WINNIPEG — Canada’s shrine to human rights will be thought-provoking, troubling, inspiring and, its planners suggest, unlike any other museum in the country.
Under construction in Winnipeg for a slated opening in 2012, the Canadian Museum for Human Rights and its projected $310-million price tag are also generating plenty of controversy, long before its exhibits and “ideas” are put before the public.
“What we need to do is prepare a product that will blow people away once they come,” said Angela Cassie, spokeswoman for the museum, which will become the first such national institution outside the Ottawa area.
Heavy on interactive technology, the 265,000-sq.-ft. museum — being built at The Forks national historic site with an eye-catching dome-and-spire design by New Mexico architect Antoine Predock — will dedicate individual floors to themes and use ramps to connect them. Visitors will take a symbolic journey from a dimly lit ground floor, upward toward gradually brighter spaces and ending atop the Tower of Hope, more than 30 metres high.
“One of the overarching goals of the museum is to first of all educate and empower people, but also leave them with a really big sense of hope,” Cassie said.
“We don’t want people to leave there feeling completely discouraged at the state of the world. They can leave there going, ‘Wow, I can make a small change. There are little things I can do, and I don’t have to be a world-famous politician or activist.’”
Putting all this together, however, has brought one challenge after another for organizers since Winnipeg media magnate Israel Asper officially launched the project in 2002, little more than a year before he died. Daughter Gail Asper has since been the project’s public face, convincing Ottawa, the Manitoba government and Winnipeg’s city hall to pour a total of $160 million into her dad’s dream while tirelessly working to drum up donations from Crown corporations, businesses and individuals — a private tally so far at $112 million.
After securing $21.7 million in yearly operating funds from the federal government and recently asking the city, province and Ottawa for another combined $45 million to cover a shortfall in a ballooned construction budget, the Friends of the Canadian Museum for Human Rights have come under fire from the Canadian Taxpayers Federation and other cost-conscious critics.
“While proponents of the museum have done a great job in raising donations for the project, the portion taxpayers are responsible for has spiralled out of control,” said CTF Manitoba director Colin Craig.
“Taxpayers have already contributed over $160 million toward building costs and will spend another $217 million over the next 10 years on operating costs — certainly that is enough.”
The feds and city have reportedly said no to the request for additional cash, though the Manitoba government is considering hiking its contribution from the $40 million already committed.
Why build it in Winnipeg?
For the critics who wonder why this city has been anointed Canada’s human rights mecca, Angela Cassie has an answer.
The spokeswoman for the human rights museum said Winnipeg’s background as an aboriginal gathering place dating back thousands of years, its subsequent role in the fur trade and its waves of immigrants from overseas make it “a symbolic spot in terms of that hub connected to east and west” in Canada.
“Whether it be the Winnipeg General Strike in 1919, the women’s rights movement with voting and Nellie McClung, to French-language and Metis and aboriginal rights, and people like Louis Riel, there’s a very rich history here,” said Cassie.
That enthusiasm apparently isn’t echoed everywhere. A focus-group survey overseen two years ago by the Canadian Heritage Department found that in Quebec, francophones — even among demographics viewed as most likely to visit the museum — saw Winnipeg’s image as “far away, and not interesting to visit,” and that very few of them appeared to want to see it. Residents of other parts of Canada expressed similarly lukewarm impressions.
Museum organizers downplay that reaction, while planning a program to bring up to 20,000 students a year from across Canada to visit.
They remain confident upward of 250,000 people a year will come through the museum’s doors.
“We also are fortunate to have many hard-working volunteers right across the country,” said Viv Draward, public relations manager for the museum’s fundraising organization.
As for the poll, Cassie said “a lot of those people also said they had never travelled to Ottawa to go to a museum,” providing some context.
“People are starting to know about this project,” she said. “There’s a lot of interest in what we’re doing.”
