Lambton Musings LAMBTON’S HISTORY AND HERITAGE NEWSLETTER – SUMMER 2024 www.discoveriesthatmatter.ca
The Mystery Box Amy Jennings, The Forest Museum
“You must actually like this stuff to keep coming back!” A somewhat baffled expression accompanied this comment as it was said. I had just explained that I was returning to the Forest Museum as a summer employee for my third year to someone I was talking to. For a moment I was confused; I forgot that some people think of museums as musty, dusty old buildings filled with even older junk. My experience at the Forest Museum hasn’t been like that at all! Sure, there’s old stuff and occasionally some dust to be swept up, but it’s been so much more than that. One of the first things that comes to mind when I think of how surprising museum work can be is the time I identified an artefact from World War II from a partially visible logo. One of our volunteers was cleaning and going through some of our artefacts from the world wars when they found something they didn’t recognize. They brought it up to the front desk where I was sitting and asked if I had any clue what it was. They thought it might be a survival kit for a soldier but it was very hard to tell since it is only a small box made of foggy brown plastic and unable to be opened because it is sealed. Looking closely at it, I was able to make out part of a logo a little larger than a postage stamp. I could read “BRYA-” on a ribbon, “Special” under it, and two overlapping circles near the bottom. I couldn’t think of too many things that would have a logo like this that would fit with the size of the mystery box, so I guessed it might be a matchbox. If it was indeed a survival kit then a matchbox would make sense. I started searching online for these “Special Brya” matches and eventually came across a matchbox with a ribbon and two overlapping circles at the bottom. They were “Bryant