.

"We enactment retired a telephone successful the autumn conscionable to inquire radical successful North Bay to stock their stories, truthful immoderate of the exhibits person travel retired of that," Hehn said.

"It's rather a wide show and we're precise excited to stock it with the assemblage arsenic portion of the Centennial celebration."

The accumulation is acceptable to unfastened connected May 8, and determination are besides concerts planned for each Thursday passim the month, she said.

North Bay officially became a metropolis connected April 14, 1925, with a colonisation of conscionable implicit 12,000.

Hehn said the city, present with a colonisation of 52,000,  has "obviously changed" implicit the years, and the accumulation volition absorption connected the antithetic clip periods wrong the past 100 years.

"One of the displays we person is really close astatine 1925 and what were things similar successful North Bay," she said.

"We besides focused connected however overmuch the assemblage and the assemblage person evolved wrong North Bay. What were they similar erstwhile opening the College Drive field successful 1972 and however has it evolved from there."

Hehn said there's besides a Welcome to North Bay display, which looks astatine much caller migration to the city.

'It's a large metropolis to unrecorded in': mayor

North Bay Mayor Peter Chirico said helium tin callback his parents telling him that erstwhile his grandparents immigrated from Italy to North Bay successful 1902, it was "a beauteous unsmooth place" astatine that clip with "very small successful the mode of streets."

But helium said the metropolis has made "lots of strides" since that clip and he's made immoderate fond memories implicit the years.

"I really bash retrieve a parade erstwhile the Queen, [Elizabeth II] made an quality successful North Bay. And I [also] retrieve a bid coming done North Bay with Emperor Haile Selassie and they made a halt successful North Bay,"  Chirico said.

"It was a large spot to turn up. It's a large metropolis to unrecorded successful and surely I'm pleased that a batch of my household are inactive here."

A ceremonial volition beryllium held astatine metropolis hallway connected Monday, the day of the charter 100 years ago. It volition diagnostic video presentations showcasing the city's maturation and translation implicit the past century.

"We're really giving distant 100 histrion seedlings, inviting residents to works thing contiguous that hopefully volition inactive beryllium increasing successful 100 years from now," the politician said.