A clear sign of our reopening
Until 2013, a large stone ring stood amongst the tropical foliage in the Garden Court of the Bank of Canada’s head office. It wasn’t a sculpture—it was a Yap stone, giant stone money from the island of Yap in the Federated States of Micronesia. Our Yap stone has been with the Bank for 38 years, longer than all but a handful of employees—12 at last count. I had been at the Currency Museum for barely three months myself before a flatbed truck, a huge crane and a dozen men in helmets and safety vests took the Yap stone away. For us, its removal from the Garden Court dramatically marked the Currency Museum’s closing. The big stone’s return now performs the opposite role for the new Bank of Canada Museum—heralding its opening.
For nearly 40 years, our Yap stone stood in the Garden Court of the Bank’s Ottawa head office complex.
The stone is poised above the truck that would take it to Gatineau for its four-year sleep.
For those of you unfamiliar with our Yap stone, or for that matter, any Yap stone, below is the artifact’s exhibition label as it appears in the Museum.
This impressive stone disc is actually money from the Pacific island of Yap. “Rai,” as these stones are called, range from a few centimetres high to four metres high. This is the largest-known rai outside of Yap. It likely stood upright in the ground outside its first owner’s house. When traded, a rai did not move—it simply changed ownership. Rai were quarried on the island of Palau and taken to Yap on rafts, crossing 500 kilometres of open water. The difficulties of this journey contributed to the rai’s value. Although rai are still occasionally used for culturally significant exchanges, the official currency of Yap is now the US dollar—a somewhat more portable currency.
The Museum’s Yap stone is one of the few rai that actually did move (several times, as it happens) and on 3 June 2017, made what we hope will be its last journey for a very long time. It came home to the Bank.
In the last week of May, two of the great curtain windows were removed from the side of the Museum entrance pyramid to allow the Yap stone to be lowered onto its place: a small pedestal just below street level beside the stairs leading down to the Museum. When I arrived early on the Saturday morning of installation, the window frames had been removed but there was no sign of the stone. I quickly discovered that what was adequate clothing for a morning bicycle ride was inadequate for standing around waiting for a truck to arrive. Your stalwart correspondent then resorted to hopping around to maintain circulation until a big, red flatbed truck rumbled up to the curb. Occupying one half of the trailer was a tall, wooden crate: the guest of honour. On the other half was a curious machine: a cross between a crane and a forklift. It looked entirely inadequate for the task at hand, but proved itself admirably when it swung into action an hour later. First, though, the flatbed trailer did this amazingly graceful transformation. The bed split in half and the end section slid forward and tilted back while the wheels were pulled towards the truck. It wasn’t as if it turned into a giant robot on rollerblades, but the effect was pretty cool, nonetheless. After the crane rolled onto the sidewalk and the trailer returned to its regular shape, three or four burly men began pulling the crate and its supporting frame apart. And there it was, our Yap stone.
We couldn’t imagine how this funny contraption was going to do the job, but it turned out to be just the right machine.
A number of us observed the flatbed trailer do this trick and I, for one, had to stop myself from applauding.
This was the first time our “rai” had seen daylight in four years. It remained wrapped up until the windows were replaced.
Although the big stone’s final placement was a subject of much debate, the entrance pyramid was always designed with the installation of the Yap stone in mind. Because of an awkwardly placed lamp post, however, the process of placing the stone had to be done in two stages. The crane couldn’t operate directly in front of the stone’s pedestal, so the stone had to be inserted through one frame of the window and temporarily placed on the top stair landing. Then the crane turned itself around and hooked up to the stone through the neighbouring window frame to allow the big disc to be swung into place without hitting any support columns.
Follow me carefully, here:
The crane gently lifted the stone from the truck and backed it carefully up Wellington Street.
Having backed up Wellington Street, the crane did a slow u-turn and then backed down Wellington, returning to the windows.
Because the lamppost is directly in line with the pedestal, the stone had to be inserted through the windows from the opposite angle.
With only a little wiggle room, the stone was inserted ever so gently through the window.
The stone was temporarily placed on the first landing of the Museum’s stair case and the crane unhooked.
The stone was re-hooked to the crane and lifted for its final manoeuvre onto its pedestal. Note the crane has been moved to the far side of the window frame.
As the Yap stone is lifted over the stair railing to its pedestal, the top of the crane was roughly 15 centimetres from the ceiling.
Almost there! The stone was suspended millimetres from its pedestal as the securing bolts were inserted.
The stone will be strapped in place until the window frames and a proper supporting arm are installed. It will remain wrapped until this time.
So smooth and quick was the whole installation process, that a lot of planning had clearly gone into it. It appeared as if it had been rehearsed, in fact. As a spectator sport, it was worth getting up at 7:00 on a Saturday morning to watch.
The Yap stone fixed in place, wrappers removed and ready to welcome visitors.
Like the robins of spring, the return of the Yap stone to the Bank heralds a new beginning: the opening of the new Bank of Canada Museum. The big stone disc has been placed at the top of the stairs as a sort of welcoming gate keeper that will again become as familiar as any Ottawa landmark. For us it is like the return of a long-lost friend.
Welcome home.
We want to hear from you! Do you have an idea for a blog post you’d like to see?
Content type(s):
Blog posts
The Museum Blog
January 22, 2015
On this trip, we were all excited to see the 8-foot-tall wooden panels with the full copy printed directly onto them. Using a new process, staff of the exhibition fabrication department at the Sherbrooke Nature and Science Museum have produced some very impressive results.
The Adventure of Exhibit Planning VIII
By: Graham Iddon
Content type(s):
Blog posts
January 14, 2015
An exhibition fabrication company was finally selected by the Museum to produce the upcoming “Voices from the Engraver” travelling exhibition. It’s all very exciting.
The Adventure of Exhibit Planning VII
Content type(s):
Blog posts
December 15, 2014
The recent additions to the National Currency Collection described below are from very different parts of the world and are between 1500 and 2500 years old.
New Acquisitions
By: Raewyn Passmore
Content type(s):
Blog posts
November 28, 2014
The commemorative 1951 5 cent piece was issued to mark the 200th anniversary of the naming of nickel and its isolation as an element. Recently, I had the great pleasure to participate in the Big Nickel anniversary festivities and give a talk about the design competition for the 1951 5 cent coin.
The Big Nickel
By: Paul S. Berry
Content type(s):
Blog posts
November 6, 2014
This is not the time for ‘nay sayers’. Basically, we planned a luxury car knowing that when all was said and done, it was going to be a very nice family sedan (maybe with the big engine?).
The Adventure of Exhibit Planning VI
By: Graham Iddon
Content type(s):
Blog posts
September 29, 2014
Now the writer takes a deep breath and attempts to take a subject like the ‘representation of 75 years of national identity as depicted on stamps and bank notes’ from 50 pages of research and squash it into 65 words.
The Adventure of Exhibit Planning V
By: Graham Iddon
Content type(s):
Blog posts
August 6, 2014
For much of their history, Canadian bank notes have represented a promise, a guarantee that they could be redeemed for “specie” (gold and silver coins) at their parent institution.
The Senior Deputy Governor’s Signature
By: Graham Iddon
Content type(s):
Blog posts
July 28, 2014
Suppose you walk into a bar frequented by currency collectors and in an attempt to join in you refer to a ‘planchette’ as a ‘rosette’ (beer mugs hit the tables and the pianist stops playing). This could be pretty humiliating and you’ll probably never be able to go to that bar again, at least not on numismatic night.
Becoming a Collector V
By: Graham Iddon
Content type(s):
Blog posts
July 21, 2014
Now that you have a grasp of preservation techniques for coins, you might want to familiarize yourself with the finer points of their anatomy. It is all part of your numismatic education and besides, you need to be informed and sound informed when you are buying coins at flea markets or coin fairs.
Becoming a Collector IV
By: Graham Iddon
Content type(s):
Blog posts
July 7, 2014
Though naturally we are aware that the former Museum space is being gutted, the reality of seeing it empty is still pretty strange for most of us here. In the last blog of this series we showed you the empty cafeteria space that will become the new Museum, as well as some images of the old Museum as it was at the time: stuffed with odds and ends of exhibit cases, the occasional display still on the walls.
Museum Reconstruction - Part 3
By: Graham Iddon
Content type(s):
Blog posts
June 23, 2014
With all the blogging we’ve been doing for Voices from the Engraver, you’d think we had nothing else on our exhibition plate. We do, actually, and it’s called CENTimental Journey. This temporary exhibition, hosted at the Canadian Museum of History, walks you through more than 150 years of the Canadian 1 cent piece.
CENTimental Journey
By: Graham Iddon
Content type(s):
Blog posts
June 16, 2014
We are coming up on a year since we closed the doors on the physical museum. During that year, we’ve worked very hard to make sure everybody knows that we are still a functioning museum and one that will be opening its doors again in a few years on a beautiful new space, with an expanded mission and mandate.
Museum Reconstruction - Part 2
By: Graham Iddon
Content type(s):
Blog posts
June 6, 2014
For you as the steward of your collection, your aim is to preserve the items as best as you can by protecting them from further deterioration. The pros call this preservation.
Becoming a Collector III
By: Graham Iddon
Content type(s):
Blog posts
May 26, 2014
This exhibition is about engravers, production processes and the beauty of postage stamps and bank notes. In the previous episode of this series we talked about the process surrounding securing the bank notes for this exhibition and how it had to take into account both the needs of the exhibition team and the concerns of the collections department.
The Adventure of Exhibit Planning IV
By: Graham Iddon
Content type(s):
Blog posts
