(Canadian Museum of Human Rights in Winnipeg, Manitoba)
The new Canadian Museum of Human Rights that is to open in 2014 in Winnipeg Manitobo, Canada, has been in the making for 10 years, but has been plagued by controversy and disagreement, as shown in the exchange of letters in the National Post of 30 September.
On 27 September Graeme Hamilton wrote inter alia: The $351-million Canadian Museum for Human Rights is set to open next year in Winnipeg, and so far things have not exactly turned out as imagined when it was announced 10 years ago. Israel Asper, the media mogul who conceived of the museum and whose family foundation contributed $22-million to the project, hoped the building would be a unifying force. “We spend a lot of time and effort trying to create a sense of Canadian identity and national unity and a lot of other clichés,” Mr. Asper, the founder of CanWest Global Communications, said at the time. “But we don’t do the things that are needed to create that cohesion.” Mr. Asper died six months later. While his project lived on — since 2008 as a national museum, the first to be built outside Ottawa — the hoped-for cohesion remains a distant dream. Scholars say the sort of division being seen today was inevitable from the moment a privately conceived museum with a focus on the Holocaust was transformed into a national human-rights institution expected to reflect multi-cultural Canada.
Several reactions, including by Stuart Murray, the President and CEO, of the Canadian Museum for Human Rights try to put the record straight under the title: “A quintessentially Canadian museum”
Once again, the National Post has painted an unfair and inaccurate portrait of the Canadian Museum for Human Rights (CMHR).[….].In reality, our approach to human rights education is very different from museums that commemorate tragic events or memorialize victims. The CMHR is unique in the world, and quintessentially Canadian — exploring the global development of human rights concepts and Canada’s role within it. As an “idea museum,” it strives to foster an appreciation for the importance of human rights, spur informed discussion and show how we can all be human rights defenders.
Arthur Schafer, director, Centre for Professional and Applied Ethics, University of Manitoba, Winnipeg adds:
Although I offered a vigorous defence of the CMHR to your journalist, none of my supportive arguments made it into the published story. Does the Post have space only for negative opinions and arguments? In my view, the swirl of controversy concerning how the human rights story should be told demonstrates that, even before it opens, the museum is fulfilling its mandate to stimulate discussion and debate. These controversies, so far from detracting from the mandate of the museum, justify its role as a leading educational institution.
Adam Fuerstenberg, Toronto writes: Graeme Hamilton’s informative article on the problems faced by Winnipeg’s soon to open Canadian Human Rights Museum ignored the most important problem it faces: its isolated location. [….]There’s no doubt that Izzy Asper was a super salesman and he had a beautiful idea, but locating it in Winnipeg was a great mistake, even without all the discord it is creating. Regrettably, this will become the biggest cultural “white elephant” Canada has ever built.
‘A quintessentially Canadian museum’ | National Post.
Related articles
- Canadian Museum for Human Rights: A decade of building (globalnews.ca)
Hans Thoolen on Human Rights Defenders and their awards 
September 19, 2014 at 13:08
[…] see previously: https://thoolen.wordpress.com/2013/10/01/a-white-elephant-or-a-quintessentially-canadian-museum/ […]
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