National Music Centre’s ‘Beatles in Canada’ exhibit is a hit with fans

The National Music Centre has an exhibit celebrating the Beatles' eight Canadian stops from 1964 to 1966. For one Calgarian, it's a chance to relive a fond memo

A National Music Centre (NMC) exhibit dedicated to exploring the the stories of the Beatles in Canada is sticking around Calgary a little while longer.

The exhibit, called “From Me to You: The Beatles in Canada”, opened in July 2024 and was scheduled to close in January, but due to what might just be a bit of 21st century Beatlemania, the NMC is extending its run of the exhibit through May 19th.

Jesse Moffatt, NMC’s senior director of collections and exhibitions says the centre received a lot of feedback from visitors who enjoyed the exhibit that was put together by NMC and is the only place to view it because it isn’t travelling across the country to other museums.

“We worked closely with Piers Hemmingsen who is by far the Canadian authority on the Beatles,” he said. “He wrote the copy and then we put the whole exhibition together design-wise.”

The exhibition focuses on the time period from 1964 to 1966 when the Beatles played a total of eight times in Vancouver, Toronto and Montreal.

Moffatt said the role that the band played in Canada dramatically changed how music was heard and culturally, it changed how Canadians dressed. The exhibit includes rare photographs and memorabilia.

“Canada embraced the Beatles even before the U.S. did and even department stores were at the forefront of Beatles merch,” Moffatt said.

“Knowing that, we took an opportunity to create a little homage to the old dioramas and merchandise that you could purchase at the store,” he added.

“Half of the exhibit looks like what the Eaton’s department store would have looked like in the 1960s and the other half is what your bedroom would look like if you purchased all of that merchandise.”

Seeing The Beatles

Philip Carr was 11 years old in 1966 when he and step-sister Liz Chander, 13 went to go see the Beatles in Toronto.

“We had another friend of ours, a girl named Jane, she was maybe 13 or 14 and we took Toronto Transit down to Maple Leaf Gardens,” he said. “We negotiated with a scalper and we bought our tickets, the ticket had a face value of $5.50,

“I think we paid around 12 bucks,” he said, “and we saw the Beatles.”

Carr says back then it was not an issue for an 11-year-old to take public transit into downtown Toronto without an adult. He says the tickets they purchased got them into the lower bowl of the arena for the concert that was headlined by a band called Cyrkle and when the Beatles took to the stage, they were only up there for about a half hour.

“I can remember 1966 was a third time (for the Beatles) coming (to Canada), so you could actually hear bits and pieces of the music as opposed to just hearing screaming,” he said.

“And Maple Leaf Gardens had the blue seats which were behind the stage and (rink officials) realized they could sell those and they actually had to string netting down in front of them to stop the fans from trying to jump from the balcony onto the stage.”

Carr took his family to the NMC Beatles in Canada exhibition to see what he experienced at a youngster and it was a hit for everyone.

“I was ecstatic, I really was,” he said. “They have the posters there, including the poster from the concert that I was at and my daughter who lives in Seattle came home and the three of us went down to see that because my daughter in particular and my younger son have inherited the love of the Beatles.”

Moffatt says there’s even a Calgary connection to the exhibit with radio DJ David Gell, who went to work in Europe before the Beatles got together -- years later, Gell met John Lennon in person.

“John came up to him and said ‘if it wasn’t for you, I don’t think I would have been a musician, I listened to your radio station and I heard Elvis Presley for the very first time and that’s what inspired me to be a musician’,” said Moffatt.

Learn more about the NMC Beatles exhibit here.