Fish out of Water: Fish Exhibition in Late Nineteenth-Century Canada

In the nineteenth century, animal display proliferated. People peered at a myriad of animals – living and dead – in museums, international exhibitions, circuses, and zoos. Benefiting from collecting networks that extended across empires and nations, these spectacular sites exhibited animals to satisfy appetites for entertainment and science. While the growing literature on animal display documents this rich history, one class of creatures is routinely ignored: fish.¹ Remote, if not invisible to most people, fish were nonetheless the subject of intense interest in Europe and North America in the last half of the nineteenth century. Public aquariums, international fisheries exhibitions,