Appointment in the Museum of Health Care at Kingston

Location:

32 George St., Kingston Ontario

right behind Kingston General Hospital (KGH). George St. is one way.

Admission Price:

The museum is free to enter, though parking in the area can be expensive.

Ease of Access:

At the moment, April 2019, the parking lot is under construction. When I went it was hilly and very treacherous. There is a sidewalk running to the door and parking on the street but, the little museum lot causes slight concern to me.

The two washrooms are gender neutral single stall. There is a note on this page that says they are not fully accessible. This is likely because they do not meet the legal requirements for space. The Museum has installed handle bars and done what they could in the historic building. Outside the toilets is a map to the KGH accessible toilets.

The above link also holds a video describing places to park. I watched it on mute and it is fairly straight forward. As it is a series of photos instead of a video it might be a little bit jarring but it is very helpful and a video taken without an expensive steady-cam rig would be equally jarring!

The museum itself has all its exhibition space on the same level. This is about a half-story up from ground level but all levels of the museum are accessible by the ‘tower entrance’, a modern front built to accommodate an elevator shaft. I have heard about this done in historic buildings but this is the first time I have seen it!

The Tower

External elevator shafts allows a historic building to keep its internal architecture while still creating access.

Here you can see the way that the modern front is part of the building but still not covering the historic architecture (just visible to the right of the photo). Inside the museum it was easy to forget that this modern front existed at all. Modern fronts can also help the public understand that they are, in fact, in front of a museum and not just another old building. I have found that a number of ‘historic’ building managers are reticent to change the facade at all which can lead to some confusion. This accessibility feature also creates space for signage!

Tour Notes

The museum of health care is tucked away behind Kingston General Hospital. Surrounding it is the campus of Queen’s University though it is only affiliated with that place by proximity. Similar to how New Walk is associated with The University of Leicester without an official connection. Inside you ascend half a flight of stairs to the entry way. To your right is a cloak room with a coat rack and a chair or two. To your left is the first Diorama Room.

Dioramas are a very old form of exhibition. It is one that I have not seen in person in quite some time! The dioramas at the Museum of Health Care depicted a nurses dorm room and a doctor’s office. The nurses’ dorm blended seamlessly into the next space – a more modern exhibition on nursing school – specifically the graduates of the KGH nursing school.

The old nursing school dormitory houses the Museum of Health Care, and I am convinced that the squeaky hardwood floors are from that era. You couldn’t have your nursing students wandering around at night after all! The focus of the museum is the nurses but their history did not stop when they graduated! Currently there is an exhibition called Trench Menders which follows the efforts and innovations and horrors of nursing during the first world war.

There is also an exhibition on immunization in Canada, Quackery, the history of dentures and much much more. You can see the list of current exhibitions at this link. The link includes online and external exhibitions as well. I cannot recommend Vaccines and Immunizations enough. It is a no-nonsense exhibition about the positive effects of vaccines. The image to the left is just the first three needles out of a whole list! I could not satisfactorily get a photo of the entire chart with my terrible camera phone.

The Desk

The Museum of Health Care at Kingston is an unusual shape. It is vaguely cross-shaped with one ‘fat’ end. As a result, the reception desk is at the centre of the cross, not the front entrance. While I was there an enthusiastic classics student from the university was in attendance. She answered my questions knowledgeably and even laughed at my terrible jokes!

If I had to guess about the odd placement of the desk, I would say that it is either a hold-over from before the modern entrance was built or it is so that the attendant can have easy view and access to the entire museum. As it was spring when I visited it is also possible that the glass in the front entrance makes temperature regulation difficult.

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Score out of 10: 7

For those of you knew to Museum Spaces I score every museum I visit out of 10 where 10 is the bees knees and 1 is the dogs dinner.

I wanted to give the museum a higher score, I really did. There were great interactive in the Skin Your In exhibition, my aunt works at KGH, my mum is a retired nurse, they have that brilliant tower entrance. But the toilets.

Those toilets.

I understand the issues that come with historic buildings, I have written about them before for the AGN. But the Museum of Health Care shot themselves in the foot in my eyes by building the tower entrance but not building a fully accessible toilet.

The Room to Grow

1. The toilet situation. It is good that there is a clear map to the nearest one, and it is quite near, but I would love the museum to have its own.
2. The cloak room. I pointed it out at the start of this article partly because it was the last room I saw. I went down the left and back up the right so I missed it entirely. A sign might have been helpful.
3. The viewing points for the dioramas. I don’t know about you, but I find it hard to see everything in a diorama with my fully functioning legs and spin. Having a few extra inches/feet could go a long way toward creating access for wheelchair users.

The Highlights

1. The Tower Entrance. You might have guessed that I liked it. It has its own section!
2. The Wayfinding. Wayfinding is how guests make their way through a space. With the single hiccough of missing the cloak room I was able to walk throughout the entire museum without getting lost or doubling back or ending up in a dead end! This is very unusual and means someone took a lot of time to think about the space.
3. The Visit Us webpage. It has a wonderfully laid out accessibility section that I linked to above including maps and a video about how to reach the museum. After the last review, which had no accessibility resources online, this was a highlight!
4. The people. I know I mentioned speaking to the volunteer attendant above but I also spoke with a few other staff and volunteers. All of them care deeply about the museum and, those I spoke to about access, shared my passion for making historic sites accessible.

I would return to the Museum of Health Care

I really enjoyed the hour or so that I spent at the Museum of Health Care. Would you want to spend a few hours a this little museum? Have you been there before? Let me know below what your experience was like!