Canadian Museum of Human Rights: Letter Regarding Portrayal of World War 1 Internment
2014/09/17 4 Comments
The ongoing challenge in satisfying (or not) everyone at the Canadian Museum for Human Rights as seen in this campaign:
We will be asking our affected communities to refrain from partaking in the opening ceremonies or any subsequent activities at the CMHR until this matter is resolved fairly.
While we welcome the development of a national museum outside the capital region, it is regrettable that the CMHR’s exhibits were developed without sufficient attention being given to key Canadian stories. An enlarged photograph and one short film clip buried in a documentary film does not, in our view, constitute an acceptable treatment of Canada’s first national internment operations.
If your goal is to have a truly inclusive national museum then you must reflect the nation’s multicultural history. The insignificant attention given to First World War era internment operations represents a slight to all of the internees, enemy aliens and their descendants, including Canadians of Ukrainian, Hungarian, Croatian, German, Austrian, Polish, Slovak, Czech, Serbian, Slovene, Bulgarian, and other origins.
Earlier controversies, spearheaded by some of the same people, included the relative portrayal of the Holocaust compared to the Holodomor (starvation of Ukraine under Stalin) – see Discontent remains on CMHR, Holodomor.
As to the portrayal of the internment camps, the Museum has to balance this against other Canadian stories such as the Chinese Head Tax, the “continuous journey” and other immigration restrictions, Japanese Canadian internment and dispersal, and other groups affected during World War II.
I don’t envy the Museum in the choices and decisions it must make.
The Government endowed $10 million to the World War I Internment Fund (more than any other group under the Community Historical Recognition Program) along with a Parks Canada $3-4 million project at Banff (Cave and Basin) to educate visitors about the or one of the first internment camps in Canada.
Picking on one aspect while not acknowledging the broader picture, while legitimate, seems a bit excessive.
About Andrew
Multicultural Meanderings 
There were no meaningful discussions between stakeholder groups and the CMHR’s management, ever, despite multiple offers over several years requesting the opportunity to provide input on the contents of this publicly-funded national museum. The contents were, it seems, determined by an (unidentified) group of people who paid little attention to Canadian stories, elevated the suffering of one community above all others with a privileged and central gallery space, and obfuscated their plans to the last minute – the only solution to the mess they have made will be the revision of the CMHR’s exhibits by professionals who know something about how museums should be run. The CMHR is and will remain divisive and contentious because its “directors” did not pay attention to what Canadians wanted “their” museum to portray.
Pingback: Canadian Museum for Human Rights – More Dissent | Multicultural Meanderings
Thanks Andrew for bringing a larger perspective to this, and for shining a bit of light on CHRP! This program deserves more recognition for enabling communities to tell their own stories of Canada’s immigration past.
Mr. Luciuk’s comments don’t take into account that the CMHR is only one avenue for people to learn the stories of WW1 internment, and trying to establish a hierarchy of suffering/more deserving of recognition, space and privilege, calls to mind Monty Python’s “Four Yorkshiremen” .
Thanks Murray for your comments. Best, Andrew