Water levels have been choppy recently at some Ontario museums. This week, the provincial government abruptly and permanently closed the Ontario Science Center, saying the concrete used in some of its roof panels posed a risk to the stability of the building.
The building is integrated into a canyon on the city’s inner outskirts, and its fate remains uncertain. But the provincial government, led by Premier Doug Ford, says the museum will move to a new, smaller building as part of the redevelopment of Ontario Place on the Lake Ontario shoreline. (Last month, I wrote about the backlash over the government’s decision to hand over West Ontario Place to an Austrian company planning to build a spa.)
The science center’s closure sparked protests calling for its reopening and repairs, as well as questions about the government’s risk analysis of the roof.
But even more atypically, someone has offered to help revive the building, which has been so neglected that visitors have to be bused to the back entrance rather than entering via its striking woodland bridge. The architectural firm that designed the building in the 1960s offered to restore it for free. Geoffrey Hinton, one of the pioneers of artificial intelligence and professor emeritus at the University of Toronto, has pledged CAD 1 million for restoration work.
While its fate has never been as uncertain as that of the Ontario Science Centre, plans for a new building at the Canadian Canoe Museum in Peterborough, Ont., hit a snag four years ago. The Canoe Museum wanted to replace the former outboard engine factory and offices that had been its home since 1998.
At the beginning of 2020, the project’s prospects were bright. A global architecture competition has resulted in a building that will be tucked into the hillside next to the Trent-Severn Waterway’s elevator locks (a type of boat lift) . It has signed a land lease with Parks Canada and raised most of the $65 million needed for the project.
But a subsequent test found the land was contaminated with an industrial solvent that had leached from the watch factory on the hilltop. The detection occurred despite previous analysis showing the site to be clean.
All this is happening in the midst of a pandemic.
“It was devastating to suddenly have to close the museum and find out that the site was unviable,” Carolyn Hyslop, the museum’s executive director, told me as she stood on the new pier, which was naturally packed with people. canoe. “It’s clear that if we don’t have a site to move this project, we’re going to lose it all together.”
About $9 million was spent on what now amounts to nothing.
But later that year Ms Hislop did find a site opposite Peterborough city center with museum director Jeremy Ward. In May, a year after the original construction opening date, the $45 million, 65,000-square-foot project was ready and fully funded.
As we walked through the new building, Mr. Ward emphasized that canoes are not unique to Canada, and the exhibits emphasized this. But they are well suited to Canada’s abundant freshwater rivers and lakes. They were an important means of transportation for Aboriginal people, as were kayaks (the museum also owns and displays kayaks). The first Europeans to move into their traditional lands soon adopted and relied on them as well.
They are now closely associated with summer recreation in much of the country, especially areas with lakeside cabins, campgrounds, cabins, or log cabins.
“Canadians know how to make love in a canoe,” Pierre Berton was quoted as saying in a 1973 magazine article. Burton, a writer and broadcaster, later denied making the quip but said he was happy to take credit for it.
A canoe with a built-in gramophone hangs at the entrance to the museum’s exhibition hall.
The old museum is surrounded by dusty parking lots. In stark contrast, the new building is located in a large bay known as the “Little Lake”, which is ideal for boating.
One of Mr Ward’s favorite boats is a Uquurmiut kayak, paddled by Aasivak Arnaquq-Baril, one of the boat’s builders. Iqaluit, during the museum’s grand opening. He then carried the wet stuff into the building and brought it to the exhibition space.
The new museum has a single, high-ceilinged exhibition hall that differs from the original outboard engine factory office section, creating a labyrinthine space on multiple levels. Its warehouses, now visible through the windows, house the bulk of its collection of approximately 665 canoes and kayaks. In the former factory they were hidden.
As before, the exhibition provides a comprehensive overview of canoes, their place in Canada’s Aboriginal communities, how they brought Europeans across Canada, their different construction forms and their recreational and sporting uses. When I visited this month, not all of the exhibits were fully installed.
There is room in the new building to expand the collection. But like all museum directors, Mr. Ward often hears people wishing to donate a valuable piece of their collection that, in most cases, the museum neither needs nor wants.
“My usual response is, ‘We already have three of these in our collection, so you’d better find an organization or a new owner that will love it as much as you do,'” he told me, surrounded by piles of unique items. wooden boat. “While we may not accept it or think it’s uninteresting, you have to understand that for these people, it’s part of the family.”
Trans Canada
This section was written by Toronto-based journalist and researcher Vjosa Isai.
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Ian Austin, a native of Windsor, Ont., educated in Toronto and living in Ottawa, has been covering Canada for The New York Times for two decades. Follow him on Bluesky: @ianausten.bsky.social
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