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Featured exhibits

Power Play: Hockey in Contemporary Art

Take a 360-degree tour of an exhibition.

Life is beautiful

Memoirs of people living with dementia.

Peel Time Capsule

Stories and images that reflect the social, cultural, or economic impacts of COVID-19 across Peel.

Botanica Colossi

A collection of photographs from Sara Angelucci’s recent Nocturnal Botanical Ontario series, which were created between the spring and fall of 2020.

Inspiring stories of Women in the PAMA collections

Many of their stories have faded from the public’s memory. We hope to change that.

Stories of Service and Sacrifice

Those who served, and their friends and families at home.

Art Voice: Expressions from youth in Peel

Explore diverse, extraordinary works created by youth artists expressing their voices through their art.

Simon Hughes 360° virtual tour

An exhibition that focuses on the artistic preoccupations of Winnipeg-based Simon Hughes through a twenty-year career in the arts.

Home: Expressions in Abstraction

Grade 11 students from Mayfield Secondary School's Regional Arts Program interpret the theme of home in an abstract painting.

Morphology

Witness the transformation of Mississauga's lakeview waterfront.

Our Voices, Our Journeys: Black Communities in Peel

A celebration of one of many black communities in Peel.

A Newcomer Journey

Storytelling through Photography

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PAMA virtual exhibit
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  • Explore PAMA

Ruth Houck (1894-1979)

UN Delegate

After being denied the right to vote for centuries, some Canadian women still didn’t cast their ballot. Ruth Houck was determined to change that.

While born in Wisconsin and educated at Cornell University, Houck spent most of her life in Ontario. In Peel, she lived on a dairy farm near Derry West, now northern Mississauga. She was intensely focused on getting rural women to participate in democracy. Many thousands of rural women were empowered by her work as “citizenship convener” for the Federated Women’s Institutes of Ontario. She also developed programming for the Institutes’ national-level organization. Houck would prepare reading lists and curriculum for the groups around the country, and tour as a speaker.

Ruth Houck served on numerous boards, including the CBC. She ran as the Liberal candidate for Peel in the 1953 provincial election. She was the first woman in Peel to get a party nomination for MPP or MP. Soon after, she was chosen as one of Canada’s five delegates to the United Nations General Assembly, making her the fifth Canadian female to serve in that role.

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Ruth Houck - PAMA, Chinn fonds.

Ruth Houck with members of the Women’s Institute, 1956 - PAMA, Russ Cooper fonds

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