Our shopping list is long: Christmas, wedding, hostess and birthday gifts for adults and children. We don't have much time to shop. Where can we shop stress-free for unique gifts that will make the recipients say: 'Wow!'?
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| Shopping in Gardiner Museum of Ceramic Art gift shop. |
| Photo © Barb & Ron Kroll |
Deciding to bypass cookie-cutter items at chain stores, we seek out treasures hidden in Ontario museums, art galleries and science centres. In Toronto, we find four specialty shops within a five-minute walk of each other.
Gift ideas
Shoe-themed gifts fill the entranceway shop at The Bata Shoe Museum. For a fashion-loving friend, we select a multicoloured silk scarf, adorned with images of shoes from the museum's collections.
We spot a shoe-shaped stainless steel cake server, with a magnetic rhinestone 'heel' that can be detached for washing. Packaged with a home-baked cake, it will be a novel hostess gift for an upcoming party.
Art work
The Gardiner Museum of Ceramic Art shop, in the lobby, is bright, airy and modern. Pastel and boldly coloured glass and ceramics, displayed on white shelves like contemporary art, draw us in like magnets. We resist the urge to buy some of the decorative plates, trays, mugs and bowls for ourselves before finishing our gift list.
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| Gift shop sells silk scarves decorated with shoes. The Bata Shoe Museum. |
| Photo © Barb & Ron Kroll |
The diversity of handcrafted work by Ontario artists impresses us. (Some have exhibited ceramics at Gardiner shows.)
We check one birthday gift off our list when we spot a floral glazed stoneware teapot, by Scott Barnim, from Dundas, Ontario. "Scott's work is very popular," says assistant shop manager, April Walsh, as she hands us his biography. "Our customers like to read about the artists' education, work experience and exhibitions."
We admire the creations of Toronto-based Karin Pavey, a master of glazing, who's an instructor at the museum. The mugs, bowls and wine coolers by Thomas Aitkin, from Warsaw, Ontario, also draw our attention. Aitkin's wife, Kate Hyde, is a porcelain sculptor. Her white angels are perfect Christmas gifts for two more people on our list.
Our eyes then zero in on an exquisite red and turquoise vase by Kleinburg artist, Kayo O'Young. It's a one-of-a-kind wedding gift for the couple on our list.
Unusual presents
To finish our shopping, we walk across the road to the ROM Museum Store in the Royal Ontario Museum. Located on the main floor of Michael Lee-Chin Crystal, it's a huge 650 sq. m. (7,000 sq. ft.) treasure house of unique gifts from around the world.
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| Glazed floral teapot by Scott Barnim. Gardiner Museum of Ceramic Art. |
| Photo © Barb & Ron Kroll |
The theme of each display corresponds to a ROM gallery. Tribal masks, decorated gourds and books about Africa. Kimonos from Japan. Geodes, cracked open to display purple amethyst crystals.
A shiny helmet with a brilliant red fringe dominates a display of Roman gifts. A small, carved wooden sarcophagus, in the adjacent Egypt section, would certainly be a conversation piece for the male on our list. A clerk opens the cover to reveal a carved wooden mummy inside, partially wrapped in gauze.
Finally, we spot the perfect gift for our coin collecting relative. The Dirty Old Coins kit contains 10 authentic ancient coins, at least 1,000 years old, with a brush, magnifier, storage cases and instructions for restoration, identification and valuation.
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| Robin's egg soaps. ROM Museum Store, Royal Ontario Museum. Toronto, Ontario. |
| Photo © Barb & Ron Kroll |
We peruse items in ROM Reproductions, a glass-enclosed section of the store, for our nature-loving niece. Egyptian gold cat jewellery, Mohawk pottery cups, yellow Chin Dynasty bowls, all copies of museum artefacts, would make novel gifts, but not for our young teenager.
In the main store, we see something she'll love — a set of French-milled soaps, shaped like robin's eggs, pale blue with brown speckles. We pull out our credit cards.
Unique gifts for kids
An entire store, devoted to children's gifts, ROM Kids Store, on Level B1, should make it easy to find gifts for the four-year-old boy on our list. But our heads spin with choices. A large green iridescent bug in a frame? A stuffed mammoth toy with curled tusks? A plush Atlantic puffin that squawks when you squeeze it?
As we flit like butterflies from one toy to the next, we note a little girl studying a replica dinosaur. A young boy runs to the same display, grabs a triceratops in one hand and a brachiosaurus in the other. "Roar!" he growls, confronting the two extinct reptiles in an imaginary dino-battle. Decision made. Our nephew will love the replica allosaurus.
One of the advantages to shopping in museums, galleries and science centres, is that many boast cafés and restaurants, so you don't have to leave the building to eat.
Another bonus? After our shopping is done, we take a leisurely stroll through the exhibit galleries. It's our reward for a job well done.
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| Girl with replica dinosaur. ROM Kids Store, Toronto. |
| Photo © Barb & Ron Kroll |
Ontario museums
According to the Ontario Museum Association, the province has more than 600 museums, art galleries and cultural institutions. Most have gift shops. Their themes are as diverse as the interests and ages of the people on your shopping list: archaeology, aviation, Canadian history, canoes, hockey, minerals, ships, railroads and wildlife, to name a few.
Take Ottawa, for example. The main boutique at the Canadian Museum of Civilization, across the river in Gatineau, has 10,000 items for sale. They include original handmade Inuit sculptures, First Nations beaded moccasins, and argillite reproductions of Haida carvings in the museum's collections.
For children, gifts range from games and stamp sets to books on architecture and Egypt (one of the themes in the Canadian Children's Museum).
Kids love the items (many under $5) in the Canadian Museum of Nature boutique in Ottawa. Besides rubber dinosaurs and genuine fossils, it sells a large selection of nature and geology books, covering topics from bats to porcupines.
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| Glass inukshuk. Whizards Gift Shop, Science North. |
| Photo © Barb & Ron Kroll |
If there is a Canadian history buff on your shopping list, visit the Diefenbunker: Canada's Cold War Museum in Carp, just west of Ottawa. Its Diefemporium, open after tours and on request, sells souvenirs ranging from spy toys to original hand-held dosimeters produced for the military during the 1960s.
Get well soon gifts
In Sudbury, Whizards Gift Shop at Science North sells cool science toys like gyroscopes and magnetic levitating globes. Multi-hued plush giant microbes, depicting maladies from ulcers to the flu, make fun get-well gifts.
The Big Nickel Boutique, at Dynamic Earth, sells crack-open geodes, agate slab wind chimes and Canadian gems, rocks and minerals for budding geologists.
Both shops sell inukshuks, hand-chipped from blocks of solid glass, in Northern Ontario. Distinctively different, the 2010 Winter Olympics will sell them as souvenirs of Canada.
TRAVEL INFORMATION
Ontario museums, galleries and science centres: www.ontariotravel.net
More things to see and do in Toronto:
Restaurant ONE - Hazelton Hotel
Michael Lee Chin Crystal - Royal Ontario Museum (ROM)
Toronto Chinatown Walking Tour