Canada Letter: Shaping History at a Revamped Museum

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/07/07/world/canada/history-hall-museum.html

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Stephen Harper, the Conservative prime minister who was defeated by Justin Trudeau in 2015, was particularly interested in promoting a traditionalist, British-centric view of Canada’s national identity.

So there was some concern, particularly among political opponents and in some academic circles, when his government announced in 2012 that it was renaming the Museum of Civilization as the Canadian Museum of History and changed the museum’s mandate from a broad, anthropological examination of the world to a strict focus on Canada’s past. The government gave the museum, which sits across Ottawa River from Parliament Hill in Gatineau, Quebec, 25 million Canadian dollars to carry out the task.

Long before any specific plans were formed, Mr. Harper’s critics warned that the Conservative government would inappropriately reshape the museum to promote the prime minister’s view of history, which rested heavily on the role of monarchy and the military, and turn the museum into a jingoist house of saber rattling.

Those fears were misplaced.

The museum’s new Canadian History Hall opened last Saturday, Canada Day, to large crowds who lined up for well over an hour to have a look at the refashioned museum. Its new signature exhibit is comprehensive and commemorates the country’s low points as well as its triumphs while including minority perspectives on events large and small. Throughout, it recognizes that history is often as much a matter of debate as absolutes.

The new exhibit differs noticeably from the unloved Canada Hall, which opened when the museum moved to its current location in 1989 and closed in 2014 as part of the reconception. The designers of that exhibit attempted to tell the country’s history through recreations of things like streetscapes and a Chinese laundry. The museum’s deep holdings of artifacts were largely left hidden in warehouses.

Now, the abundance of artifacts is the most striking feature in its successor. There are about 1,500 on display, from “The First Face,” a delicate carving about 3,900 years old from Devon Island in the Arctic, to the pianist Glenn Gould’s cap and gloves. In general, the artifacts tell broader stories rather than serve simply as national relics. A much-darned hockey sweater worn by the Montreal Canadiens hockey great Maurice Richard during the 1959 Stanley Cup playoffs is within a section dealing with Quebec nationalism rather than as part of a sports exhibit. (A 1955 riot sparked by the suspension of Richard is now seen as an early manifestation of Quebec nationalism.)

The curators also did not shy away from debates over the past. One section covers Sir John A. Macdonald’s role in brokering the deal that led to the formation of Canada’s federal system 150 years ago and which made him the first prime minister. But the exhibit also addresses his view of indigenous Canadians, which many native people find racist and, they say, suggest he wanted to eradicate their culture. A quote from Macdonald stands in large type above a section about Canada’s program to remove indigenous children from their families and take them to boarding schools, where many were abused: “Indian children should be withdrawn as much as possible from the parental influence.”

In the past I steered friends and relatives visiting Ottawa away from the Museum of Civilization. Not anymore.

Many Canadians whose travels take them to New York end up at the Metropolitan Opera. A team from The Times’ video group took a Steadicam there to record everything that happens behind the curtain just before showtime. The freneticism is beyond imagining, along with the number of wigs owned by the Met.

Watch: What Happens Just Before Show Time at the Met Opera, in 12 Rooms You’ll Never See

“The Wire,” which some critics proclaim the greatest television series ever made, continues to be available on demand in Canada nearly nine years after its first run ended.

The series was all about Baltimore, of course. But one of its key actors, Michael K. Williams, is very much of New York. Mr. Williams played Omar Little, a stickup man who Barack Obama said was his favorite character. He developed that character from his life in a Brooklyn housing project now known as Flatbush Gardens. The Times reporter Noah Remnick returned to the project with Mr. Williams and produced a moving and nuanced profile of the actor, chronicling his life and the struggles with addiction that left him homeless at times while playing Omar.

Read: Michael K. Williams Is More Than Omar From ‘The Wire’

From emails, I know that some of you followed my reporting in recent years from the Tour de France. This July, I’m minding things in Canada while Andrew Keh, our European sports correspondent, reports on cycling’s biggest event. Mr. Keh provided an amusing look at how the citizens of Nuits-Saint-Georges seduced the race organizers into letting them host the finish of Friday’s stage and then how yarn bombing figured in preparations for the big day.

Read: When the Tour de France Comes to Town

—After several days of speculation, the government of Canada agreed to compensate Omar Khadr for its failings while he was only Canadian imprisoned in Guantánamo Bay. He had confessed to killing as a member of the American military during a battle when he was a child soldier. While Canada’s Supreme Court rebuked the previous Conservative government for violating his rights under Canadian law, the debate over the settlement seems likely to continue.

—For a critic’s notebook, Elisabeth Vincentelli took in the Canada Day performance in New York by Toronto’s Soulpepper Theatre Company. While she noted that excursions by Canadian theater companies to New York “barely make a ripple in the United States,” they still have value. “Canadian artists will return transformed, in some unquantifiable way, by the experience, and will draw from it for their next projects,” she wrote. “Would that be a failure? Hardly.”

— Prime Minister Justin Trudeau stopped in Ireland on his way to the Group of 20 meeting in Germany. He impressed the locals with his skill at sliotar.