Last Vantages Inside The Museum

Picking up where I left off yesterday, here are more of the display cases featuring First Nations creativity.

This colourful ceremonial attire is displayed prominently. Amanda Laroque, a Mi'kmaq woman from Quebec, has worn attire like this for formal powwow ceremonies, including at the Winter Olympics in Vancouver. This particular one of hers now resides here.

Other thematic areas are examined before things wrap up. That includes the perpetual Quebec question, with the occasional referendum on sovereignty (a movement that now seems past its day, as Quebec sovereignists are getting older and dying while there is no new blood coming into the movement from young people). In 1995 the sovereigntists came as close as they ever got in a narrow referendum with both sides urgently vying for the result they wanted. The displays about that period include two puppets depicting two key figures on opposing sides of the dispute. The first is the Parti Quebecois premier at the time, Jacques Parizeau, who infamously blasted "money and ethnic votes" for the defeat in a speech on referendum night, a night in which he was almost certainly completely hammered.

The other puppet depicts our Prime Minister at the time, Jean Chretien, who managed to rally enough support to stave off the separatist movement in the referendum.

"Keep calm, there are Francophones outside Quebec" is the wry remark on this recent t-shirt which does speak truth. Francophone communities can be found in each province and territory.

Contemporary issues are examined here, particularly in terms of race and religion, such as the question of whether or not a Sikh could wear a turban as a Mountie, or the story of Viola Desmond, an African-Canadian woman whose quiet defiance of a movie theatre's segregation rules preceded Rosa Parks by a decade. Her image is to be on new currency this year.

These Mounties on a display screen caught my eye.

Here we have a view looking out over the rooftop of St. Onuphrius, the church I showed you the other day.

Departing from the permanent galleries, I stopped first to take in this plaster cast. Chief Of The Undersea World is by the Haida artist Bill Reid, and resides one level above the main entrance. The bronze version of this one is at the Vancouver Aquarium.

I finish this tour of the Museum, as well as this Canada Day series, with one more view of the Grand Hall from above.