It is always a good  idea to be a wary consumer, but it is even more so with the Christmas shopping season in full swing.  Because everything you can buy can be counterfeited including the currency itself. So it is a perfect time for the Galt Museum to  open their latest exhibit— Fakes and Forgeries: Yesterday and Today. The traveling exhibit comes to the Galt  from the Royal Ontario Museum with the help of a  special Heritage Canada grant.
“Every 10-12 years, we release a new series of bills with different security features. This helps us keep one step ahead of the counterfeiters,” said Trudel, giving a preview of his  sneak preview of his presentation. He said next year, bills will be made of a special plastic polymer, though he doesn’t know which ones will be redesigned or what the new features will be.

“They’ll probably tell us what they are about two hours before it happens, because they don’t want any leaks,” he laughed adding there are a variety of security features on  the current issue of bills which include a special cotton fibres, which give them a distinct feel. So in addition to feeling the bills, you should be able to tell a counterfeit bill as well as by holding it up to light.

Can you tell the true artifact from the fake? The Galt Museum & Archives invites visitors to test their skills in Fakes & Forgeries: Yesterday and Today, an interactive travelling exhibit produced by the Royal Ontario Museum opening Saturday, Dec. 18, 2010 as part of the Museum Community Day from 10 a.m. to 4:30 pm. Admission is free all day with special activities planned.

Fakes & Forgeries presents 115 authentic items next to counterfeit products that run the gamut from historical specimens and cultural artifacts, to household items and designer name brands.

“Fakes and forgeries are everywhere in our world, but this is nothing new,” said Wendy Aitkens, Curator at the Galt.
“ Counterfeit money has been around since the use of currency began some 2,500 years ago. Forged art, archaeological specimens, fossils and other collectibles have been sold on the black market for generations. Many reproductions were made hundreds of years ago as legitimate souvenirs or modest replicas for the local market. As they resurface today they are often sold as the real goods. More recently, pirated software, music, movies and knocks offs of more expensive clothing, accessories, automotive parts and technical equipment have been sold to and used by many of us.”

Visitors of all ages will learn how to tell authentic pieces from sly forgeries and discover the fascinating lengths forgers will take to hoodwink the unwary. The exhibit provides information to help visitors identify and avoid misrepresentative
articles, including pirated computer software and counterfeit currency.

Programs reflecting the theme will be offered throughout the run of the exhibit, including weekly family activities during Saturdays at 1 p.m., presentations on the first and third Wednesday monthly as part of Wednesdays at the Galt for senior, The Curator Presents... in January and a special guest speaker for Café Galt in February.

Fakes & Forgeries is a travelling exhibit produced by the Royal Ontario Museum, and made possible in part by a grant from the Museums Assistance Program, Department of Canadian Heritage.

My dad fought in the Second World War as a gunner  in a Lancaster bomber but doesn’t talk much about his experiences in the war though once when helping clean out his bunk house, I found some aerial surveillance photos from the war, so I can appreciate the challenge local author Garry Allison had when writing his book “ The Prairie Boys: Southern Alberta’s Wartime experience,” which was released in 2006.

“It was a challenge. You really had to pry it out of them. All my dad would say was ‘we went to Europe and I was in the  39th Artillery,”he said, holding up his dad’s diary from those days, which consisted of a single sheet of paper with the date and simple one line descriptions of the day like “marching,” or ’day off,’ or ‘truce for 24 hours.’

“ I found the best way was to go to the Legion and get a couple of them sitting around a table. I’d sit with them for about an hour and then one of them would tell a story, which would get the others to remember stories,” said Allison, who spent 50 years as feature writer for the Lethbridge Herald right after the war, and talked with a lot of the veterans for Remembrance Day/Armistace Day stories.

 He shared several of these stories from his book with an enraptured room full of people at the Galt Museum, Nov. 3, which was part of their Wednesday afternoon speaker’s series, “Wednesday’s At The Galt.”
This week’s presentation, whihc begins at 2 p.m. this afternoon, features a panel of local Korean War Veterans who will be speaking about their experiences.

Allison’s own father was  pretty tight lipped about his experience.
“He wouldn’t say anything. So I had to sit him down and say ‘Hey, you’re not talking  to your son now, you’re talking to a reporter,” related Allison, who had a few items on hand for his “show and tell” presentation including German pamphlets, a medical guide for soldiers and the beret his own grandfather wore during the First World War, fighting with the Scots.

“I remember him telling how the Scots scared a lot of people with their kilts and their bagpipes, but you’d never make fun of either of them to grandpa’s face,” he said, holding up the beret.
He also had an empty rations book, which Allison remembers vividly, though he was only a boy when the war broke out.
“I remember not being allowed to have sugar for my cereal then,” he recalled.
“I don’t  pretend to be an expert on the army, but I’ve talked to a lot of people and have nothing but respect for veterans,” he told the attentive audience, before launching into an incredible saga of Southern Albertan heros.
“I was impressed by the fact that so many Southern Albertans played such a big part in history. They were members of the Devil’s Brigade. I mean you have Hollywood, but I’ve met and talked with real life heroes rather than the Hollywood heroes,” he continued.

“There’s people like Father Keon from the Assumption Church. He was a nice, quiet little priest, but he was over there,” he  noted, relating a few stories of the popular Catholic Central High School pastor which amazed several graduates in the audience  who never knew that side of him before.

Tonight, at the Southern Alberta Art Gallery, Dr. Josephine Mills presents Deaccessioning: The Root of All Scandal to offer insight into the sometimes necessary and often controversial practice of selling work from public art collections.

Dr. Josephine Mills is the Director/Curator of the University of Lethbridge Art Gallery and an Associate Professor in the Department of Art.

Mills has a PhD in Communication Studies from Concordia University and is a recent graduate of the Museum Leadership Institute at the Getty Center. Her research interests focus on broader issues related to collecting for art galleries and for artists as well as on the relationship between art and notions of public in Canada.

Mills is Past President of the University and College Art Gallery Association of Canada and Chair of the Collection Issues Committee, Canadian Art Museum Directors Organization.
 The talk begins at 7 p.m..