Speech given by the Honourable James Moore, Minister of Canadian Heritage and Official Languages on the occasion of the Canadian Museums Association’s Canadian Museums Day
Ottawa, Ontario
November 27, 2012
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I’m very pleased to be here.
I really am genuinely appreciative of the invitation to come and speak with you this morning, particularly because I know it’s your 65th anniversary and because of the great work that the CMA has always done on behalf of museums and galleries all across the country.
I’m a huge fan of museums and always have been. I think that museums are really the jewels of communities all across the country.
Two summers ago, I was doing a motorcycle road trip through the Okanagan in British Columbia, and I went to this little museum in Midway, British Columbia. I don’t know how many of you have been there. Midway, British Columbia, is exactly where you think it is. It’s midway between the borders of British Columbia and Alberta, right along the border. They’ve got a little border crossing there that’s miniature. I think they have two guards there at the crossing.
So, I went to the Midway Museum. If you haven’t been there, it’s a tiny little museum in an old train station, and it’s a fantastic little museum. It might be something like one of the museums that each of you is responsible for. And you go in there, and it’s this fantastic museum. I mean when you go into these little places you see collections of things that are often eclectic, out of joint—but that’s the charm.
In the Midway Museum, they have a fantastic display on the Japanese internment during the Second World War—obviously a very painful chapter in Canada’s history and in British Columbia’s history, in particular.
This fantastic display was put together by the Japanese Canadians of Midway, British Columbia, of whom I think there are about five. But they got together and put together this narrative of the history of the Japanese in the South Okanagan during internment in the Second World War.
And I saw this display, and it was not well lit; you could tell it was not professionally done. But it was done with so much heart and soul, and the story it told was really very touching because of the perspective—it was firsthand history.
And I thought to myself, this is really great, but, I bet when I sign the guest book over by the front door, there’ll be less than 200 people that have been in here in the last two years. So, I went over there and, sure enough, it was a very limited list, and I thought to myself, we need to do better than that because this is a great display.
And you know what? I bet you there are dozens, if not hundreds, of displays like this of all kinds of different narratives about Canada’s history that are sprinkled all across the country that need to be shared with Canadians. And we can do better than that, particularly in the digital environment.
We have great national museums and great opportunities to talk more about Canada’s history. We should share these stories more and better than we do right now.
We have lots of projects, as you know, through the War Museum or through the Canadian Museum of Civilization. And digitization projects through Library and Archives Canada or the Memory Project with the Historica–Dominion Institute.
But I thought to myself, still, we need to do better than that. It’s not just about digitizing things and seeing things on a website. Actually getting stuff moving around this country and talking more about Canada’s history is something that is a real opportunity for this country.
And that’s why I came up with the idea of creating the Canadian Museum of History—because this is a big country. We talk about how Canada is the second‑largest country in the world, and we are. In the geographical sense, we are the second‑largest country in the world, but, in terms of population, we’re the 35th‑largest country in the world.
The things that unite us together are language, culture, the arts, and the ability to tell stories to one another and share our histories.
What you find as well, is that people know their local histories incredibly well. I can tell you about Port Moody, and I can tell you about Captain Vancouver, and I can tell you all about where I come from. And I’m sure each of you can tell about where you’re from. But often those stories aren’t shared across the country as well as they ought to be, particularly in a country as educated as ours, as wealthy as ours, with the capacity to do this and with organizations like the Canadian Museums Association—people who come together and want to share projects and build and be aspirational about sharing all of Canada’s stories.
So, I got together with my officials and with folks whose abilities I greatly treasure, and we came up with the idea of creating the Canadian Museum of History. And we’re taking the largest museum in the country—the Canadian Museum of Civilization.
Later on this morning, I’m tabling legislation in Parliament in order to create the Canadian Museum of History with a new mandate and a new focus to bind all of Canada’s museums together all across this country. To take what is an iconic building, an iconic institution here in the national capital, and to broaden it and to build it up and to make it the hub of a pan-Canadian network of all of Canada’s museums that have elements in them that talk about Canada’s history.
Whether we’re talking about women in science or the history of Canada’s universities, or the history of the performing arts in Canada, or the history of great premiers in this country, or the history of when cities were incorporated, or any of the different narratives that you can think of all across the country that can be bound together. To have this national institution as such a hub is, I think, an idea and a concept that this country deserves.
The United States has the Smithsonian; Germany has the German History Museum. We have all these other models around the world where great countries have great institutions that talk about great historical narratives.
We have the opportunity to do that in Canada, particularly as you think about how we’re going towards our 150th birthday in 2017, and a lot of local museums across the country are developing great narratives and local ideas about how they want to tell their local story for Canada’s 150th birthday.
We should take that energy and bring it together and draw it together and do it through a new national institution in the Canadian Museum of History.
As John mentioned, when our Government was elected six years ago, we honoured our commitment to create the Canadian Museum for Human Rights in Winnipeg. I know that all of you have followed the narrative of this museum and its development very closely. It has not been an easy one, but it’s an important one. It’s an important institution not only for Winnipeg but for all of Canada.
During the recession, we decided that we needed to keep supporting these institutions. And we realized that not all of Canada’s great institutions of arts and culture and museums should necessarily just be in the national capital. We created the Canadian Museum of Immigration at Pier 21, Canada’s sixth national museum.
It represents a capital investment of up to $24.9 million and an ongoing operating budget of up to $7.7 million per year. And that museum is doing incredibly well and continues to move forward.
And now we’re creating the Canadian Museum of History.
On top of that, as John mentioned, we’ve supported the CMA.
The indemnification program has been doubled from $1.5 billion to $3 billion per year. To make sure that smaller museums, museums all across the country, can compete for those scarce dollars to ensure that collections are brought in from around the world and that collections within this country move around so we can tell more of our stories and so museums can continue to build and continue to grow.
To me, it’s very important, because I think back to that little museum in Midway or I think about the Port Moody Station Museum.
If you haven’t been to the Port Moody Station Museum, it’s a very cute little museum. It’s at the original terminus of the CP line heading out to British Columbia.
But when you go to this museum, you realize that the collection that’s in there has been static. It’s been static in there for about 30 years, and everybody in Port Moody has seen it.
It’s great to take all the grade‑6 and grade‑7 students through it and have the local historian come and tell them the story of Port Moody and why things are the way they are and how the town was developed.
But what’s equally true is that it’s an incredible opportunity—because we have this institution and volunteers who have an incredible thirst to talk about Canada’s history, and, by binding together with the Canadian Museum of History, we’ll have an opportunity now to bring in collections and to tell new stories and have local museums build on local themes that make sense for a local museum to tell local patrons. It will also help local museums bring items in and fundraise and build a unique local narrative that’ll help museums move forward and breathe new life and energy into institutions that have had static displays for a very long time.
So, by having local museums sign agreements with the Canadian Museum of History, doubling the indemnification program from $1.5 million to $3 billion, now you have the infrastructure and you have the cash to lubricate the system and to get the collections moving around the country. And, when you consider that, I think, about three-quarters of the collection of the Canadian Museum of Civilization, which will be the Canadian Museum of History, is now in storage, what a missed opportunity.
At the War Museum—Mark’s taken me into the vaults of the War Museum a few times—the art bank there is gorgeous. It’s stunning. And it fills a room that’s probably about three times the size of this room.
If you haven’t been there, it’s a gorgeous collection of art from wars and conflicts that Canada has been involved in, and it’s just sitting there in storage. It’s an unbelievable collection that could be shared around the country, and stories could be told about the collection and the way it moves forward.
I’m very proud of our Government’s record. You know, we’re the only government in the world that has created two—now two and a half—new national museums during a recession, doubled the indemnification program, supported the Canadian Museums Association and all these institutions across the country that work so well.
And, in the height of the recession, as you know, we also doubled the Canada Cultural Spaces fund for cultural infrastructure—doubled it from $30 million to $60 million to ensure that museums all across the country have more new money for fire-suppression equipment, new sound equipment, new staging equipment and
all the things that are so important to make sure that local museums are upgraded and built and will be there for the long term. It’s a really important project of which I am incredibly proud.
So I just wanted to come here this morning to let you know that we are moving forward and that we are working together, and John is doing a great job on your behalf of getting in my face and, yes, with a smile. But he does it with energy and with passion and a commitment. And I know that it’s also a reflection of all of your commitment to the great work that all of you are doing in institutions large and small all across the country.
Whether it’s the Royal Ontario Museum, or whether we’re talking about the Glenbow, or we’re talking about the Royal B.C. Museum, or that little museum in Midway, British Columbia, or the Port Moody Station Museum and everything in between, museums are fantastic local institutions about which everybody is proud in their hometown. Everybody is proud when they have families coming in for the holiday season or they come in the summer: “You’ve got to check out the museum.” “You’ve got to see this display that we have in the museum. You’ll love it there.”
And what we want to do as a national government is to create this Canadian Museum of History to have all of your institutions and your partner institutions sign these MOUs to become official partners of the Canadian Museum of History, to have access to that massive collection that is there and to start thinking about themes that you want to build on for your local museum and bring in collections and host them there and tell kids stories about Canada’s history. Whether it’s Terry Fox’s run, or whether it’s about Payette’s mission to space, or whether you want to talk about Canada’s political history, or you want to talk about performing arts and the Royal Winnipeg Ballet and their trip to Bulgaria during the Cold War and what it meant to both Bulgarians and the Royal Winnipeg Ballet, there are amazing themes that you can build on and talk about Canada’s history.
And so we want to build an institution for the 150th birthday of Canada that will not just benefit an iconic institution here in Ottawa, but that will benefit all of our museums across the country. So that you’ll have new life and energy breathed into your institutions. So that you can build and move forward for Canada’s 150th birthday.
So we take another step today. In about an hour’s time, I’m going to be in the Parliament of Canada tabling legislation to create the Canadian Museum of History. We’ve committed $25 million to the project.
As was mentioned, we protected the budgets of all our national museums. In this year of austerity budgets and cutting, we’ve had to make difficult choices as a government, but it was not a difficult decision, I can tell you, to protect our museums and the funding that we provide to museums. And not only not cut back, but double the indemnification program. To lean forward and to move forward and to be more generous to our museums at a time when almost everything else was being cut back is a decision about which I’m very proud and that I stand by, because the institutions and communities all across this country that you all represent are so essential to telling Canada’s history.
We have a great history as a country, and I’m really proud of the work that all of you do. Working together, we will bind all of us together in this great project to tell Canada’s history to all of Canada.
Thank you very much.