Canada's Sports Hall of Fame collection now housed at Canadian Museum of History

The Canadian Museum of History has scored a massive collection of sports artifacts and a handful of memorabilia is now on display for the next year. 

The museum in Gatineau, Que., acquired more than 100,000 items from Canada's Sports Hall of Fame in Calgary, which closed its doors to visitors at the start of the pandemic and never reopened. 

"It is the biggest acquisition the museum has ever made in its history," said Chloe Ouellet-Riendeau, assistant curator of sport history at the Canadian Museum of History. 

In 2021, the federal government allocated $5 million for the history museum to acquire and preserve the collection from the hall of fame. 

The entire collection has now arrived at its new home, but staff are still working through the items to check the inventory and see if any require restoration. 

Now, 10 of those artifacts will be on display at the museum in a special exhibit, Canada's Got Game: Highlights from the Order of Sport Collection. 

"It was a really hard choice to wind it down to only these objects," Ouellet-Riendeau said, adding it's because of limited space at the museum. 

"It was just to choose stories that are unique, try to represent everybody because we are such a diverse country. I mean, we have to represent different communities, different genders, different stories," she said of the selection process. 

One of the items currently on display at the museum is a bright red parka with a wolf fur trim, handsewn by 12 seamstresses from Nunavut and worn by the members of Canada's 1972 Winter Olympic team. 

The one on display belonged to Jim Hunter, an alpine skier who represented Canada and wore the parka during the 1972 opening ceremony in Sapporo, Japan. 

Only members of the Olympic team received a