Like most things, it started with a single idea. In the year 2000, Israel Asper – media mogul, politician, and philanthropist – approached the federal government with plans to create a “tolerance” museum in Winnipeg. A lot has gone into the project since then – including 14 years of work, $351 million, and the passing of Asper himself – but today his dream stands realized in the form of the new Canadian Museum for Human Rights.
The controversies surrounding the building have, of course, been rampant. In 2013, the museum rejected a call from aboriginal leaders who asked them to use the word “genocide” in an exhibit about Canada’s treatment of First Nations. Not everyone was happy about that decision.
A group called Canadians for Genocide Education has argued the museum was built on land that was stolen from aboriginal peoples.
Some claim that Asper, who was of Jewish descent, originally wanted to build a museum specifically geared towards the Holocaust, and so the Holocaust portion of the museum is disproportionately large.
Another group, the Ukrainian Canadian Congress, complained that the museum has downplayed the suffering of their ancestors at the hands of Joseph Stalin. Apparently, they are upset because the display regarding said events is located too close to the public toilets.
And many are simply upset with the sheer grandeur, and price tag, of the project. Originally touted as a $200 million build, the inflated sum has been supplied partly by the feds, who pitched in $100 million, as well as individual and corporate donors, who footed about $150 million of the bill. The Manitoba government and Winnipeg municipal government have also supplied some funding.
Photos of the museum’s finished façade show a massive, modern structure that indeed seems a little too extravagant, considering its contents.
The museum had a grand opening of sorts the weekend of Sept. 20, when 9,000 ticketholders were paraded through the building. The event was marred by protesters, and those in attendance reported seeing an unfinished museum with missing displays and ill-informed tour guides.
During the opening event, museum CEO Stuart Murray made some comments that were most likely directed towards the bullhorn-wielding protesters in attendance.
“This museum will ignite passion and protest. There can be no other way,” Murray said. “The Canadian Museum For Human Rights will open doors to conversations we haven’t had before. Not all of these conversations will be easy.”
Murray, in those few pointed words, has perhaps done well to sum up the value of this museum. The group faced a daunting task in putting this together. Most museums of its kind tend to focus on specific events in history, rather than the broad and somewhat ambiguous topic of human rights in general. They were never going to please everyone, and they knew it. That type of ambition should be applauded.
What we now have is a national forum – the first of its kind located outside of Ottawa – that has the ability to challenge our past, to put on display the gore and violence and hatred that has taken place throughout history – both inside and outside of our borders – and to force us to take a look.
It seems as though it could have been done cheaper, and it also seems as though the project is incomplete, but the potential for this museum is strong. It has already – as we have seen through its years of preparation and again throughout its grand opening – spurred debate and ignited conversation, which seem to have been the project’s initial intentions.
If developed correctly, this facility has the power to educate every patron who walks through its doors – an estimated 250,000 people per year – and to prevent those people from averting their eyes.
It has the power to demand recognition, conversation, and quietly pondered moments, and if, in doing so, this building can play a part in stopping these atrocities from repeating, somehow become a catalyst towards action, towards changing some of the injustices still going on today – while at the same time serving as a beacon of our nation’s dedication to the same – then perhaps it was worth the extravagant costs.
