Down All The Days (Museums & Art Galleries in Quebec)

Member Name: michaelhudson

Product:	Museums & Art Galleries in Quebec
Date:	28/12/02 (224 review reads)
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The Canadian Museum of Civilization emerges from the banks of the Ottawa River, extending in smooth contours, twisting angles and rippled curves for four floors and 100,000 square metres in front of Gatineau’s shabby smoke stacks, sex shops and office blocks. The symbolic representation of the wind forged, weather eroded, glacial landscape of a country inhabited since the end of the Ice Age mixes ancient rock with animal shapes and the great stone mask of the main entrance. The 3.75 million artefacts within range from maps printed on grains of rice to a collection of totem poles that rise in solemn lines to high ceilings which cut only the sky out of perfect views over the river to Parliament Hill. Walls of glass and Alberta limestone – itself containing the fossilized remains of 460 million years – enclose copper vaults and mysterious rooms where the history of the vanquished is presented along with that of the victor.

MUSEUM OVERVIEW

LEVEL ONE

Behind the Grand Hall, which holds the world’s largest indoor collection of totem poles, six houses contain exhibits from Aboriginal cultures on the Pacific Coast, while on the other side of Special Exhibitions Gallery A and B the massive First Peoples Hall is currently nearing completion. There is also a dreary, overpriced café on this level with crumb-laden tables and plastic muffins.

LEVEL TWO

The Main Entrance opens into a lobby, ticket office, information desk and gift shop. Special Exhibition Gallery C is located at the beginning of a corridor running past D and E up to the Canadian Postal Museum. To the right of the lobby another gift shop stands opposite the entrance to the 23-metre high IMAX screen. The Children’s Museum squeezes between this, the Café Express and a Theatre.

LEVEL THREE

IMAX exits lead out to small temporary exhibitions in a corridor and escalators lead back down to the lower levels. The huge Canada Hall tak
es up the remainder of this level, although the entrance can only be reached from Level 2.

LEVEL FOUR

The Special Exhibitions Mezzanine holds changing exhibitions of the museum’s historical collections.

THE IMAX THEATRE

The two-storey screen has a capacity of 295 people, showing 45-minute long features on a number of different themes. Current features are on the Cirque du Soleil and a Space Station.

INSIDE

Entering on Level 2, I decided to start my tour from the top and work my way back down to the totem poles below. The long escalator to Level 3 and a set of stairs to the right of the exit from the Canada Hall wound up to Level 4, where a yellow 47G-2 helicopter dominated the approach to a circular display on the Canadian Bill of Rights. Behind, thousands of dolls lie in dozens of glass display cases while doll artists perform life in a theatre below. There are dolls from 1750 and 2000, dolls made by Innuits, First Nations and European Settlers. A German China Doll from the 1850s stands out from the rows of paper, glass, china and wood. Babies and monsters crowd around soldiers and bears, clergy and shamans.

The upper floor of a nineteenth century Masonic Lodge intrudes from Level 3 and Canada Hall, leading to a square terrace and the Souvenirs of Canada exhibition. Plates marking the Montreal Olympics, and electric switch flicked by King Edward VII, plaques, more plates, Victorian Royal Family keepsakes, a gift box never presented to Charles de Gaulle, a linen print celebrating Victoria’s Diamond Jubilee, an ashtray made from dried cod, a plumed hat that once sat on the head of a governor general, a replica Nobel Peace Prize for Lester B. Pearson and a collection of contemporary stickers and t-shirts are some of the interesting exhibits here.

Then we’re into The Artic Voyages of Martin Frobisher, a sixteenth century pirate and explorer who sailed in search of the Northwest
Passage that would lead to the riches of the Orient and ended up in the icy wastes of the North Atlantic with one surviving ship. It’s a fascinating story, embroidered with a (displayed) whale tusk from Baffin Island that was mistaken for the horn of a unicorn and a black stone (also displayed) that was pronounced by a prominent London assayer to be high grade gold ore, prompting the first real attempt to plant an English colony in the New World. Frobisher’s story, told with maps, documents, anecdotes and artefacts, is one of heroic errors, muddles and misconceptions. His original 1576 expedition of three ships was repeated two years later with fifteen ships and four hundred men, sent to mine the ‘gold’ on Baffin Island for the glory of England. The artefacts on display – stove fragments, a model of his ship, baskets used to carry the ore from the mines, a reproduced store house and a full size ship’s mast with a soundtrack of the Artic seas – are a fitting tribute to one of the great explorers.

Into the lift for Level 3 and out to a domed ceiling and views across to Parliament Hill, life size models of Norsemen work in their Vinland settlement below maps detailing the routes of the Vikings, Frobisher, Champlain, Cartier and Hudson at the beginning of a 1,000 year journey from east to west coast. Starting at a Breton fishing boat, a trail moves through a whaling station complete with harpoons, lamps, hooks, projections showing whale hunts and imitation blubber ready to be sliced. The Spanish alone killed more than 17,500 whales between 1545 and 1585.

Through the village models and eighteenth century cart of the French-speaking Acadians, who were forcibly relocated out of Nova Scotia by the British, a replica of a town gate marks the start of New France, which once stretched from New Orleans, through Detroit to Quebec City and beyond. The gate leads to the first of several impressive street scenes with mark
et stalls set out in a square – with an original 1636 bronze mortar - around which an inn, a hospital, a pharmacy and a shoemaker’s stand. Displays of cutlery, pottery, tableware and eighteenth century pine armoires (a kind of wardrobe) can be found within the recreated rooms inside each building.
Canada’s Fur Trade displays European and Indian clothing, muskets, kettles and a mock up of a nineteenth century Lumber Shanty, though none interested me quite as much as the pointer boat that was once used to guide logs downriver to the saw mills.
Farming Frontier takes us a little further inland, with artefacts once belonging to British Loyalists and pacifist German refugees fleeing post-independence America.

From pacifists to preparations for war, the next displays focus on military uniforms and banners, with water bottles, shovels and chains from the construction of the Rideau Canal given particular prominence. The reproduced officer’s room in Montreal is covered with fur and strange souvenirs from the New World, while another display shows leisure activities such as curling stones and hockey sticks.

Into Toronto and another street scene, this time from 1885 and centred round a railway ticket office. On the lower floor of the Masonic Lodge we briefly visited earlier a parlour, dining room and study are full of period furniture and artefacts. Then it’s good-bye to Ontario and hello Saskatchewan, with a truck unloading a railway car next to a grain elevator. Old workers are interviewed on video next to a 1920s Model T and broadcasts of a 1939 Royal Tour play on a wireless in the diner.

Turn of the century Winnipeg has a bookstore, a North Star Press Office and, best of all, the magnificent Ukrainian St Onuphrius Church, donated by its former congregation in 1993. The Byzantine-style church has a lovely pear shaped dome and an interior full of pews, an ornate altar and the sounds of the last ever mass. N
ext door, the Labour Temple’s meeting room reproduces the 1919 General Strike with banners and rows of seats facing video screens. A Chinese laundry is located in the same building, full of family photographs and possessions.

An Alberta oil well houses tools and pottery along the route to British Columbia, where the Nishga Girl fishing boat stands outside an old worker’s house. We end in the Northern Territories with the Wildcat Café’s long tables and local narratives heard through headphones. Then down the stairs and escalator to Level 2.

The Children’s Museum is full of interactive puzzles and games from around the world. Exhibits include a multi-coloured bus from Pakistan, a red telephone box from Britain, gabled houses from Amsterdam and a taxi stand with a tuk-tuk from Thailand and a trishaw from Singapore. Other displays take kids to Nigeria, On the Nile, Japan, Indonesia, Mexico, In the Desert and India. The Outdoor Adventure World has even more activities and exhibits including a tugboat once featured on the $1 note.

The Postal Museum is not quite as much fun, though the display of nineteenth century consumer goods from the Eaton’s Catalogue was very interesting. The collection of old post boxes, a model sorting office and embroidered WWI postcards are also worth a look, while another room displays every single Canadian stamp from 1851 onwards.

Finally we reach the first floor. At the bottom of the escalator, look back over your shoulder at the Heida sculpture of Raven Brings Light to the World on the wall behind. Then marvel at the collection of totem poles on either side of the hall, many at least twenty metres high, and look at Bill Reid’s 7,000 kg plaster mould entitled The Spirit of Haida Gwaii.

The six houses take us on a northward journey along the coast of British Columbia, starting with the tidal pool and long kelp tubes of the Coastal Salish settlement. The whaling
floats of the Nuu-Chah-Nuith lead to the traditional house of the Central Coast, the masks of the Nuxalk to the carvings of the Haida, and the bentwood boxes of the North Coast. It’s an amazing journey, worth at least an hour of anyone’s time.

TIPS

Eat in Ottawa before going across the river to the museum.

Leave at least four hours to see everything. If you’re pushed for time, go to Level 1 first and then up to Canada Hall.

Make sure you pick up a free floor plan in the Main Lobby.

Take your parking ticket with you and validate it in the machines before you get back to your car. Parking is quite expensive.

If you go in summer, don’t forget the outdoor Japanese Zen Garden.

GETTING THERE

Bus number 8 leaves Mackenzie-King in Ottawa, following King, Elgin, Metcalfe, O’Connor and Bank before crossing over into Quebec.

Paid parking is available in secure car parks under the building.

The museum is within walking distance of Ottawa city centre, just across the Alexander Bridge in Laurier Street.

ADMISSION AND OPENING TIMES

Adult admission is $10 for the museum and $9.50 for the IMAX theatre. Combined admission costs $17.
Student admission is $6 / $8 / $13.
Children aged 3-12 get in for $4 / $7 / $10.

Free on Heritage Day (Feb 16), Canada Day (July 1) and Remembrance Day.
Free every Thursday between 4-9pm.
Half-price admission every Sunday and on Museums’ Day (May 18).

Closing times vary depending on the time of year, though the museum opens at 9am year round. Details are available on www.civilization.ca.

The museum is closed on Christmas Day, over New Year and on every Monday between mid-October and the end of April.

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