Federal cabinet minister Jason Kenney has written to the Canadian Museum of Civilization to say that a controversial decision to move out a prominent artifact is “regrettable.”
What’s regrettable is Kenney’s decision to get involved in the issue at all.
When the Conservative government announced several months ago that the Museum of Civilization in Gatineau would be renamed and repackaged as the new Canadian Museum of History, there was much whinging and gnashing of teeth among those who fear government interference in the museum’s exhibits.
While much of the opposition may have come from those who have an interest in the status quo, or those who have an instinctive objection to any idea that comes from a Conservative government, the anxiety is not entirely unfounded.
The Conservative government has a reputation, deserved or not, for ignoring the advice of experts, so steamrollering a few curators over the content of historical exhibits doesn’t seem implausible. The Harper cabinet has tried to calm any concerns over a loss of curatorial independence. Recently, James Moore, the heritage minister, vowed that: “At no time would I, or could I, ever tell a museum what they can or cannot display.”
A newspaper reported: “Moore said it’s ‘flatly false’ to suggest, as some critics have, that the government will interfere in the selection of the new history museum’s exhibits.”
Enter, stage right, Jason Kenney, the minister of citizenship, immigration and multiculturalism, who apparently didn’t get the memo about cabinet staying out of the museum’s decisions.
Kenney sent a letter to museum CEO Mark O’Neill last week criticizing the decision to remove Nishga Girl, a wooden gillnetter that has been displayed at the museum for years.
Museum officials said recently that the boat doesn’t fit the new mandate, so it would be graciously returned to its former home in British Columbia — repatriated, so to speak.
Nishga Girl was made by Japanese-Canadian boat-builder Judo (Jack) Tasaka, and donated to the museum by Nisga’a Chief Harry Nyce and his wife, Deanna, and so there’s been loud opposition to the museum’s decision from both the Japanese-Canadian and First Nations communities.
Kenney wrote to O’Neill to say the boat “is a significant part of Canada’s history which suits the new display that will offer a narrative of our country’s history. It is regrettable that this gift is now to be shipped back.”
Granted, Kenney did acknowledge the museum’s independence, but if you were the boss of a federally funded museum and you received a stern letter from a federal cabinet minister saying that a decision you’d made was “particularly unfortunate,” how independent would you feel? Perhaps removing Nishga Girl is a good decision, perhaps it’s a bad decision. But if the museum had been considering a reversal of the decision, it now has to consider that any such reversal would be seen by the public as a capitulation to government pressure of the exact sort that, we’ve been repeatedly assured, does not exist. Kenney, therefore, has put the museum in an untenable position.
Kenney’s press secretary, Alexis Pavlich, told the Ottawa Citizen the letter was sent “to relay to the management of the museum the serious concerns expressed by the Japanese-Canadian community regarding the decision to relocate the Nishga Girl.”
How specious is that? I am confident that every single person who works at the museum is already well aware of those concerns.
I believe the switch of mandate at the museum is a good idea, for two reasons: First, the name “Museum of Civilization” is generic and bland, and it says nothing about what’s inside the building; second, why shouldn’t Canada have a museum dedicated to the history of its own people, of all backgrounds and from coast to coast to coast?
Public support for the switch rides on the museum not becoming a pawn of the federal cabinet.
Now, amid the first bit of controversy arising from the museum’s transformation process, the cabinet has intervened.
Kenney’s letter from on high has undermined whatever credibility was in the government’s promise to not interfere with the museum’s new mandate. Regrettable, indeed.
Peter Simpson is the Ottawa Citizen’s arts editor at large.
