A House of Making
The Story Behind the Museum
It started with a few machines and artifacts worth saving.
What began decades ago as a personal project, saving tools, machines, and instruments worth preserving gradually grew into an underground museum in the Alberta foothills.
Today the museum holds thousands of pieces: oilfield iron, farm machinery, household tools, gauges, vehicles, and the smaller, stranger objects of daily life from around the world.
Each piece helps tell the story of how people worked, what they made and the ingenuity behind it.
So much to explore
The Museum brings together machinery, tools, vehicles, artifacts and stories from across generations. Some pieces are large and immediately striking; others reveal themselves only when you slow down and look closely. Together, they create one immersive experience shaped by curiosity, craftsmanship and discovery.
African Heritage
Carvings, textiles, and ceremonial objects from across the continent.
Mary's Collection
A lifetime's worth of household tools and fine instruments.
Indicators
Gauges, dials, and precision instruments of measure.
Machines
Industrial lathes, mills, presses, and stationary engines.
Oilfield
The heavy iron and rig hardware of Canada's oil patch.
Vehicles
Trucks, motorcycles, and motorcars from another era.
The Forge
During the founding of the Canadian Museum of Making, the Museum built its own forge and machine shop for on-site restorations, and to preserve and share the traditional methods of making everyday items from metal.
Explore the Forge & WorkshopsHidden beneath the Alberta foothills.
A place shaped by history
The museum is built underground on the original Jamieson family homestead in southern Alberta, in a deliberately quiet place set within a landscape once travelled and mapped by explorer David Thompson.
With breathtaking views across the foothills, the museum invites visitors to slow down, look closely and discover what lies beneath the surface.
Visits are by tour registration only.