By Brent Creelman
Visitors to the Canadian War Museum can see many relics of war: tanks, rifles and military uniforms. But a local activist group says the museum does not have a large enough focus on peace.
An existing Cold War exhibit features slogans such as “disarm and there will be a tomorrow” on the floor. Visitors must walk on the words to go through the exhibit.
Having visitors walk over the exhibit symbolizes the museum’s attitude towards the peace movement, says a member of the activist group.
“Surely there could have been another way to present this than having things (that) people walk over,” says Debbie Grisdale, the chair of the Committee for an Expanded Mandate for the New War Museum, an Ottawa-based peace activist group.
Dr. Dean Oliver, the director of research and exhibitions at the Canadian War Museum, says the words were painted on the floor to draw attention to the subject, not to be disrespectful.
The words on the floor are just one of Grisdale’s concerns. “The overall feeling of the museum is that there’s this heavy burden of war and this sense that war is inevitable,” she says.
The group wants the museum to instead educate visitors about Canadian efforts to prevent war. Grisdale says the museum should create displays about issues such as international disarmament efforts, the dangers of nuclear weapons and the reasons to ban them.
Oliver says the museum is planning a new peace advocacy exhibit. The museum has talked with the peace activist group, but the exhibit is still in an early stage of development, he says. It will take about five years to research, find artifacts, and produce the exhibit, he adds.
To address Grisdale’s concerns, Oliver says the museum already has peace material in its permanent galleries. There are displays about peacekeeping and the terrible effects of nuclear explosions, he says.
Oliver says public feedback from the museum has been positive. People are glad the museum shows the human side of war, he adds.
“The museum certainly does not glorify war. This is a very positive thing,” says Jordan Bishop, a member of Veterans Against Nuclear Arms. He says he would like to see more displays telling the stories of Canadian peacekeeping missions.
“It’s a harder story to tell, because it’s not so dramatic. But it’s tremendously important,” Bishop says.
Grisdale says the fact that peace tends to be less dramatic than war makes creating interesting peace-related displays a challenge. Keeping children interested in the displays is also a challenge, she says.
In addition to showing the children who have been victims of war, the museum should profile children who have done positive, peaceful things, Grisdale says. She also says that links could be made between war and bullying, so that the museum has some impact on a local level.
“If there is money and interest,” she says, “you could do some quite creative things.”