Preston Manning, the founder of the now-defunct Reform Party, has proposed the establishment of a theme park in Ottawa to teach visitors to the nation`s capital about Confederation. See here. Manning argues that foreign visitors to Ottawa currently get a distorted view of what Canada is like, since Ottawa is very different from the big, multicultural urban centres in which most Canadians live.
As someone who knows a bit about Confederation, I`m intrigued by this idea. In fact, I hope that my book on Confederation goes on sale in the gift shop of the Confederation theme park, should it ever be constructed. However, I have a counter-proposal. Let`s establish something called a _museum_. A museum with professional curators would be a far better way of teaching people about history. I admit that the dividing line between museums and theme parks has become a bit blurry over the years as museum have tried to attract more visitors by becoming more entertaining. Outdoor museums, such as the famous reconstruction of Colonial Williamsburg, have a certain theme park feel. Nevertheless, there is a fundamental distinction between an outdoor museum and a theme park. A theme park is a commercial entity. A museum is a non-profit entity staffed by people with academic training.
There is nothing wrong with a museum trying to get more visitors in by making history more exciting any more than there is something wrong with my using videos to jazz up my lectures to undergraduates. Inevitably, museums` attempts to popularize history will involve a certain degree of simplification for a mass audience. There is a problem, however, when museum curators begin to sacrifice accuracy in the interests of pleasing visitors or presenting the past in a light designed to serve some political agenda. I`m afraid that if we use the term _theme park_ to describe what Preston Manning is proposing, it help to legitimize the triumph of heritage over history. What you will end up with be closer to Disneyworld than Colonial Williamsburg.
Manning`s complaint that the foreign visitor to Canada would gain an inaccurate view of Canadian life is a reasonable one. Ottawa currently has museums devoted to the following themes: nature; anthropology (the Canadian Museum of Civilization); war; aviation. Foreign visitors to the capital take home a particular image of what Canada is like: Canada is place will lots of nature, dinosaur skeletons, First Nations crafts, soldiers, and aircraft. If they visit the federal government`s experimental farm, which is located with Ottawa`s city limits, they will also get the impression that Canada has many farmers. All of this is a somewhat distorted view of Canada. After all, Canada is one of the most urbanized countries in the world, with about 1% of the population engaged in agriculture, far less than France or the USA. Canada is a net exporter of automobiles, but you won`t see this mentioned in Ottawa, but you will see many canoes in the nation`s capital. And even though the military has played a less important role in Canada`s history than in the recent history of any other G20 country with the possible exception of Australia, there is a big military history museum in the middle of the capital. The incongruous of the last bit will doubtless amuse visitors from countries such as Brazil and India, where the military has played perhaps too important a role in recent history. After all, one of the reasons so many people move to Canada is to get away from militarism and conflict.
In the early 2000s, there was a proposal to establish a museum of political history in Ottawa. The idea was that visitors would walk through galleries devoted to each post-Confederation Prime Minister. The panels would be written by a strictly non-partisan team of academic historians. The old train station, which was the location of the 1981 constitutional conferences, was mooted as a possible site for this museum. This proposal was killed off when Paul Martin toppled Jean Chretien and became PM in late 2003.
I have mixed feelings about the possibility of the federal government setting up a political history museum. It seems to be that present-day politics would inevitably influence the content of the exhibits, no matter how many safeguards we put in place. I would bet that any museum on Confederation would have a pro-Confederation bias and would tell visitors that Joseph Howe and the other opponents of Confederation were mistaken. Any discussion of the more recent periods of Canadian history would be even more contentious.
If the Confederation theme park-outdoor museum is ever set up, I suggest that the designers of the public house attached to the gift shop consult Professor Ged Martin`s ^`John A. Macdonald and the Bottle`` Journal of Canadian Studies – Volume 40, Number 3, 2006, pp. 162-185
The Past Speaks 
An interesting dig at Australia.
I’ve been told by some intel officers (anecdotal, yes) that Australia has been very successful in recent decades in getting its military intel into close and regular contact with those of the US and UK, even where their military has had lesser involvement.
To what extent might the relationships and information obtained through these efforts enter into domestic policy-making and diplomatic efforts?
Well Australia did fight for the US in the Vietnam War, unlike Canada. Unlike Canada, it still has the Union Jack on its flag, so I can see why the two big Anglo-Saxon countries might see Australia as a somewhat more loyal imperial spear carrier than Canada, which has been governed by French-speakers for much of living memory. Anyway, saying that the histories of Canada and Australia have been relatively peaceful is neither a dig at nor a compliment to these two countries, just a neutral statement. Australia is one-country continent with no land borders, so you would expect its history to have been relatively peaceful, especially since the aboriginals there had primitive weapons. Aside from the bombing of Darwin in the Second World War, Australian soil has been spared the ravages of war. Armed conflict is obviously a somewhat more important theme in Canadian history, but in global terms Canada has been a pretty peaceful place, much like Australia. Countries like Costa Rica which are peaceful despite being surrounded by military dictatorships are much harder to explain.
It sounds like Manning wants to inject Ottawa with a little bit of Potemkin. Only someone who would get worked up over a national capital being unique would suggest something as silly as a theme park. Would the three-ring circus be parliament (sorry, only open a few days of the year).
A new, Canadian history museum (preferably more comprehensive than just “political history”) does make much more sense, but is obviously fraught with difficulties.
Maybe we should just settle on declaring the John A. Macdonald pub on Elgin Street as the museum. Interactive history, or something like that.
While the prospect of creating a confederation theme park makes me giggle, I do have to clarify a couple of points in this article.
The Canadian Museum of Civilization is not a repository of “First Nation’s crafts”. It’s one the world’s largest centres of material culture and archives related to Canadian anthopology, history, ethnology, folklore and archaeology (including Inuit and Métis). One might remind Mr. Manning as well that it was this institution that sparked the debate in the national museological community about the “Disneyfication” of museums, and went ridiculously over budget.
Ottawa boasts dozens of other museums and heritage institutions, as well as independent galleries, that tell the “Canadian Story”. Ottawa does *not* need another museum (and certainly not another war monument). In addition, IMHO, a theme park or museum dedicated specifically to Canadian political history really does not have the draw, and would probably be as doomed as the Portrait Gallery.
I think you misread Mr. Manning’s proposal. He seems to be proposing something more akin to an Expo, with independent pavilions built by each province. Certainly there would be something about the process of confederation and other provincial history, but it’d also be about what each province is like right now in a way independent of the greater Canadian political federation.
Not sure that it’d be very interesting. But his point is that Ottawa conveys its own idea of Canada, one that doesn’t necessarily describe Canada from each province’s point of view.
But if they build a Confederation Museum, I’ll be first in line 🙂
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