The Yellowknife Historical Museum was busy on the weekend with a different sort of exhibit.
Pin Fest 2024 happened on April 20 with collectors gathering together to showcase and possibly trade some of their collections.
The event was hosted in collaboration with the Yellowknife Historical Society and Janet Pacey, a pin collector who started in 2004.
Pacey was by far one of the biggest contributors to the event with her display being split into two parts across eight tables: one part solely for showcasing the hundreds of pins themed around the Arctic Winter Games (AWG), and the other a trading area where people were able to try and make a deal with Pacey.
Pacey brought a huge collection — the total number of which she’s lost count of — with the total weight close to 500 lbs. worth of pins.
Pacey was asked to design pins for CBC North’s AWG programming when she worked with them, and she said that opened up a whole new world for her.
One day in 2004, when she was handing out a pin to a group of youth, one asked to trade with her, and that’s where it all began for her.
“I was hooked on trying to get all the sets or one from every contingent or everything that was released,” said Pacey.
The event saw more than 20 people visit and Pacey tried to hand out a pack of pins to each one of them for their part of the collection.
Jana Dunn and her children, daughter Aisling and son Lochlan, were also at the event. Both of her kids have been Team NT athletes with Aisling having participated in the Canada Summer Games in 2017, and Lochlan recently competing at the 2024 AWG in speedskating. They‘re all pin collectors as well.
Jana Dunn said she started to become a collector when her daughter participated in 2017.
Keith MacNeill also brought his collections to the museum. He started pin collecting when he was sent to cover the 1988 AWG for CBC North.
For him, the hobby served as a way to socialize.
“Everybody has a pin, and people just started talking,” he said. “It kind of breaks the ice and people can just walk up to you and say, ‘What is that pin?’, and that allows people to talk to each other in a way that they would not usually do.”
MacNeill not only collected a variety of the AWG pins, but also pins from other broadcast companies as well as those from the Olympic Games.