Much ado about nothing for museum
A rebranding didn’t make the sky fall, writes Christopher Dummitt,
Canada is an odd country. Last spring, the federal government announced it was changing the name of the Museum of Civilization to the Canadian Museum of History as part of the lead-up to the country’s 150th anniversary in 2017. Hurrah for Canada, you might think. You’d be wrong.
The reaction in many circles varied from distrust to horror. Observers saw politics at work. The rebranding came in tandem with the announcement that the House of Commons Heritage Committee would investigate the way Canadians learn of their history (an investigation no longer publicly on the agenda). Opposition MPs accused Conservatives of imposing their distorted vision of Canada’s history on Canadians. Historian Ian McKay decried the way the Harper government’s agenda transformed the nation’s history into a militaristic tale of heroic soldiers, successful wars and triumphant militarism.
Just last week, the museum’s former CEO, Victor Rabinovitch, came out with similar accusations. The new museum represented a culture clash, he said. Conservatives disliked the cosmopolitan emphasis of the old museum with its links to the Canada of Pearson, Trudeau and Chrétien, preferring instead their own view of Canada “as a land of victorious armed forces, brawny resource extractors and compliant monarchists.”
Here we have it: the culture wars 2.0, Canadian edition.
The Conservative party must love it. The critics are correct that Conservatives see the nation’s history differently. For many stalwart Conservatives, the modern, cosmopolitan, liberal version of Canada is a problem. Canada went wrong in the 1960s, discarding the Red Ensign and the royalist dressings on our institutions. Canadian symbolism morphed into a multicultural and liberal hodgepodge of human rights, health care and Mounties in turbans.
In reality, many Canadians are perfectly happy with this kind of Canada — even many who vote Conservative, certainly the multi-ethnic voters that Jason Kenney has been so successful in appealing to. But as the Liberal party has found out over the last decade, Trudeau-era political nationalism doesn’t inspire political loyalty precisely because it’s simply the basis for everyday life, a taken-for-granted common sense. As a partisan issue, it inspires diehard Conservatives, not others, to vote. It motivates the base, and angers the intellectuals. It’s the longform census all over again.
The critics of the Harper history agenda and the new museum are right to think that the Harper Conservatives would dearly love to change the symbolism of Canadian nationalism. An alternate nationalism — featuring Tim Hortons, hockey, the military and our British and royal heritage — has been part of Tory branding throughout the Harper years. It’s the smalltown and 905 area code strategy, unlikely to win over anyone living in downtown Toronto or Vancouver’s west end.
Last week, the new museum revealed details about what would actually be in the new Canada Hall, the centrepiece of the rebranded museum. History watchers peered in to see what the lair of the Harper History Monster would look like. And what we saw was, well, banal.
David Morrison, the head of the team putting together the new Canada Hall, revealed that the main stories to be told were the relations between aboriginal peoples and European settlers, French-English relations and the experiences of new immigrants. Political history would give structure to the exhibit but “the real content is the consequences of political history …. What did this mean to ordinary people?” He got out ahead of the critics by asserting that the museum would include many troubled aspects of the nation’s history including “residential schools, the imprisonment of Ukrainian Canadians during the First World War, anti-potlatch laws and the forced relocation of Japanese Canadians during the Second World War.”
Where were the swords and scythes, the royalists with machine guns, the mock lynching-in-absentia of Lester Pearson? Absent. Perhaps between now and the opening, Harper’s history apparatchiks will descend to wreak their havoc. More likely, the new museum will give us a benign version of Canada’s history — a museumified Canadian Studies 101.
To some academic critics, this is bad enough. For a certain kind of Canadian historian, to say anything positive about Canada is to announce yourself as a right-wing ideologue. The nation is a dangerous topic.
But when the critics line up to attack the new museum as the latest incarnation of the Harper History Monster, my guess is that most Canadians, if they are paying any attention, will be puzzled. You’d think, they might say, that dedicating a museum to our nation’s history would bring cheers from history professors. But, then again, perhaps not. Canada really is an odd country.