Canada's insider blog

Early last April the Vancouver Police Museum announced, via a Tweet, a new forensics workshop it was offering called “How to Cover Your Tracks.” A day later came a second announcement. “April Fools.” Just kidding about that “Covering your Tracks” course. “All those who enquired, you’re now on a watchlist.”

Funny stuff, courtesy of Vancouver Police Museum director Chris Mathieson. But the museum’s forensics programs are no joke. They’re real, and inspired, and have become a calling card of this under-appreciated non-profit museum, brimming with quirkiness, in Vancouver’s gritty downtown eastside. Mathieson’s Friday night adult workshops — including ballistics, entomology and “blood-splatter analysis” — have proven insanely, indeed suspiciously popular. But it’s the kid-and-families forensics program that got the whole shooting match started – and have since been widely copied across North America. In these workshops kids sniff around through the museum solving a crime using fingerprint analysis and other tricks of the CSI trade. Kids as young as five — the blood-and-gore dimension cranked right down — and as old as high-school age — find plenty of cool hands-on science on offer. Perfect  for budding Dexters – er, detectives.

Forensics workshops for kids and families will be offered during March Break www.vancouverpolicemuseum.ca