Changes Raise Serious Concerns

Like most other Canadians, we welcome more government money to support public awareness of Canadian history. We nonetheless have several serious concerns with how the government is proposing to spend that money:

Scope and Mandate

The government’s determination to create a narrowly conceived “Canadian Museum of History” (CMH) in place of the existing Canadian Museum of Civilization violates the CMC’s broad legislative mandate (Museums Act, S.C. 1990, c.3), which calls for “establishing maintaining, and developing for research and posterity a collection of objects of historical and cultural interest, with special but not exclusive reference to Canada” (emphasis added). Media coverage of the government announcement of this initiative repeatedly suggested that the CMC has put more emphasis on non-Canadian exhibitions, but in fact it has devoted most of its resources to Canadian history and cultures, and only in a much more limited way presented exhibitions that focus on other parts of the world. More importantly, as the government and virtually all other parts of our society embrace globalization, it is surely more appropriate to keep our national cultural institutions open to the widest possible range of global histories.

Existing Profile

The government’s announcement of its new initiative and subsequent media coverage did a serious injustice to the excellent work that has been done at the CMC over the past quarter century. The staff of that institution engaged in extensive research, collection, and consultation with many groups in Canadian society in order to put together a richly textured panorama of Canadian historical experience. They responded with sensitivity and imagination to the latest developments in the writing of Canadian history, and produced a range of exhibitions that incorporated the diversity and complexity of our past. In any rethinking of the CMC’s profile, all that work cannot be shunted aside. It should be respected and preserved. The tens of thousands of visitors to the CMC every year have voted with their feet for the exciting mix of programming that has been available there.

A History of Diversity

The government’s announcement of what will be included in the new CMH emphasises dates, events, heroes, and narrative time-lines. The writing and teaching of Canadian history has moved decisively away from such a restricted perspective of our past, because it leaves out the experience of the great majority of the Canadian population. Such a “great-man” approach to history gives no opening for crucial processes that don’t fit on a rigid time-line or into a political biography – the colonization of First Nations, industrialization, gender relations, migration and ethnic conflict, environmental change, and much more. Certainly political history is an important component in any presentation of our history, but it must be situated within the rich diversity that Canadians at all levels of society contributed to our collective past.

Keep Politics Out

The government’s high-profile announcement about transforming the CMC into the CMH fits into a pattern of politically motivated heritage policy that has been emerging in the past few years. Alongside the great quantities of public funds that were directed into the celebration of the bicentennial of the War of 1812, this initiative reflects a new use of history to support the government’s political agenda – that is, the evocation of particular features of our past as worthy of official endorsement and promotion. This is a highly inappropriate use of our national cultural institutions, which should stand apart from any particular government agenda and should be run instead according to sound professional standards. Our past should not be a political plaything.

Offloading Costs

The government’s announcement included a promise to draw provincial museums into joint ventures, ostensibly to be able to share artefacts and other resources and thus to include a wider range of regional experience in the new museum. In essence, however, this approach would mean downloading at least part of the cost of organizing a large part of the CMH’s exhibition space to the provinces.

Cuts to Other Heritage Organizations

The announcement of $25 million to remake the CMC into the CMH reveals a shocking inconsistency in government policy. Last spring, the government slashed funding to Parks Canada, Library and Archives Canada, and a longstanding program that supported local archives across the country. Instead of using scarce money to re-orient the CMC, the government should be using the funds to ensure that key institutions for discovering and presenting our past are adequately funded.

A Flawed Process of Consultation

The CMC has set up a lively website to encourage public input into the new programming of the new museum. Aside from the oddity of such an approach (did the government do the same in drafting its budget, or in setting new environmental or trade policy?), it is troubling that visitors to the site are encouraged to express their preference for a number of options on a time line that contains very few entries and are not encouraged to identify longer-term processes, such as migration and settlement, native dispossession of their lands, changing class structures, or evolving gender relations. It would be far more productive to convene a large panel of senior scholars, teachers, and museum staff to undertake a more thoughtful and informed process of conceptualizing a new museum.