Canadian Heritage Committee on Feb. 27th, 2018

[Henry Kim]

The United Kingdom, I think. Again, I've had a lot of experience in that country. The support for museums is very strong. I think the reason is that there's a recognition in the population base that heritage is part of everyone's everyday life. This is very important. It's not just funding that's coming from the centre or coming from other directions. It's the fact that heritage is recognized as very important. Again, look at the United Kingdom and throughout Europe. Heritage is quite literally everywhere.

[Julie Dzerowicz, Liberal, Davenport, ON]

What is it that they do that makes it...? Does the national government fund their museums, is it the way they support them, is it the way they promote it? What is it that makes them a model?

[Henry Kim]

There are so many organizations. I have to say that I'd single out organizations such as the National Trust, English Heritage, and the Scottish Heritage organization. These are wonderful organizations that probably boast somewhere in the range of a quarter of the population as their membership, and that's again, I think, something: it's the way they organize themselves and the way they open up properties throughout the country.

Here's the other thing. In the United Kingdom, most museums are free. That is something to look at very strongly, because when you lower the barriers to access, suddenly the numbers increase. When the V&A cut their admission price from four pounds to zero—and I used to wait until 4 o'clock so that I could go into the V&A for free—suddenly their numbers increased fourfold.

When you look at funding, also look at funding for how it affects ticket prices, I think, because that will make a huge difference to visitation.

[The Chair, Liberal, Julie Dabrusin]

That takes us pretty much to the end of our time. You have 20 seconds left.

[Julie Dzerowicz, Liberal, Davenport, ON]

I think that's fine.

[The Chair, Liberal, Julie Dabrusin]

I just figured that I would give you a heads-up.

[Julie Dzerowicz, Liberal, Davenport, ON]

Yes, you interrupted and that wasted the last of my time, so no problem.

[Voices]

Oh, oh!

[Julie Dzerowicz, Liberal, Davenport, ON]

I have tons of questions.

[The Chair, Liberal, Julie Dabrusin]

Well, I think we all have a lot of questions. The only reason I prompted there is that we are actually out of time for this session as a whole.

I want to thank the witnesses for coming. It was really helpful.

We're going to be suspending briefly while we move to our next witnesses, who are coming to us via video conference.

[The Chair, Liberal, Julie Dabrusin]

We are now here with our second panel, which takes us from coast to coast. We have the Maritime Museum of the Atlantic, with Kim Reinhardt. From the Vancouver Maritime Museum, we have Duncan MacLeod, curator, and Tom Beasley, vice-chair, board of trustees.

As a word to our witnesses who are here by video conference, you will not be muted, so just be aware that if you're having a conversation while someone else is presenting or asking questions, that's going to create interference.

Why don't we start with 10 minutes for Ms. Reinhardt from the Maritime Museum of the Atlantic?

[Kim Reinhardt, General Manager, Nova Scotia Museum, Maritime Museum of the Atlantic]

Certainly.

To begin, thank you very much for inviting me here today to speak to you about the Maritime Museum of the Atlantic in Halifax, Nova Scotia.

The Maritime Museum of the Atlantic is part of the Nova Scotia Museum system, which is responsible for the provincial collection of over one million artifacts and specimens. The Nova Scotia Museum, consisting of 28 sites, is the most decentralized museum in Canada. It is also one of the oldest museums in the country. It includes more than 210 buildings, four floating vessels, and nine locomotives. It's all across the province.

The Nova Scotia Museum tells the stories of our communities, our natural history, our people's history, our seafaring traditions, our industrial heritage, and our artistic life. The Nova Scotia Museum is governed by the Nova Scotia Museum board of governors through the Nova Scotia Museum Act.

Its sites are either directly or indirectly managed by the Government of Nova Scotia through financial allocations and through the policies, procedure, and accountability of the Department of Communities, Culture and Heritage. The Maritime Museum of the Atlantic is one of the sites that are directly operated by the Province of Nova Scotia.

The Maritime Museum of the Atlantic is located on Halifax's historic waterfront. The museum tells the stories of Nova Scotia's rich maritime history, our seafaring heritage, and our relationship with the sea, from small craft boatbuilding to world war convoys, from the days of sail to the age of steam, from the Titanic to the Halifax Harbour explosion. We are the oldest and largest maritime museum in Canada.

The Maritime Museum of the Atlantic is open year-round and offers both permanent and temporary exhibitions. There are a wide variety of programs in support of the exhibitions, including guided tours for student and adult groups, directed and self-learning assistance, lectures, demonstrations, and educational hands-on opportunities.

We also host many special events throughout the year. As the most visited provincial museum in Nova Scotia, with an annual average visitation of between 130,000 and 150,000 visitors, the maritime museum is considered a provincial icon.

In terms of our facilities, there are two parts to our building proper. We have a circa 1860s heritage building called the Robertson Store. Then we have a new addition that was built in 1980, which is larger. Throughout the two buildings, which are actually combined to be one building, we have nine permanent galleries. We have a temporary exhibition space of approximately 1,500 square feet. We have a very extensive library available by invitation or by request. It's probably one of the largest marine nautical libraries of its kind in North America. We have a small 50-person theatre for different presentations that we host and provide.

We're also, as I said, on the Halifax waterfront, so part of our footprint includes the museum wharves. We have two large jetties and a marginal wharf in between, as well as an anchor yard. We're very fortunate to be located right in the middle of the Halifax waterfront, which is the most visited visitor attraction in Nova Scotia. We do get a lot of people just passing by. From our wharves they can take in CSS Acadia, our 104-year-old exhibit that is out on the water, as well as programming and activities that take place. We're also able to host visiting ships at our jetties.

We also have boat sheds out between the museum proper and the wharves. In the boat sheds we have a number of different hands-on programming and learning opportunities.

We are exploring more and more partnerships through boatbuilding. In the last couple of years we initiated a family boatbuilding program that has really helped us to connect with a variety of community groups, particularly youth. We have activities like that. In the summer one of our boat sheds serves as a gift shop, and we have a year-round gift shop that operates inside the museum proper.

In our services at the maritime museum, as mentioned, we offer a number of different types of tours for different groups. We have large visitations from the cruise ships that come to Halifax, particularly between mid-May and the end of October. Some of them are for visitors from outside the country or the province. We also do tours with schools and we do a lot of outreach in the newcomer and diverse communities in our region. We have a number of tours for English as an additional language that are facilitated by partners coming to our museum. We host a number of different types of demonstrations, ranging from traditional maritime knitting to boatbuilding, as I said, having people learn how to bend frames on a boat or other traditional marine experiences.

We have a number of school programs whereby students come to the museum and participate in activities, and we have developed relationships and partnerships with other community groups, such as the Halifax Amateur Radio Club. Volunteers from their club will come to the museum and work with students on different types of communication, which has been great. As well, we have model-maker volunteers who have played a huge role in preserving our various ship models or making purpose-filled activities. They also engage with the public quite a bit, and we really value that.

We have public talks on a regular basis, and those are free to the public every Tuesday night, generally speaking. In the summer we pause the public talks, or do fewer of them, and shift to concerts in our courtyard space at the museum, which we do in partnership with Waterfront Development.

We are trying more and more to bring in some cultural experiences to the museum. We have a volunteer program, as mentioned. Some volunteers are from particular clubs, such as the model-makers' guild or the Halifax amateur radio operators, but many come as individuals with a particular interest in having experience in a museum.

We do a certain amount of facility rentals, and we bring in travelling exhibits as well. We share exhibits throughout the Nova Scotia Museum system that we create in-house, and currently we have one exhibit at the war museum on the MS St. Louis that will be opening later in March. We host visiting ships, whether they are tall ships or interpretive vessels, and sometimes the navy will bring a vessel to the museum. We have family programming and March break programming and holiday programming, to name a few. There are more.

Our vision at the maritime museum is that Nova Scotians will live in welcoming, healthy, and prosperous communities. They will participate in opportunities for learning and experiencing our diverse maritime culture and heritage. They will feel engaged in current events, feel a strong sense of identity, and will take an active role in advancing the health and prosperity of their communities.

We see our purpose through our work at the maritime museum, which is guided by the Nova Scotia Museum's interpretive master plan and by Nova Scotia's culture action plan. One year ago Nova Scotia launched its first culture action plan. The plan brings to life the mandate of the Department of Communities, Culture and Heritage, which the Nova Scotia Museum is a part of, to contribute to the well-being and prosperity of Nova Scotia's diverse and creative communities through the promotion, development, preservation, and celebration of the province's culture, heritage, identity, and languages.

A formal consultation was held at the Assembly of Nova Scotia Mi'kmaq chiefs.

[The Chair, Liberal, Julie Dabrusin]

Excuse me, sorry. You're at 10 minutes, so if you can start wrapping it up please.

[Kim Reinhardt]

I will certainly.

The culture action plan and the interpretive master plan are key to guiding the work that we do at the Maritime Museum of the Atlantic under the five pillars of promoting Mi'kmaq culture: promoting creativity and innovation; strengthening partnerships; education and understanding; advancing cultural diversity; and excellence in cultural stewardship.

The Maritime Museum of the Atlantic preserves, protects, promotes, and presents Nova Scotia's seafaring-culture heritage. We are proud of the work we do and I would like to take a moment to close and thank the staff for their commitment, passion, and value to their work. Our museum has incredible opportunities to leverage the value of our important cultural assets to ensure all Nova Scotians know and appreciate our maritime heritage and culture.

Thank you very much for inviting me.

[The Chair, Liberal, Julie Dabrusin]

Thank you.

We are now going to go over to the Vancouver Maritime Museum for 10 minutes. I'll just ask you to keep an eye on the clock a bit because you can't see me wave my hands at all.

[Tom Beasley, Vice Chair, Board of Trustees, Vancouver Maritime Museum]

Thank you for the opportunity to speak to you today. My name is Tom Beasley. I'm vice chair of the board of the Vancouver Maritime Museum.

I'm going to give a little history of the museum, a little history of my involvement with the museum for context, some statements on the evolution of the museum and evolution of the board, and a summary going towards, I think, what your mission is here, which is understanding the state of Canadian museums from a local and community perspective. Duncan MacLeod, the curator, will then give some comments about the collection and the management of the collection.

The Vancouver Maritime Museum was created in 1958 to house the St. Roch, the historic RCMP boat that was the first to go from west to east through the Northwest Passage and to circumnavigate North America, an important sovereignty issue right now that is very topical for Canada.

It has been a national historic site since 1962, with no federal funding. It operates under a lease-grant arrangement with the City of Vancouver. We're on city property. We get 25% of our monies from the city and the rest from other grants and from the gate.

We have a volunteer board, of course. Our substantial collections, which Duncan will talk about, are below sea level, near the water, which is not a good thing, even without climate warming. We've made several attempts to move over the last 30 years, and I'm going to talk about that.

As for my involvement, I'm an employment lawyer with a focus on workplace harassment. That's my day job. I'm also heavily involved in the underwater archeological community, diving community, and shipwreck community, and have been involved in that passionately for many, many years.

I got on the board in 1986 and became chair of the board by default in 1989. Then there was a changed board and a changed vision, and a new director was hired, Jim Delgado, who may be known to many of you. He's a rather iconic, charismatic person in the maritime archeology and maritime history world. I left the board when he was hired because I'd done my job. I got back on the board after Jim left to go back to the States 10 years ago. I was asked back, perhaps because they wanted some dinosaur representation. I'm not sure.

Regarding the evolution of the museum, as I said, we wanted to move off that site, which is a wonderful, tremendous site and has the best view in the city of Vancouver from Vanier Park, but it's not near traffic and it's not accessible from a number of perspectives. We've wanted to move off the site for a long time. There was a move 10 years ago to create the national maritime centre of the Pacific and Arctic in North Vancouver. That failed, and then we were on palliative care for several years.

A couple of hires as executive director did not fare well. We hired a new person, a non-museum person, who was a manager. He turned the museum around, reduced our debt to almost nothing, and created an operating surplus for the last four years. He stepped aside because he had done his job. Ken Burton was his name. He stepped aside eight months ago, and we hired a new director, Dr. Joost Schokkenbroek, who is from the National Maritime Museum in the Netherlands and who is going to bring us, I think, to the next move, wherever we go.

We've moved outside the doors of the museum and brought in a number of people as experts, including my friend Bill Haley—not of the Comets, but of Haley Sharpe—an exhibit designer from England. He designed exhibits for the Canadian War Museum in Ottawa and for Stonehenge, and he is currently designing nine exhibits for the Smithsonian.

Bill has engaged our board and our staff and brought us outside to create very interactive exhibits with the Centre for Digital Media, an academic institution in Vancouver. He reset our vision, reset our mission, and talks in the mission about creating a centre for dialogue, research, and artistic expression and experience for the maritime heritage in the Pacific and Arctic.

I think the word here that's key for me is “dialogue”. Museums are about storytelling. Yes, they're a collection of artifacts, but the artifacts are nothing without the stories that evolve out of them.

With that, the next steps are going to be.... The board made a decision in November, 2016 to move. The board made a decision in February of 2017 to move to a site a little higher than we are now yet relatively close by, but it seemed nimble to other opportunities.

The board has evolved—and I think this is an important step for museums generally—from people on the board with a passion for the subject matter to those with a collection of diverse skills and backgrounds. Our recent board members from the last board meeting are reflective of that. There is Kelly Speck from the Namgis First Nation in Alert Bay, Shaleena Meghji from the RCMP, and a younger person, Peter Helland.

We've also reached out on indigenous matters. I think it's very significant for any museum in Canada to reach out and bring in...together with indigenous communities. I could go on with this one because a personal interest of mine is the Whaler's Shrine, but I'll just tease you a bit with it.

The Whaler's Shrine was collected in 1904 and brought to New York. It's one of the most iconic west coast—and I hate the word 'artifact' on this—belongings. It's a collection of material with about 100 pieces of art that's stored in the American Museum of Natural History in New York City.

We have a pledge of substantial money to help repatriate that to the Mowachaht Muchalaht people in the Gold River area. We're about to sign a memorandum of agreement with the Royal BC Museum to assist the Mowachaht Muchalaht First Nation to bring it back. It's been a passion of mine for eight years, and I think we're on the cusp of doing that.

In summary, I think it's important to reset the mission vision. It's important to strengthen your board and get more diverse backgrounds, connections, and passionate people. It's also important to set the governance and make sure you know what the board's role is and what the staff's role is. That's a struggle for any small museum. Know your audience. Diversify your funding opportunities. Above all, have fun, and make it a fun experience.

Duncan.

[Duncan MacLeod, Curator, Vancouver Maritime Museum]

Thanks, Tom.

With the few minutes we have left, I'll give a little bit of background on what we're doing with the collection. Without a collection there's not much to the museum. It's all really built around the collection. A strong collection supports exhibitions, educational programs, and even facility rentals.

We are focusing this coming year and in the next few years on strengthening our collections management program. We've been collecting at the Vancouver Maritime Museum for almost 60 years. As with many museums, I'm sure, we have found that as the mandate changes, items in the collection no longer fit that mandate. We're trying to de-accession a lot of our collection to focus on stories that we want to tell, with a focus on the community stories of local Vancouver, stories of British Columbia, and stories that pertain to the Arctic.

This helps in a number of ways. First, it allows more space in the collections areas. Many museums struggle with overcrowded areas and collections. Having a more honed collection will allow for better access, both for staff and for external researchers for other institutions. Along with that is the idea of digitization and putting our collections onto a publicly accessible website in terms of a searchable database. This will have a number of benefits for access.

[The Chair, Liberal, Julie Dabrusin]

If you could quickly wrap that up, you've also gone over ten minutes.

[Duncan MacLeod]

Okay.

The other thing we're trying to do is make connections with non-traditional institutions and local groups to broaden our reach. We recently partnered with the Vancouver Civic Theatres. They run some of the main opera theatres and presentation theatres in Vancouver. We're working with them to find ways to deliver our collection to a broader audience, to reach more demographics, a larger demographic, than we do traditionally with the Maritime Museum.

[The Chair, Liberal, Julie Dabrusin]

Perfect.

We're going to move to our question and answer. We have seven minutes for the question and the answer. Perhaps you might be able to finish up some of those thoughts as well in the courses of questions and answers.

Our first person who will be asking questions is Mr. Hogg.

[Gordie Hogg, Liberal, South Surrey—White Rock, BC]

Thank you.

I'd like you to look like you're really happy now, please. Out in British Columbia, where it must be warmer than this—

[Tom Beasley]

But we haven't had coffee yet this morning.

[Gordie Hogg, Liberal, South Surrey—White Rock, BC]

You haven't had coffee? Well, you can tell that we have.

Thank you very much for that.

We've been hearing a number of witnesses, and I've been trying to pull out some themes that seem to be evolving from that testimony. One of the themes I think I'm hearing is that museums are about connecting people across time, place, beliefs, experiences, cultures, and the stories are the things that you want to tell.

Can you talk a little more about whether that fits with your understanding and with what you're doing at the Maritime Museum? I've been there a number of times and quite enjoy seeing the St. Roch over and over again, for some reason. I think I see it differently each time that I'm there.

Can you talk a bit about those connections and what they might mean? Can you talk about it happily and smiling?

[Duncan MacLeod]

Yes.

I'll talk briefly about an exhibition we are currently hosting that deals with personal stories and community connections. It's called the Lost Fleet. It's the story of the seizure of Japanese fishing vessels on the Canadian Pacific coast during the Second World War.

We look at it from the beginnings of immigration of Japanese people to B.C. and take it up to the seizure of the vessels in 1941 and 1942, and then the subsequent internment. We have found that has been a powerful story, and people from the Japanese community connect with it. Even beyond the Japanese community, a lot of local Vancouverites were not familiar with the seizure.

Through the Japanese community, this has allowed a lot of people to come in to tell their story. They've wanted to share their stories with us of their experience with the internment or the seizure of their family's property. We've created an educational program around it that ties in with the B.C. school curriculum. As well, we have started to create an archive of the people who want to come in and tell their stories. A lecture series around this brings in artists, storytellers, and historians to expand on some of the themes we deal with in the exhibit that touch on immigration and connections to current societal issues around immigration, systematic racism, and issues like that.

Tom, do you want to talk about anything?

[Tom Beasley]

I'd just sum up there. It's creating an opportunity, through the artifacts, for a dialogue that's not just on the past—on what happened in World War II and the seizure of the boats—but on the issues from it that resonate today on immigration and systemic racism. It's very important.