UCC Concerned Over Content of CMHR

Calls upon Canadians to Express Concerns 

April 5, 2013 – Winnipeg - The Ukrainian Canadian Congress (UCC) urges all Canadians to voice their concerns over the content and layout proposed for the Canadian Museum for Human Rights (CMHR).

“On a recent site tour of this taxpayer-funded museum, I was shocked to discover how shamefully Ukrainian Canadian and Ukrainian themes are to be presented in this national institution. We are deeply troubled that neither Canada’s first national internment operations nor the Holodomor will have permanent and prominent exhibits and galleries in the Museum,” stated UCC National President Paul Grod. “It is outrageous that in the Province of Manitoba, which has the highest proportional percentage of Ukrainians in Canada, the human rights stories that have impacted our community have either been ignored or minimalised. We have attempted to work in good faith with the Museum for the past 2 1/2 years, yet they remain wedded to the discredited Content Advisory Committee Report, which makes no mention of the Holodomor or the crimes of Communism. Despite several meetings with senior management of the Museum where these questions have been raised, they have been unable to articulate how decisions are made on content and layout or who is making them. This is unacceptable and we are calling upon all Canadians to speak out on the issues of content, layout and transparency at the Museum.

“It is appalling that the only reference to Canada’s first national internment operations is a nondescript picture, even though thousands of Ukrainians and other Europeans were interned as “enemy aliens” in 24 Canadian labour camps, tens of thousands more were disenfranchised, and Winnipeg was a “receiving station” for these “enemy aliens” during the First World War period. Even more outrageous, the subject of the Famine-Genocide of 1932-33 in Soviet Ukraine, the Holodomor, is relegated to a minor panel in a small obscure gallery near the Museum’s public toilets! This is offensive and intolerable.”

The UCC released a video of a presentation made by Paul Grod outlining its concerns and sent a letter of its concerns relating to the content and layout to the Board of the Museum several weeks ago and is still awaiting a response.

The Museum is proceeding to plan its galleries without a permanent and prominent gallery dedicated to the Holodomor or a permanent exhibit to the First World War Internment Operations. Furthermore, in galleries such as “Making a Difference”, which is to tell the human rights stories of immigrants to Canada, there is no intention to tell the story of prejudice, discrimination and violence against Ukrainian and other Eastern European immigrants in Canada, many of whom were forced to change their names and abandon their cultural, linguistic and religious traditions.    

The Ukrainian Canadian Congress had supported the government-funded Museum on the basis that:

• it would be reflective of the broader Canadian experience; and

• the Holodomor and Canada’s first national internment operations would be given a permanent and prominent place in the Museum.

As presented, the Museum is completing construction and current plans do not distinctively and appropriately commemorate these two tragedies.

UCC is calling for the following changes to the Museum:

1. Establishment of a permanent and prominent Holodomor gallery - the Hope and Hardwork Gallery should be repurposed to house a Holodomor gallery and the Breaking the Silence Gallery should be redesigned to provide prominence to the genocides recognized by the Government of Canada that are not featured in other places in the Museum. These two amalgamated and repurposed galleries will have sufficient space also to house exhibits relating to the human rights violations committed by the Soviet regime.

2. Allocate a permanent exhibition space for a WWI Internment exhibit - a separate exhibit section dedicated to WWI internment operations in the gallery titled Canada’s Human Rights Journey.

3. Revise the Canadian Challenge Gallery - to include a discussion on the War Measures Act, legislation which was used to remove the rights of tens of thousands of Canadians during WWI and WWII.

4. Modify the Canadian Immigrant Experience Gallery to include the difficult experiences of early Ukrainian and other Eastern European immigrants to Canada.

5. Crimes of Communism and Nazism - a comparative analysis of human rights abuses perpetrated under Soviet-Communist and Nazi dictatorships.

Reference

Visit www.ucc.ca to view reference documents: UCC briefing note on content and layout of the Museum; UCC Letter sent to Museum CEO Stuart Murray; and CMHR Gallery Profiles 2012 - profile of the inaugural exhibitions.

Call to Action!

UCC calls upon all Canadians to:

• Write and call your Member of Parliament to voice your concerns.  We encourage all Canadians to meet with Members of Parliament and federal Cabinet Ministers to address these serious concerns. You can find the contact information for your Member of Parliament at: www.parl.gc.ca

• Write to and/or call the Hon. James Moore at (819)-997-7788

Minister of Canadian Heritage

House of Commons

Ottawa, ON K1A 0A6

• Express your concerns to the individuals, companies and governments that have donated or pledged to provide funding to the Museum (view www.friendsofcmhr.com).