Virtual trucking museum connects with the Net

HAMILTON, Ont. (March 22, 2004) — The saying, ‘Canada moves by truck’ is not just a figure of speech, and the Workers Arts and Heritage Center in Hamilton, Ont. has prepared a fascinating look at our industry’s history and culture to back the claim.

The exhibition — titled Highway Workplace: The Canadian Truckers Story — is actually a website, billed as a virtual museum, designed to inform visitors about truckers’ history and culture. It engages visitors directly through a number of interactive components based on oral history, imagery, sound, text, and artifacts. The virtual museum offers an intimate look at the daily life of the Canadian trucker and the history of the Canadian trucking industry.

The site takes visitors through trucking’s early years with personal stories and images from the past, to a comprehensive look at what it’s like to be a trucker today. And further, the site looks at trucking through the music, films, literature and poetry that have been spawned by trucks, truckers, and trucking. There’s even an account of the one and probably only opera ever written around a trucking theme: Cruel Tears.

If you’re looking for a perspective on trucking, this website has it in spades, as well as some great pictures of trucking’s glory days. Betcha didn’t know that poet Milton Acorn and American novelist John Steinbeck have both written about the lives of truckers?

The website is the brainchild of truck writer Harry Rudolphs and is supported by Canadian Heritage Information Network, Virtual Museum of Canada Investment Program, Teamsters Canada, Mackie Moving Systems, and CAW-TCA.