*TO HEAR MY TOUR GUIDES AT THE MUSEUM, LISTEN TO THE EPISODE AS IT FEATURES CLIPS 🙂 *
One of my biggest pet peeves is when someone says that Canada doesn’t have much of a history.
I am understandably annoyed as I have made it my entire career and have covered it in over600 episodes of this podcast proving this country does indeed, have a long story to tell.
Naysayers argue that compared to Europe, Latin America or Asia, our nation is young.
A mere blip on the historical clock of humanity.
Balderdash I say.
Our Euro-centric narrative goes back over 1,000 years to the Vikings landing on our shores But the Indigenous people across the land share stories that go back millennia and further than the Great Pyramid of Giza or Stonehenge.
Now, it is one thing for me to talk about Canada’s past, but it is another to experience it.
I wanted to truly see the items that make up that story so in July 2024, I made my first trip to Ottawa and Gatineau, where I visited one of the best museums in our nation.
Right in front of my eyes were so many things I have endlessly researched and read about
I’m Craig Baird, this is Canadian History Ehx and in this bonus episode I’m going to walk through time to share the exhibits of the Canadian Museum of History!
Even before I set foot in the building my journey followed a path from a bygone era.
I stayed the night at the iconic Chateau Laurier located right beside the locks of the Rideau Canal.
When I first arrived, it took me some time to get used to the fact that Parliament Hill, which I had seen in photographs countless times, was now right in front of my hotel window.
The rugged masonry, pointed openings, carved beasts and buttresses seemed just within reach and below me I watched boats go by and looked over at the Bytown Museum building which dates back two hundred years.
As I walked through the Chateau Laurier on my way to the museum, I was reminded of the many important figures that had walked over the same tiles and wood panels I was walking over.
I felt like I was following 120 years of footsteps in the building where our greatest portrait photographer, Yousuf Karsh, took the Roaring Lion portrait of Winston Churchill that now graces the £5 note in the United Kingdom.
I was overwhelmed by everything I saw around me.
Or maybe it was the humidity.
Seriously, I’m from Alberta, I don’t know how people handle that humidity.
I stopped to see the terrifying Maman, a giant spider by the artist Louise Bourgeois which sits outside the National Gallery of Canada.
There is a half a dozen of these massive sculptures around the world, and I made sure to get a selfie before I made my way across the Alexandra Bridge which links Ontario and Quebec as it crosses the Ottawa River.
I was walking on history.
Built in 1899 it opened one year later and was once the longest bridge in the country and the fourth longest bridge in the world.
When I visited, there was construction, so it was closed to vehicle traffic, and I could walk down the centre of it just as carriages did over 125 years ago.
I was sad to hear later that there is a possibility the bridge could be completely replaced.
Another piece of our past, gone forever.
But as I walked across the bridge, I stepped foot in Quebec for only the second time in my life.
And shortly after I arrived at the doors of the Canadian Museum of History.
The museum itself has existed since the 1850s, and over the decades, occupied various buildings throughout Ottawa.
The current 75,000 square meter building is a wonder to behold.
Designed by First Nations architect Douglas Cardinal it was built with 56,000 square meters of concrete and 7,300 tonnes of steel.
It was the first building in the National Capital Region to incorporate Indigenous architectural designs, while also being environmentally friendly.
The building hoped to capture Canada’s cultures while cementing it as a sculptural icon After my hot walk across the bridge, I opened the doors to a very welcomed blast of cool air that came from water drawn from the Ottawa River.
Standing in the foyer of the museum, I was ready to begin my journey.
And my first stop required a descent down the escalator to the Grand Hall.
The Grand Hall and the First Nations Gallery was completed in 2003 and occupies 3,300 square metres of space on the ground floor.
There are over 2,000 objects on display, but the real stars of the hall are the beautiful totem poles that rise to the roof.
Each totem pole dates back 100 to 200 years.
They were brought from British Columbia and are displayed with permission from the First Nations and are located in front of various houses which offer thematic displays exploring life on the Northwest Coast.
Developed in association with Indigenous scholars and artisans, each display incorporates objects, voices, images and texts, speaking to their peoples’ histories, achievements and current realities and are based on locations that were reconstructed based on photographs.
Stephanie was my tour guide through this portion of the museum and explained what I saw around me.
Growing up, I often cheap imitations placed in a person’s suburban yard as a decoration with no consideration for the cultural importance totem poles have for Indigenous cultures of Canada’s Pacific Northwest.
Totem poles were also taken from Indigenous lands throughout the 19th and 20th centuries and placed in museums around the world as curiosities.
Today, efforts are in place to return them to the people they were stolen from.
Seeing Totem Poles in the Grand Hall as I began my journey through the museum, and knowing they were placed there with permission and respect to educate others, was something I was happy to see.
Behind each pole were the houses that were recreated using the skills of Indigenous builders, who completed the work with traditional tools.
The Grand Hall was designed to deconstruct and supersede erroneous assumptions while addressing the stereotypes surrounding Indigenous identity.
The exhibits confront the notion of Eurasian technological supremacy at the time of first contact with the Americas.
They are organized into various sections including Ways of Knowing, The Arrival of Strangers and An Ancient Bond With the Land.
This pre-colonial era story is told through artifacts on display, and via items that have been recreated by the First Nations using traditional methods.
While the Grand Hall is filled with the artwork dating back hundreds of years, the last thing you see before you leave is the original plaster for the Spirit of Haida Gwaii, a sculpture created by Bill Reid in 1991.
It is not by chance it is placed at the exit as it represents the fact that the First Nations are still here and still creating art.
They have for centuries and will continue to in the future.
This sculpture was cast in bronze several times from the plaster original.
The sculpture represents the First Nations heritage of Haida Gwaii by showing a traditional Haida cedar dugout canoe six metres in length carrying creatures from Haida mythology.
Bronze casts of the sculpture are located outside the Canadian Embassy in Washington D.C. and outside the Vancouver International Airport.
Once we walked out of the Grand Hall, my attention was directed three storeys up to the very top of the building, where Alex Janvier painted his mural Morning Star in 1993.
Janvier, who passed away in 2024, was one of our most celebrated Indigenous artists.
Described as the first First Nations modernist, his masterpiece covers the domed ceiling of the Grand Hall.
He painted it over the course of three months with the help of his son Dean.
Once you have walked up the ramp to get a closer look at Morning Star, you turn down a long hallway with images of our country.
Canadians submitted photos representing every province and territory in The Great White North.
The images of monuments, places and activities from province and territory regardless of area or population size have been placed on top of mirrors so that you can see yourself in them.
As you exit you come to a hub where three halls branch out from.
On the floor is an image of Canada devoid of any borders, city or place names.
It was created from over 120 satellite images and like everything else in the museum, there is more to it than meets the eye.
Each section that branches off takes you through a timeline covering 15,000 years of Canadian history to the Present Day.
And it all begins with our origin story told in two ways.
Told by an Anishinaabe woman, the Indigenous story shares the mythology of the people who occupied the land that is now Gatineau, Quebec. The woman speaks Anishinabek with English and French subtitles as an animation of the origin story plays.
The video reinforces the important fact that First Nations have always been here, since time immemorial and why the land is called Turtle Island.
After watching the animation, you begin your journey further into precolonial history as you enter the Earliest Times to 1763 gallery.
One of the most interesting parts here was the bison hunt diorama.
It recreated the use of a bison jump, like the famous one at Head-Smashed-In Buffalo Jump in southern Alberta, where First Nations used the land itself to hunt bison in great numbers and harvest everything they needed from the great beasts.
Other important artifacts in this first part include The First Face, which is an ivory carving from the Arctic that dates back 3,600 to 3,900 years.
It is the oldest representation of a human face ever found in Canada.
Archeologists believe that it represents the face of an older woman.
Various sculptures by the Dorset People representing polar bears and other animals found in the North are also on display.
The Dorset People preceded the Inuit in the Arctic.
Every step through this section was hundreds of years and generations of people long before Europeans ever set foot on North American shores.
At the end, I was greeted by the face of an Inuk man who lived eight hundred years before I was born.
His name is Nuvumiutaq, and his remains were collected sixty years ago but through the work of archeologists and the Inuit people, he lives once more.
He stands, holding his walking stick, meeting the gaze of every visitor.
In front of him was a recreation of the bow drill that was inscribed with scenes depicting his life and it was found buried with him.
It was hard not to feel as if he had reached across the centuries to share his story with me and in turn with you.
The items on display were all reproductions, the original items were reburied out of respect for the Inuit people and their beliefs.
To create Nuvumiutaq, the skull was laser-scanned, and a plastic replica was sent to France where a forensically accurate reconstruction of his face would be created.
There was a lot of consultation with Inuit people to ensure he was represented properly.
Even his expression was chosen by the community, who wanted him to look proud, looking out on the land, remembering the past.
As for his name, it means “person from the peninsula”.
Hearing Nuvumiutaq story from Stephanie was a great way to end the first part of my tour just as I was about to begin my journey into the post-colonial era.
For that journey, I was joined by Tim Foran and Jean-Francois Lozier.
And our tour began with a rock.
Not just any rock, but one of the rocks mined from the Arctic by Martin Frobisher.
On his first voyage to North America in 1576 in search of the Northwest Passage, Frobisher collected some rocks which he believed had gold.
He brought them back to the Royal Assayer in the Tower of London, and two other experts.
They each told him they were worthless and contained no gold.
The rocks were then taken to an Italian alchemist in London who said the rocks contained gold.
Guess who Frobisher listened to…
Sure, he had found gold, Frobisher launched a second, much larger exhibition in 1577 to gather more ore, and then a third expedition in 1578 to establish a colony of 100 men and mine 1,400 tons of ore, equal to the weight of 200 elephants.
That ore was taken back to England where it was found to be…surprise surprise…worthless!
Most of the rocks were used to patch roads around Dartford, but some were saved, and one made its way back to North America centuries later and now sits in the museum.
The next artifact I was shown was an astrolabe, an early scientific instrument used for reckoning time and for observational purposes.
One widely employed variety, the planispheric astrolabe, enabled astronomers to calculate the position of the Sun and prominent stars with respect to both the horizon and the meridian.
So, seeing one in person was inauspicious enough but there was quite the story behind this one.
In fact, it may be one of the most famous items in our history.
In May 1613, French explorer Samuel de Champlain was traveling up the Ottawa River.
Rapids near present-day Cobden, forced him to portage over difficult terrain and reached what was then called Green Lake but is now called Astrolabe Lake.
According to legend, Champlain lost his precious astrolabe.
For 254 years the astrolabe was hidden from history until one day in 1867, when a 14-year-old boy named Edward Lee was helping his father clear trees when suddenly, they found an astrolabe in the ground.
Captain Cowley owned a steamboat nearby and offered Lee $10 for the astrolabe, but Lee never received the money.
Most likely his father took it.
Cowley for his part then sold it to his employer R.W. Cassels out of Toronto who then sold it to a man named Samuel Hoffman in New York.
In 1942, it was donated to the New York Historical Society.
In 1989, the Canadian Museum of Civilization acquired it for $250,000.
For the longest time, it was assumed the astrolabe belonged to Samuel de Champlain, but this was a lot of poetic licence… here’s my tour guide.
In 2013, Bruce Elliott, a Carleton University historian, found a document from 1893 written by Captain Cowley.
The captain simply identified the discovery as one of many French artifacts found with no attribution to Champlain.
Most believe it belonged to a Jesuit missionary’s supply cache because of its size.
It’s too small to be Champlain’s astrolabe [BEAT]
One of my favourite movies is Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark, and there’s one scene that sticks with me.
Rene Belloq, a French archeologist and main antagonist in the film, finds Indy in a crowded bar.
He pulls out a watch and says it’s worthless.
It cost him $10 from a street vendor but if he were to take it, bury it in sand for 1,000 years, it would become priceless.
That quote stuck with me as a kid because it showed me the power of time.
History can turn something inconsequential into something wonderful.
Just think of how Gen Z looks at Nokia 3, telephones and beanie babies
And our next stop on the tour was the perfect example of that.
An exhibition of trash in the nation’s most prestigious museum
Specifically, trash from a well that sat outside the home of an officer with the French colonial troops at Louisbourg.
What they considered to be worthless enough to throw down a well, are now priceless artifacts.
That trash also tells the story of a dark chapter for our nation and gives insight into the life of an amazing woman.
Tim and Jean-Frozier then took me to see… more rocks, and as you can imagine they also came with a cool story, and it involves a group of angry citizens descended on the Province of Canada’s Parliament Building in Montreal and burned it to the ground.
I covered this in early 2024, but essentially, citizens resented the passing of the Lower Canada Rebellion Losses Bill, which compensated French Canadians for their losses over a decade earlier.
At the end of April 1849, just over a month after the government passed the bill, Governor General Lord Elgin made his way to the Parliament Building to give his assent to a new tariff bill.
At 5 p.m. he signed it and while he was there, he decided he might as well sign another 41 bills waiting for Royal Assent including the Rebellion Losses Bill.
As he signed, the spectator gallery became agitated, but he was able to continue with little fanfare while outside the building word spread, and a crowd formed.
At 6 p.m., Lord Elgin left the building and was met by a crowd who threw eggs and rocks at him.
He rushed to his carriage and ordered his driver to get him home as quickly as possible.
Before they left, his wife Elizabeth reached down and grabbed two rocks.
She then labelled them, giving historians a specific date and time to tie the object to an event.
Of course, I also had to ask about the legend that Sandford Fleming, the creator of Canada’s first stamp, who surveyed many of our railroads and brought us the concept of standard time was one of the individuals who rescued the Queen Victoria portrait from the burning building.
I also covered the amazing Sir Sandford Fleming story in early 2024, so have a listen to learn more And speaking of the stamp created by him, you can find his stamp, the Threepenny Beaver, at the Canadian Museum of History.
Our next stop on the tour was something truly amazing to see, and it’s connected to Thomas D’Arcy McGee, one of the Fathers of Confederation.
McGee was born Irish Catholic and opposed British rule in Ireland. Eventually, this led to an arrest warrant. He fled to the United States where he lived for a time. He later moved to Montreal in 1857.
By then, his revolutionary tendencies were mellowing out, and he worked to have Irish Canadians cooperate with Canadian Protestants to form a self-governing nation within the British Empire.
Called Canada’s first nationalist, he denounced the Fenian Brotherhood, a paramilitary secret society of exiled Irish Republicans.
That group led attacks from the United States in the late-1850s and early-1860s to force the British to divert resources from Ireland to North America.
When McGee denounced the Fenian Brotherhood it came with the ultimate sacrifice.
On April 7, 1868, he was shot in the head at his home along Sparks Street in Ottawa.
The assassin, or at least the man accused of the murder and sentenced to death was Patrick Whelan.
Whelan stood on the gallows on Feb. 11, 1869, and he professed his innocence stating he knew who killed McGee but refused to name them. As we came upon an exhibit of a gun which was found in Whelan’s pocket, I asked my tour guide Tim if Whelan killed McGee?
After that amazing item, we went to see something that, well, quite literally floored me.
I have made no secret of my love for David Thompson on this podcast.
In fact, he is my favourite historical figure, and I covered his and t Charlotte Small’s story in 2023.
When Tim pointed to David Thompson’s portable writing desk… well, I was speechless.
There in front of me was something that Thompson held and used to draw maps that were so accurate, they were being used a century later.
I had to resist the urge to reach out and touch it.
After the tour was over, I was able to wander around on my own, and as you can imagine the first place, I returned to was that desk.
I stared at it and contemplated the things David Thompson had seen while using it.
I then stopped by the silver spike used on Nov. 7, 1885, in The Last Spike ceremony of the Canadian Pacific Railway.
Then walked over to the only known surviving red tunic from the legendary March West of the North West Mounted Police in 1874 which you might remember from an episode from summer 2024.
It belonged to Leif Crozier who was everywhere in the Prairies during the late-19th century, from the March West to the signing of Treaty 7 to the founding of Calgary.
Crozier witnessed First Nations suffer after the demise of the bison and warned that government policies would lead them to conflict.
He was proven right when the North West Resistance broke out in 1885.
The conflict was the final stop on my tour.
Tim said having the handcuffs worn by Louis Riel when he was sentenced to death on Nov. 16, 1885, in Regina on display is something he wrestles with.
I continued to walk around the museum to explore everything once more.
There was so much to see.
There was Terry Fox’s T-shirt from the Marathon of Hope, Tommy Douglas’s hat and the game-worn hockey jersey of Maurice the Rocket Richard.
Randy Bachman’s guitar, which he used at the height of his career with The Guess Who was there, and Glenn Gould’s hat and gloves.
No item is too small or too large to fit in the Canadian Museum of History
There you can also find St. Onuphrius Church, a Ukrainian Church from the Prairies that was dismantled and then reconstructed inside the museum.
I saw pieces of iron and other items from a Viking settlement on the northern tip of Newfoundland, and many objects from Canada’s triumphs in the world wars, and the terrible story of the Residential School System.
So much history in such a wonderful space, I truly can’t express enough how much seeing all it impacted me.
But there were more stories to explore in Ottawa, and the Canadian Museum of History was just one stop.
I walked back through the various halls, into the Grand Hall to take one last look at the great totem poles as I ascended the escalator to my next destination.
After I left the museum and had the best bagel of my life at a Quebec bagel shop with Jean-Francois, then I strolled the grounds along the banks of the Ottawa River.
I walked over to the Monument to the Algonquin Chief Tessouat, who lived in the early-to-mid-1600s and was known for being a great leader and negotiator for his people.
I was in awe of the Parliament Buildings across the river and thought about how the decisions were made there which impacted so many of the people.
Then I remembered everything I saw inside the museum.
Canada’s present and future is decided, directly across from a building celebrating its past.
And once I realized that the Aquataxi I was hoping to take back across the river was not going to arrive anytime soon, so I walked back across the Alexandra Bridge to my hotel, as the 30-degree Celsius heat cooked me and nearly gave me a heat stroke.
Always bring water on any historical excursion folks
And don’t forget your sunblock.
