Natural sciences
The natural sciences collection is split into two major components: the wildlife subseries and the mineralogy subseries.Over half the 132 specimens comprising the former are stuffed animal specimens obtained by the Musée during the 1980s thanks to donations from the Ville de Sept-Îles, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police and the ministère du Loisir, de la Chasse et de la Pêche du Québec. In particular, 51 specimens were purchased from Studio Caribou, which used to be based in Sept-Îles. Those bear accession numbers starting with 1980, 1981 and 1982.
The stuffed animal specimens are representative of the Canadian boreal forest. They represent animals such as the black bear, stoat, American mink, Canadian lynx, beaver and groundhog (marmot). Many species of duck, including the common eider, common scoter and common murre (common guillemot), as well as birds of prey, such as the boreal owl (Tengmalm’s owl), great horned owl (tiger owl) and snowy owl (white owl) are also represented. Lastly, it also contains 6 fish specimens, including a lake trout and an Arctic char.
Pierre Gonin
In December 2012, Montreal collector Mr. Pierre Gonin donated his geological collection to the MCN. It makes up 101 entries of the virtual collection, which comprises 1692 mineral and fossil specimens from Canada and elsewhere.
The minerals from the Côte-Nord found within it come from prospector Mr. Benoît Thibault’s collection. Many were collected in the early 1990s.
Fossils from the Côte-Nord within the Gonin collection mainly come from the region of Ragueneau and from Baie-Comeau, in the Haute-Côte-Nord, and were collected in the decade of the 2000s. The same applies to sedimentary forms. The other mineral and fossil specimens were collected by Mr. Gonin himself. It should be noted that all the specimens are labelled.