It's hard to believe as warm, grey clouds drop mist and rain onto houses, roads and shopping centres that Port Coquitlam was once under several hundred metres of ice.
But a new exhibit at Heritage at Leigh Square, "That Cold, Crushing Feeling: Local Impacts of the Last Ice Age," shows not only how the Cordilleran ice sheet flowed into the area during the Fraser glaciation period 20,000 years ago but how the land was altered when it receded.
Hills with which Tri-City residents are familiar, such as that in the Mary Hill are, were created by glaciation and debris left behind, and rocks the size of trucks were not carried by there by giants but dragged there by ice.
For Brian Hubbard, president of the PoCo Heritage Society, and Steve Smith, the exhibit creator, glaciation is a natural process that is akin to a miracle because the result is the place where we now live.
"This beautiful pace we all love and enjoy was created by a lot of things that happened before we came," Hubbard told The Tri-City News during a recent tour of the exhibit.
This is the first of many natural history exhibits PoCo Heritage plans to introduce PoCo residents to the abundant nature of the area. Named after the late Carol Hubbard, the former PoCo Heritage board secretary, the Carol Hubbard Memorial Natural History Exhibit this year talks about the ice age.
Smith said "That Cold, Crushing Feeling: Local Impacts of the Last Ice Age" seemed like an ideal topic to start the series because many of the natural features of the area were, in fact, created by the ice age.
"We really want to bring that to a young audience," Smith said.
As a result, the exhibit is a hands-on display that brings to life cold, hard facts, such as what temperatures are needed to create glaciers, what happens when the land is compacted several metres, and how the Pitt and Fraser rivers were altered, creating the flat, fertile delta where we live and grow our food.
Photos, interactive video and displays — such as a weather machine, where students can raise or lower a "glacier" depending on the temperature — have been developed to convey the concepts in ways young people can understand. There is even an interactive quiz at the end to see how much exhibit visitors have learned.
"You can do it at a glance or if you want to explore it, you can," Smith said.
The display will likely be popular with teachers in School District 43 and will be available to view until the end of the year.
WHAT IS IT?
"That Cold, Crushing Feeling: Local Impacts of the Last Ice Age" is a hands-on natural history exhibit showing how glaciation affected the land features of Port Coquitlam and the surrounding area. Geared to children in Grade 6 and up, the exhibit explains how glaciers form, what they do to the landscape and how climate change affects weather.
Heritage at Leigh Square is operated by PoCo Heritage and is located at 150-2248 McAllister Ave., Port Coquitlam. For more information, email [email protected]. A virtual exhibit is also online at www.pocoheritage.org
• Saturday, Oct. 24 from 1 to 3 p.m., children 12 years and older can join the Burke Mountain Naturalists in building a chickadee nest box while visiting the museum. It costs $5 to participate and children are encouraged to bring their own hammer. To register, call PoCo Heritage at 604-927-8403 or email [email protected]
