Cape Breton Fossil Centre/Sydney Mines Heritage Museum — Attraction in Sydney Mines

We stopped into the Sydney Fossil Museum during our recent visit to Nova Scotia. What an incredible treat! From the start it was clear that much thought and planning went into displaying the amazing array of fascinating Paleozoic fossils we were treated to. We were given an outstanding personal tour by a very knowledgeable young woman, Connor, during which we learned details about the abundant plant fossils and geological processes of the Carboniferous period, the age of coal formation. The museum featured so many excellent fossil specimens not only of Carboniferous plant life but also more recent life in the maritimes such as Mastodons as well as tracks of ancient tetrapods. The museum’s curator, Jason Loxton, gave us a special tour of the museum’s laboratory in which we saw amazing fossils in the process of being prepared for presentation. Jason spent much time with us sharing his paleontology expertise and enthusiasm as well as entertaining stories about paleontology history in the maritimes. In all it was an afternoon so well spent which we will never forget. We highly recommend a stop at this special museum which is essentially a diamond in...

From what I have learned, the chairperson and the curator, both of who successfully ran and operated the three museums under the Sydney Mines Heritage Society for seventeen years, reluctantly resigned from the Sydney Mines Heritage Society in June, 2021. Their departure was not a very amicable one. During the months following their departure, five other members of the Board of Directors resigned from the Sydney Mines Heritage Society. The three remaining members formed a new Board of Directors and one became the Chairperson, one became the Vice-Chairperson, and one was already the Board Secretary. Their Facebook page has not been updated since January , 2022, and the Sydney Mines Heritage Society Webpage has been taken down. Google has this site listed as temporarily closed. The page listing the Board of Directors for the new Board has been removed. It leaves questions as to what...

My parents and I were lucky enough to drive past a roadside advert for the museum and made a note to visit the next day. We are so glad we did. We were offered a tour with the curator, Jason and he was engaging, friendly, funny and needless to mention, extremely knowledgeable. His love of geology was palpable and really kept your attention. The collection was incredible, too. The other staff were two college students who were equally as enthusiastic and helpful. One took us over to the small but well curated and interesting mining museum. It was wonderful to hear from his experience, as a younger local person, of growing up in a once thriving town and to understand the generational difficulties of living in the town in its current economical slump. I hope the museums continue to receive funding to flourish as they are real gems that don’t deserve...