The circus is coming to town in the form of posters, ticket stubs, Newspaper clippings, scrapbooks and more, from the 1850s to the 1950s.
Centre Wellington resident Eric Huber recently donated a collection of circus memorabilia and paraphernalia to the Guelph Civic Museum.
“We didn’t really have anything in the collection before on circuses that had come to Guelph,” said Bev Dietrich, museum curator.
She said the museum was pleased to fill the gap with Guelph Under the Big Top.
Huber, who has been known to discover historical artifacts before, happened to stumble on an intact circus collection about two years ago.
“My interest in the circus came about when I was told about a display of circus paraphernalia and I had to make a purchase very quickly so it wouldn’t all be scattered about and displaced,” he explained.
The circus memorabilia was a first for Huber, who said he has made several artifact donations to museums in the past, but this is the first intact collection.
“My interest in history as a whole is bringing to the people what happened years ago and what should be recorded of interest to most people,” he said.
After making the multi-thousand dollar purchase, Huber did his own research using various maps, books and other archives to piece together what he could of the history of Guelph circuses.
Not using a computer, he did all of his research with a paper and pen through hard copies of historical documents such as Newspapers and historical books.
Now that the circus memorabilia is with the museum, Dietrich said they’d be working to build a full exhibit. Right now the starting point is Huber’s collection, but Dietrich said she’s looking for more objects.
“I’m hoping if anybody out there has some type of circus memorabilia that connects to Guelph, because we have to collect Guelph-related objects, that they may think ‘oh wait a minute, I’ve got something,’ and it will come forward too,” she said.
Due to the exhibit schedule, Dietrich said the full Guelph circus exhibit will not be on display for at least three years. However, the research will be ongoing. She said the idea is to tell the story of the circus from the beginning.
“We’ll be piecing together the whole story of when the circuses came to Guelph,” she said. “So it will mean going through the scrapbooks and doing a lot of research to pull the loose ends together and make them into sort of a storyline that people can read and follow.”
The Guelph Civic Museum will be holding a public viewing of Huber’s donation, Guelph Under the Big Top on Feb. 4 from 2 to 4pm.
