OTTAWA - Famed Montreal Canadiens goalie Jacques Plante spent much of his spare time knitting to calm his nerves.

Superstar singer-songwriter Joni Mitchell developed alternative guitar tunings to compensate for an arm weakened by polio that she contracted as a child.

These are among information nuggets that may cause viewers to do a double take at a Library and Archives Canada exhibition that runs until June.

The federal institution has installed 25 photographic portraits, with accompanying text panels, of notable personalities in the lobby of its Wellington Street building west of Parliament Hill. Several prime ministers, including Sir John A. Macdonald, Pierre Trudeau, Kim Campbell and Jean Chretien, are part of the display, dubbed "Double Take: Portraits of Intriguing Canadians."

There are also photos of a helmeted Gilles Villeneuve behind the wheel of a race car, of Joe Fafard's 2006 sculpture of David Suzuki, and of a 1950 painting of the Dionne quintuplets roasting hot dogs on a campfire.

The images are drawn from a Library and Archives touring exhibition that was launched at the Confederation Centre Art Gallery in Charlottetown in March 2012 and later shown at the Canadian Museum of Civilization in Gatineau, Que., and the McMichael Canadian Art Collection in Kleinburg, Ont.