An iconic Christmas display from a long-standing Halifax store has found a new home.
Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs drew crowds to the window of the Mills Brother’s store on Halifax’s Spring Garden Road from 1948 to 2007.
Jane MacLellan says Snow White and the Seven Dwarves were practically members of her family, spending every holiday season in the windows of her family store.
“It’s been around such a long time and everyone has enjoyed Snow White,” says MacLellan.
People have been coming to see the Christmas display since H.O. Mills brought them home from Germany after the Second World War.
When MacLellan sold the store eight years ago, Snow White went with it.
“I said that’s fine, but you have to put her in the window every year,” says MacLellan.
And now, after Mills closed its doors for good, the display lives on at the Museum of Natural History.
“We have a wonderful opportunity to put that on display and keep that tradition alive of having them out every Christmas,” says curator Martin Hubley.
Each year, just like in years past, the sets will need to be installed, the trees primped and the delicate dolls unpacked from museum grade boxes.
“They’re stored with acid free paper in these boxes and then put in another box and stored in a humidity controlled climate,” says Catherine Arsenault, a window display designer.
Every year, fingers are crossed when the nearly 70-year-old dwarves and Snow White are plugged in.
“It was always such a wonderful thing to unveil the window, take the brown paper off it and have all the little children push their noses against the glass and say ‘oh look, she’s breathing’ and I’m thinking, ‘please God let her breathe,’” says MacLellan.
All the hard work will pay off Wednesday night when the Natural History Musuem opens its holiday village and Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs live happily ever after.
With files from CTV Atlantic's Kelly Linehan
