RedPath Museum

In early 1870, when McGill College was not yet a university, it had as its rector Sir William Dawson, an eminent researcher, a professor of natural philosophy (a science that studies nature and the physical universe), and "the only person in the whole country to have a microscope," says Ingrid Birker, scientific outreach and public programs coordinator at the Redpath Museum.

Over the years, William had accumulated a large collection of fossils, minerals and seashells. However, unlike his colleagues from other prestigious universities in Europe and the United States like Oxford or Harvard, he had nowhere to put his collections.

By the late 1870s, he was offered a position in Princeton, New Jersey. However, to keep him in Montreal, the College offered him a museum, which would be built with a gift from Peter Redpath, a businessman and philanthropist. And so in 1882 the Redpath Museum, dedicated to natural history through paleontology, mineralogy, zoology and ethnology, opened its doors on the campus of McGill College.