Building the Boreal Museum: Jason Feller's Adventures in Natural History and Innovation

Dive into the captivating world of natural history and innovation with Jason Feller, the visionary young leader behind Thunder Bay's Boreal Museum. Discover how his passion for botany and creative community engagement transformed a dream into a dynamic space of curiosity and learning.

Join Dr. Diane on a journey to Thunder Bay, Ontario, as we explore the remarkable story of Jason Feller and the creation of the Boreal Museum. From his roots in botany at Lakehead University to his impactful work at the Thunder Bay Museum, Jason's path is marked by creativity and community connection. During COVID lockdowns, he inspired local nature lovers with take-home science kits and forager walks, ultimately bringing his vision of the Boreal Museum to life. This episode delves into the enchanting boreal forest, skull collecting, and the art of creating interactive exhibits. Discover how Jason's story is a testament to the power of curiosity and innovation in making science accessible to all.

Chapters and Timestamps:

(0:00:00) - Creating the Boreal Museum. Uncover Jason Feller's journey from botany student to museum creator, his innovative solutions during lockdowns, and the birth of the Boreal Museum.

(0:13:12) - What is a Boreal Forest? Immerse yourself in the wonders of the boreal forest, the thrill of skull collecting, and the rich biodiversity of Thunder Bay's natural landscapes.

(0:20:15) - Building the Boreal Science Museum: Discover the importance of interactive and inclusive science exhibits, inspired by Jason's childhood experiences, and the vision for future expansions.

Links:

Visit the Boreal Museum website: borealmuseum.com

Follow Boreal Museum on Facebook

Follow Boreal Museum on Instagram: @BorealMuseum

Don't miss the Boreal Museum on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@borealmuseum

Visit the Boreal Museum in Thunder Bay: 215 Red River Road, Keskes Court, Port Arthur, Thunder Bay

Plan your visit to Thunder Bay and be inspired by the wonders of the Boreal Museum! I'm not sponsored by the tourism community or the Boreal Museum -- but I'll gladly make a second or third visit!

Transcript

00:02 - Dr Diane Jackson Schnoor (Host)
So sometimes life is full of fortunate accidents, and one of those really fabulous fortunate accidents happened to me this summer in Thunder Bay, ontario. We were walking around downtown and they were tearing up the streets and my dad and I were walking and trying to decide where we wanted to go and how we were going to get back to the Viking ship and, lo and behold, I saw a sign that warmed my nerd heart. It said museum this way. And I looked and I saw the coolest guy who was putting the sign out and he invited me in. And I spent one of the best hours of my trip hanging out in the Boreal Museum with its owner and operator, jason Feller, and he has so graciously agreed to come onto the show today and talk about what goes into creating a museum to bring education to everybody. So, jason, thanks for joining me from Canada. 

01:03 - Jason Feller (Guest)
Hi, thank you so much for having me. What a wonderful accident we had, running into each other. 

01:09 - Dr Diane Jackson Schnoor (Host)
It was so amazing. You let us come in. I think you guys. It was an off day and you were in the middle of doing some pretty amazing renovations the day I came in. How are those going? How is the museum? Tell us what made you start the Boreal Museum. 

01:24 - Jason Feller (Guest)
Absolutely, tell us what made you start the Boreal Museum? Absolutely, I mean to start it. I had the idea for the Boreal Museum in 2019. But well before that I was studying at Lakehead University here in Thunder Bay. I was going through my science degree and then I focused in on botany and while I was kind of doing that I was thinking, oh, I might work for, you know, the local M&R, the Ministry of Natural Resources, or I don't really know what I'm going to do. And then, while I was kind of doing my thesis, I started working at the Thunder Bay Museum, which is like a local history museum in town. 

01:59
While I was working there, it kind of changed my whole perspective about what I wanted to do. I was working there kind of changed my whole perspective about what I wanted to do. I started there in collections where I went through like thousands of objects in the Thunder Bay Museum, recataloging things, all that stuff, and I really latched onto that. I thought that was amazing, even though it was kind of a desk job and whatever, and I didn't ever see myself liking something like that. But then, because I was a student, I was bouncing around contract to contract, up to the point where I even redid one of the exhibits, the dinosaur exhibit they used to have. They had an Albertosaurus skeleton. But when I was going through the collections I found hundreds of fossils that were just in boxes, stowed away, that weren't on display, and I was like we should put these out. So I just went, went forward, redid the dinosaur exhibit and from that moment it was like blood in the water for me, like I knew exactly what I wanted to do and it aligned with my passions. Now the Thunder Bay Museum is focused on like local history um, not so much natural history. So I knew if I wanted to do more, I was going to have to do my own thing, because we didn't really have anything locally available like that, which is really unfortunate considering how much nature we're surrounded by here. We're just in the middle of nowhere, just surrounded by the boreal borers in the Great Lakes. 

03:19
So what ended up happening is it was during the lockdowns. I was working two different jobs. I was working at the Thunder Bay museum and I was working at a bookstore, a Canadian bookstore chain called Indigo and when the lockdowns happens, suddenly I had so much time on my hands that I never had before in my life and I thought maybe I'll give it a try. And my partner Mariano, he really pushed me. He's like I think you should do it, I think you should do something with this, I think it's a good idea. So I really started going forward with that and then that led me into doing I was doing take-home science kits during the lockdowns because nobody could go anywhere. I was making pre-packaged science kits that would have like six to eight different science experiments inside of them and they were all kind of themed seasonally and I would drop them off door to door. So you know, families wouldn't kill each other indoors being trapped together that long. 

04:16 - Dr Diane Jackson Schnoor (Host)
I remember the kits. I did them too, yeah. 

04:22 - Jason Feller (Guest)
And I had enough success with that that I thought I could keep myself afloat without these other jobs, like I could just keep doing this and put all of my energy into this. So I started doing that full time and I was able to leave both of my jobs and sustain myself on those kits. And then I started doing that summer it was 2021. I started doing foragers walks. So this is really where my passion lies, because I'm a botanist, I'm a big plant nerd, you know they couldn't keep me inside as a kid, so I started doing guided walking tours where I go out with groups and I we identify wild foods that grow absolutely everywhere around us, and those really were a hit. 

05:07
Um, I think I've started I'd like to think I've started to create a little subculture of foragers in Thunder Bay, cause I've been doing it every summer now for the past you know, three years. 

05:18
Um, and there's lots of foragers around now, which is it's fantastic to see people connect with nature like that. 

05:24
Um, and then so I've had the kits and I was doing the foragers walks and I was sustaining myself enough that I thought I might be able to get a physical space and I might be able to unload some of the stuff in my house somewhere else, maybe even like, if it didn't work out so well, at least I'd have an office space to kind of take away some of the mess in my house, because my whole house was just science kits at that point and I started doing it was a thousand square feet, it was on the far side of town from where I am now and it was kind of crammed in a shoebox but I started doing mini exhibits in that space. But I started doing mini exhibits in that space. So I was really generously donated like a polar bear, cub and a couple of things from Arctic animals and this whole display that I kind of redid and repurposed to talk about Arctic animals and kind of like the melting ice sheets and kind of how that affects communities and things like that. 

06:23 - Dr Diane Jackson Schnoor (Host)
And just to clarify for our listeners, it's a taxidermied polar bear cub, a real live polar bear cub. 

06:32 - Jason Feller (Guest)
No, no, I don't, definitely don't have the means for that. No, yeah, it was a. It's a really old taxidermied polar bear cub that was really generously donated to me and, well, to the boreal museum, and I had success with that and I ended up buying a Deinonychus skeleton, so it's a nine and a half foot long raptor replica skeleton that I got, and so then I did a mini exhibit about dinosaurs in my space and to this day now that was years ago that I started that, but to this day I can't escape talking about dinosaurs. We're stuck on dinosaurs forever now. 

07:09 - Dr Diane Jackson Schnoor (Host)
I understand, once you go down the dinosaur path, you never leave it. 

07:13 - Jason Feller (Guest)
There's no going back. Luckily for me. I lived my whole life as a bit of a hoarder. As you can see behind me, this is my home office, so you can see me. Even having a physical space hasn't helped much. I understand. 

07:24 - Dr Diane Jackson Schnoor (Host)
You can see the books behind me and it's the same thing. My science. Kids are downstairs, but yes. 

07:30 - Jason Feller (Guest)
Yeah, yeah, they're in here somewhere. 

07:35
So I had that small space and I had a lot of schools and community groups reaching out to me wanting to do programs with me, and I was trapped in like a thousand square feet, um, and it was kind of like a cooperative situation so I couldn't control my hours or anything. 

07:51
So I saw this really great opportunity to move downtown Port Arthur and Thunder Bay, um, in a space that hadn't been it's been neglected for about 20 years. So we went in there. Uh, it was an old mall that was kind of cut off, um, and we've been painting the whole mall for the past year, kind of bringing it back to life, because it was a bit of a frightening liminal space, um, and then me and my sister-in-law, who runs quirky company, um, we want to make it as immersive as possible, like it's got to be as fun as possible for us. So, uh, we started making like a mushroom garden in a defunct fountain that no longer could hold water. So it's all these giant sculptural mushrooms that Laura from Quirky Company made. We've been painting murals on the wall. In fact, right now we have a muralist in painting the upper hallways. 

08:39 - Dr Diane Jackson Schnoor (Host)
So, it's really exciting. 

08:41 - Jason Feller (Guest)
Yeah, it's really exciting to see the changes in the mall. Amazing, yeah, it's really exciting to see the changes in the mall. It's all. It's like a anthropomorphized bear with like binoculars and a backpack looking out across the sleeping giant. There's like geese flying. It's. It's stunning what she's doing. 

08:54
Perfect for you, absolutely, and we have about just shy of 4000 square feet that we've been getting ready, just shy of 4,000 square feet that we've been getting ready. Like, when Diane stumbled across our shop, the street was under construction and they actually popped a water line through our whole space because they cut off a lot of the building. So we weren't able to work on exhibits for a really long time while that was happening. But we're back at it now. So I'm working on a geology exhibit. I'm working, of course. 

09:24
I'm bringing back my Deinonychus skeleton. He's waiting for his home in his exhibit. I even have fossil dinosaur eggs as part of that collection. Arctic animals is going to be there as well, and then we have a temporary classroom space that's going to be expanding and kind of our next stage of opening. So we're going to have a ton of ways to engage people into what I do and everything like that, and I'll actually be able to have schools visit me, which is really exciting. That is just right now we're aiming for, hopefully, november. Everybody, please keep your fingers crossed for us about that deadline for the exhibits to be all ready for everybody to come see us. 

10:01 - Dr Diane Jackson Schnoor (Host)
Well, and you kind of touched a little bit on where I was going to start is you were starting from scratch, and so where did you get all of the things you talked about, the taxidermy, polar bear, cub, but all of these other things that you're putting on display? And I noticed, when I was there, even in the little space I saw, you managed not just with the fossils, but you had a hands-on component to everything as well. What sort of goes into the process of deciding what you have, what you're going to create? 

10:38 - Jason Feller (Guest)
and how you're going to present it to families. Planning and thinking about what I'm going to make definitely takes the longest time. It's way outbeats how long it actually takes to make something, because it's really important for me that everything is super hands on For me, especially in school, like I'm pretty dyslexic, and so I really struggled in a formal way of teaching. You know, read this copy that, read this copy that that does not work for me right at at all. I really excel when it's hands-on material, when it's something I could touch and interact with and I can make it do the thing or, you know, perform the concept that they're trying to give to me. So for me, uh, I'm always building the exhibits kind of around a storyline, so I'm trying to follow kind of a pathway that makes the most sense. So that way it's going to bridge the most connections, um and on each of kind of like, the key points of it. Or you know ways that make it really easy. I always want to have an interactive element that you actually touch and you hold a piece and you look at it under a microscope to see it up close, or you are assembling a puzzle or any way like that, or you're touching the actual polar bear fur as you learn about how polar bears keep warm, things like that. It's so critical for me to have everything hands-on. 

11:54
A lot of my collections and things have kind of just followed me around through my life. Like I said, I've lived my life as a bit of a goblin, so I've always been out in nature. I've lived my life as a bit of a goblin, so I've always been out in nature hoarding things, even as a kid one of my formative experiences, I guess as a young kid in the Thunder Bay area in the public school system, we'd go out to a place called Kingfisher which was like a bunch of cabins out by a lake, and as kids we would spend like overnight in these cabins and we'd go on nature walks and things like that, and one of the things that we did out there was dissected owl pellets, and so I would have been in grade seven. So how old would I have been then? Like 10, 11? 

12:39 - Dr Diane Jackson Schnoor (Host)
Okay, yeah, somewhere around there. 

12:42 - Jason Feller (Guest)
Yeah, and so when I was taking apart the owl pellet, by this time they already couldn't keep me inside, so it was already like a lost adventure. But in the owl pellet I got a mouse skull inside of it and it was like this is the coolest thing and I got to take it home with me and I carried that little mouse skull with me like the whole rest of that trip and I brought it home with me and really it was um, it was just a landslide from there that I was like kind of starting to hoard natural history objects in a way. You still have the skull? I don't think so. I it. I might have it in a memory trunk in my parents' attic, locked away for you know, 20 plus years. Maybe it's hidden away somewhere, but I've definitely got a lot bigger skulls now. So what are? 

13:32 - Dr Diane Jackson Schnoor (Host)
some of the favorite skulls that you have. 

13:36 - Jason Feller (Guest)
Well, my favorite for talking to people about is actually. So I have the polar bear skull that was generously donated to me, but I also have a black bear skull. Because when you look at the polar bear skull, even though it's an adult male skull, it doesn't look that big. It's like, I think, about 14 inches long, um. And then so it's like, well, this is actually a huge animal, but it doesn't seem like that big of a skull. But then I bring out the black bear skull and it's like, well, this is actually a huge animal, but it doesn't seem like that big of a skull. But then I bring out the black bear skull and it's like, and this was like the biggest black bear you're ever going to see, kind of skull. 

14:06
So, it's like you can really see the difference of how much meat and fur and muscle attaches to that skull to make that animal the size that it is. So I really love those two skulls Plus, you know, they're the biggest skulls I have, aside from my dinosaur skull and let's talk a little bit, because you've talked about a boreal forest. 

14:26 - Dr Diane Jackson Schnoor (Host)
If somebody has never been to a boreal forest, what is that? 

14:32 - Jason Feller (Guest)
so a boreal forest, I mean, holds a special place in my heart. Technically, where I live, I am like a crossroads between like uh, like a St Lawrence Great Lakes kind of ecosystem and a boreal forest. So it's a bit of a crossover here. So we get some things you don't normally see. But the boreal forest is mostly defined by the trees within it, and that's kind of how many forests are described. 

14:54
So the trees within the boreal forest are heavily reliant on conifer trees, spruce trees, fir trees, pine trees make up the bulk of it because they're really well equipped. You know, sometimes the very harsh winters of the boreal forest are able to survive those things. And so the boreal forest is really defined by its community of trees really. And then there's kind of like the mirroring forest trees really, uh, and then there's kind of like the mirroring forest. So in our forest, our boreal forest, uh, we are largely white spruce, black spruce, balsam fir, and then we have like, um, our northern white cedar, uh. 

15:30
But our mirror kind of habitat would be like the taiga forest, which is spans across europe and russia, which is almost the same as the boreal forest. It's just different species of conifer trees that make it up, but they all kind of fill the same niches and perform the same functions. But as growing up in the boreal forest, it's really, really special to me and I think there's no other kind of habitat on earth that has kind of the. Once you enter springtime in the boreal forest and summertime in the boreal forest, the amount of time that things have to flush and flower and do their thing is so rapid. It's just this crazy cacophony of life that springs into action in our summers. 

16:12 - Dr Diane Jackson Schnoor (Host)
Right? Well, you've got a very limited growing period, and so they have to take full advantage of it. 

16:17 - Jason Feller (Guest)
Yeah, absolutely, and so they have to take full advantage of it. Yeah, absolutely. They've got like two months, you know, to really get the bulk of their work done, for you know, the animals got to bulk up, the plants got to make their fruits and flowers and seeds and everything kind of has to happen in such a short window. So it's just this absolute explosion of life just through the summer months. And then for I mean for us, you know, it's a good season from like May to maybe October, if we're really lucky. I don't think we're going to be lucky this year, but last year well into October things were still growing, but typically you just got like June to August in our area where things got to get their stuff done before the first frost come. 

16:56 - Dr Diane Jackson Schnoor (Host)
And so what animals and birds call the boreal forest home oh well, we are. 

17:04 - Jason Feller (Guest)
We get moose, white-tailed deer really common is the deer, especially in the city here, because people feed them so they're just encroach on the city like crazy. Uh, if you're really lucky, you can spot lynx, uh, in our area. So those are like and bobcats as well. The lynx have the little tufts on their ears Probably one of my favorite animals. Plus, we have, you know, lots of squirrels and roans all those kind of guys who are ripping apart those pine cones like crazy right now. 

17:34
And birds we have a lot of. We have a lot of woodpeckers, we have blue jays, we have black-capped chickadees. They're very nostalgic for a lot of people. They're a very iconic call. We have a few juncos. Honestly, I'm not very good at birds, but I wish I was better at the people who are very passionate about them and can just like, oh, that's that bird, and that's that bird I always find just so incredible and I'm like, oh, well, and I find I learn by experiencing, and so I have a feeling that, as you're expanding your exhibits, you may end up experiencing a whole lot more birds. 

18:22
Oh, absolutely, and we have uh in our area too, like we have some bird migration outpost places like the Thundercate Bird Observatory. It's like on the very foot of the Sleeping Giant, because it ends up being this natural channel. If you guys don't know, the Sleeping Giant is like a rock isle formation in Thunder Bay. It's very iconic, you know. You can Google the images and you can see it from Thunder Bay City. You can see the uh, you can see it even in my logo there. That's the sleeping giant kind of profile there that you'd see from the thunder bay harbor, um, on the very tip of it. Birds kind of get stuck there when they're migrating because they think that they're continuing south, uh, and so there's an observatory there. I I actually overnighted there once helping the bird observatory and we saw, like saw what owls migrating and a bunch of birds. So it's a really incredible place to come see birds, especially if you're coming during the times of migration, because we're like a total throwaway for these birds trying to get somewhere warmer. 

19:15 - Dr Diane Jackson Schnoor (Host)
Makes total sense to me. You know, and I'm just so caught up by your passion and your love of the natural world. You had talked a little bit about wanting to create access and feeling a need for people to have access to science, education and to the world around. Can you address that a little bit in terms of the needs you see and how you're helping to fill those needs needs you? 

19:38 - Jason Feller (Guest)
see and how you're helping to sort of fill those needs. Yeah, absolutely it's, and that it ties in a lot with the access and the hands on things that I do with my exhibits that really change it. But so when, even when we were looking for a new space, it was so important to me that it was like physically even accessible to people. So we have an elevator in our space and we have flat to the ground accessible doors, like there's no ramp. Um, I have to save up money to get the electric buttons on the doors. We don't have those, unfortunately yet. Uh, because those are quite pricey. Uh, but it's so important for me to make science as accessible as possible because I really want to build the empire that I wish was around. 

20:15
When I was a kid. Um, when I was growing up in Thunder Bay, we had there's a large nonprofit it's mostly based out of Sudbury, which is about eight hours from here called Science North. So they have a pretty big museum in Sudbury and they had outposts here and they had one for a really short while when I was a kid and that was kind of like it locked in my mind as being able to go in and touch and interact with science concepts and things like that. But then they were here and they were gone like a flash in the pan and I really missed that. I thought that was incredible. Um, so for me it's it was really important to make a space that's accessible to science and I'm trying to reach as many audiences as possible. That being said, going forward too, even in to science, and I'm trying to reach as many audiences as possible. That being said, going forward too, even in my exhibits. I'm looking for people right now kind of to help me translate things into other languages so it can even cross language barriers and things like that. So, as I'm building my exhibits right now and getting into the meat of it, I'm kind of addressing even the panel sizes I have. But I also want to incorporate I'm looking into even making it so you can put on headphones and you can listen to the content, versus having to read it as well to kind of help change that as well. 

21:31
So it's really important for me to see how many barriers I can cross to be able to get science into people's hands in any way that I can. And like with the birds I am not an expert in most things, you know, especially like exhibits that I'm working on, like my geology exhibit or like the Arctic animals exhibit. That one I'm a little more confident. But geology exhibit I need a lot of help on. I get. 

21:59
I talk to a lot of people who are way more professional and way more studied in that topic than me to be able to build my exhibits in a way that makes sense but is also going to be able to bridge connections for people. 

22:11
So in my geology exhibit coming up, we kind of talk, start from the basics, like what is a rock, what is a, a mineral, and then you get to like touch and sort those kinds of things to see what defines those two things, uh, and then you get to talk about the mineral test before we move into things like, uh, tectonic activity even we talk about in there, and there's even a puzzle of pangea where you can actually move the pieces and rebuild pangea or try and make it fit the modern world and things like that. So, yeah, accessibility is absolute key for me, and not only just in terms of physical accessibility but language accessibility and in like different learning experiences. Accessibility for being able to bridge gaps for people with learning disabilities as well, is really important. So I'm always trying to find new ways to make topics being able to meet people and their needs and how they kind of consume information. 

23:08 - Dr Diane Jackson Schnoor (Host)
I love all of that, and so question for you if you could wave a magic wand and have everything you wanted come true in 10 years, what would it look like? 

23:20 - Jason Feller (Guest)
you wanted come true in 10 years, what would it look like? Oh my goodness, it would. Uh, it would probably be massive for one physically massive. Um, a lot of people are really excited about the dinosaur exhibit and so I would probably be okay. I would want to get replicas of many different dinosaurs and expand that whole collection, because I have things like fossil dinosaur eggs part of my collection and I have, you know, small pieces of bones and things like that. 

23:42
But you know, sometimes people really need the big wow effect of some some of our bigger dinosaurs um, I'd also want to expand and kind of have like a host of outreach teams that would be able to actually go into the smaller communities and provide education and things like that. There's, I mean the for me. I feel like the opportunities are endless to expand, just because I really love all aspects of science and I'm not an expert at it. But if I had a magic wand, you know at least have a team of experts at everything so I could kind of cover everything at once everything, so I could kind of cover everything at once. 

24:22 - Dr Diane Jackson Schnoor (Host)
Well, and that's the joy of doing what you do is you're able to take that passion and that curiosity that so clearly comes through and apply it to learning about new things and figuring out. How do I teach this to other people in a way that they're going to get it and find that same passion and buy in, and so I think that's an awesome calling. 

24:44 - Jason Feller (Guest)
It's definitely a journey. I don't know of many people who started a museum in the past 80 years, so there's not really like a playbook to what I'm doing either. I feel like most of the time I'm just making it up as I go, but I'm definitely extremely passionate about it, which is good, because it's not easy to do. It's pretty tough. It's like it's a challenge to come up with all of these things without knowing what you're doing. So I spent a lot of time like my mom's. She's a retired teacher now, but she just retired two years ago, I guess now. 

25:18
So I've, like I've grown up with teachers around me my whole life, so that helps a great deal. 

25:24
And my mother has, like a huge passion for geography and things like that. So and we were very encouraged, me and my siblings to grow up and kind of lean into our passions as much as possible. So it really built that passion and that's yeah, really in the in the lockdowns it changed kind of how I was thinking about the world and how I could interact with the world and it kind of made me feel like I could move from a backseat position to more of a front seat position to kind of do what I wanted to do instead of just you know, just you know, doing what's already here, you know. So building things from scratch suddenly seemed way more in my hands. And uh, like I said, even in the first lockdown, my partner Mariano, he pushed me to start doing stuff with this idea I had and he's been alongside every step of the way uh, that that poor man is in there carving exhibits out of foam and whatever crazy idea I have. 

26:20
he's sort of locked into um. So he's there every step of the way and of course my family's dragged along on this whole journey as well. So it's really kind of a community and family experience in a big way as well, because it's a lot to do and without a guidebook we're all just kind of plodding along figuring it out. 

26:40 - Dr Diane Jackson Schnoor (Host)
Well, and they say nobody's an island of plodding along, figuring it out. Well, and they say nobody's an island, and I think that that's very true. It really does take a collective of people to build our dreams. If people would like to follow you, follow the Boreal Museum, how do they reach you? 

26:55 - Jason Feller (Guest)
So you can find the Boreal Museum. You can go to our website, of course, borealmuseumcom. It's going to be going through a bit of a redo soon because it's it's a little bit outdated, uh, but usually some of the quick, fast updates you can find through there, especially when it comes to our events and things like that, like the foragers walks uh, we even do the haunted lakehead walk, so that is like some of the true, horrible ghost and gut stories of thunder bays downtown, um. You can also find us on Facebook as Boreal Museum or Instagram as Boreal Museum. That's kind of where I'm most active. I've tried a couple other places, but I'm so harebrained that I kind of forget about my other outlets. 

27:34 - Dr Diane Jackson Schnoor (Host)
Understood. 

27:37 - Jason Feller (Guest)
Very, very, sometimes very few and far between I'll release like a YouTube video. Usually that's about some of these science kits that we do and kind of the concept around how they work and how they kind of function in our science shop. And you can find a lot of these things on our store. But, like I said, we'll be kind of redoing our store and bringing a lot of things in a big way. We make I personally make in-house a lot of different small experiment kits as well as some larger ones, things like that and those kinds of uh the kits, especially the small ones. I'm kind of always trying to rotate them and get new ones in all the time so people can keep coming back and learning new things. 

28:17
Um, and then you can also find me if you live in Thunder Bay, if you're traveling to Thunder Bay. Uh, we are at 215 Red River Road. We're downtown Port Arthur in Thunder Bay. We are inside of a building called Keskes Court, so you can always come, stop by, say hi, come meet my polar bear cub there, and then hopefully, by the time you guys are visiting, my exhibits will be up and you'll be able to say hi to my dinosaur as well. And come learn some fun stuff at the Boreal. 

28:43 - Dr Diane Jackson Schnoor (Host)
Museum and I'll post some pictures from my own visit in the stories, because you were kind enough to let me take pictures and we posed together, so I'll make sure people are able to see that. But seriously, don't do it as an accidental visit the way I did it. Plan a real visit to Thunder Bay and make the Boreal Museum your number one stop. It's definitely worth it. So Jason very last question of the day what currently brings you joy or hope? 

29:11 - Jason Feller (Guest)
Ooh, what brings me joy or hope? Well, right now, because the exhibits are pushing forward and now I'm like really going into it. It's really that I'm like I'm holding onto that November timeline's really that I'm like I'm holding on to that November timeline. That's bringing me a lot of joy. To be able to making the exhibits is one of my favorite things I get to do, and so because we're making an entire museum's worth of exhibits right now, you know there's lots to be done. 

29:37
Where I normally don't get to do that stuff very often, I'm sure I have rotating exhibits that I get to work on slowly, but right now it's one of my favorite things is, you know, all of the imagineering that goes into how to make a space immersive, because I really try to make things immersive. So, like the geology exhibit, you walk through like a big cave entrance into it, you're gonna sit in a little bat cave and I'll talk about cave structures and things like that. So so all of that imagining, that brings me a lot of joy. To come up with these, you know, totally crazy ideas, and then my family and my partner has to be like, well, that's not really possible, but we can do this side thing, and so I get to see, you know, my imagination kind of come to life, and that is such a joyful experience for me. 

30:22
Another thing, well, this, and another thing that brings me joy. Actually this has been happening a lot lately because I've been doing this for a couple years now, and so now I've had some kids who came into the Bordeaux Museum when I was on the other side of town very young, and now they're starting to get older and they remember me and they want to come into the museum and talk to me specifically, and that is an absolute thrill to me because I. 

30:46
It's really heartwarming to see my little love letter to science being able to reach kids like that and to be part of their formative science exploration journey you know. So it brings me huge joy when that happens. 

31:00 - Dr Diane Jackson Schnoor (Host)
I love that and I love the fact that them wanting to come and talk to you is a love letter back and that's compliments you can be paid. Well, jason, thank you so much for being on the adventures and learning podcast. It has been such a treat to catch up with you, yeah. 

31:16 - Jason Feller (Guest)
Thank you so much. It's been so nice getting to talk to you again.