Greater Sudbury Heritage Museums


The Greater Sudbury Museums are a network of four small community history museums in Greater Sudbury, Ontario. Three of the four are located on heritage properties in different neighbourhoods within the city, and the fourth is located in a library facility.

Anderson Farm Museum

The Anderson Farm Museum is located on a site in Lively, on a historic dairy farm once owned by Finnish immigrants Frank Anderson and Gretta Anderson. The museum incorporates many of the original farm buildings, as well as the historic paymaster's cabin from Inco's mining facilities in Creighton, which was moved to the Anderson Farm site after the community was shut down in 1987.

Copper Cliff Museum

The Copper Cliff Museum on Balsam Street in Copper Cliff is housed in a log cabin on the site of the very first homestead in the community. The log cabin is not the original structure on that property, however, but was moved there in 1972. The museum is set up to depict the lifestyle of a miner's family in the area. The museum also has the baseball jacket of Thelma Jo Walmsley, a Copper Cliff native who played on the Racine Belles' 1946 All-American Girls Professional Baseball League championship team. An Ontario Historical Plaque was erected by the province to commemorate the Mine Rescue Stations's role in Ontario's heritage.

Flour Mill Museum

The Flour Mill Museum was initially located on Notre-Dame Avenue beside the Flour Mill Silos in the city's historic Flour Mill neighbourhood. It was later moved in the 1980s to its present location on St. Charles Street. The historic building was originally the home of François Varieur, the foreman of an early lumber mill in the Sudbury area. It was later acquired by the Manitoba and Ontario Flour Mill Company, to serve as the home of the community's flour mill foreman.
The museum was opened in 1974, and is devoted particularly to the life and history of the Franco-Ontarian community in the Flour Mill area.

Rayside-Balfour Museum

The Rayside-Balfour Museum located in Azilda, is the smallest of the four museums. Located in the community library branch, it incorporates several small exhibits depicting historical agricultural lifestyles in the Sudbury Basin area.

Re-Branding Project

In 2015 the museums' undertook a re-branding project. This involved employing a local graphic design firm to create and design new logos for each heritage site and a main logo for the Greater Sudbury Museums.
The inspiration for the logos stems from the idea that Greater Sudbury is a patchwork community that combines cultural aspects from the nearby settlements of the area. The re-branding was centered around this concept, as well as their motto "cultural mosaic", to highlight each settlement's unique history as it comes together to form the Greater City of Sudbury. The cultural mosaic concept took inspiration from the unifying quilt by Mrs. Carolyn Wahamaa, who created imagery that " the harmony existing in the towns of Rayside-Balfour, Azilda and Chelmsford, as well as between Anglophone and Francophone residents, with each party maintaining its own identity".

Online resources

The museums' website incorporates some video and photographic exhibits, as well as quite a bit of historical writing on the region and its distinct communities.
In addition to the website, the museums offer a number of online resources, including:
The museums are affiliated with the Canadian Museums Association, the Ontario Museum Association, the Canadian Heritage Information Network and the Virtual Museum of Canada.