I Think We Need a Provincial Museum. . .

Wes MacAleer, MLA - from HANSARD P.E.I. LEGISLATIVE ASSEMBLY 14 DECEMBER 2006 pg 1047-1048

The hon. Member from Charlottetown- Spring Park.
Mr. MacAleer: Mr. Speaker, I’d like to comment on this very briefly. I’ll say unabashedly that I very much support the concept of this motion. I think we need a provincial museum and I think we need a provincial museum because we have an infrastructure in place that we want to support. As I understand, we have developed an infrastructure that has seven locations. I think we have to look outside the box, we have to look just beyond museums and what they mean. If the idea of a museum is to in some way display what we have as a history of Prince Edward Island, then we have to look at who the clientele are. Some of them will be schoolchildren, some of them will be interested Islanders. But I would suggest the majority of those people are going to be visitors. If we consider visitors and what visitors have in terms of time at their disposal and what they can do, indications to us in surveys is that a majority of those people will be coming to Prince Edward Island to attend conventions and meetings and they don’t have a lot of time on their hands. Some of them may have more than others. But if you’re to interest these people in the historical aspect of Prince Edward Island, then you’d better do it very quickly. By that I mean you’re going to have to introduce them to the concept of museums and then build on it.

So my proposition is this. It better be near where you’re going to have conventions and meetings, and you’d better make a good impression on these people if you’re going to get them to visit some of these other sites that we have. So I’m saying that -

An Hon. Member: (Indistinct).

Mr. MacAleer: I just said that. But the problem we have, of course, is funding and we also have to have materials and so forth to put in this. Therefore I very much support the idea of a better storage facility, artifactory, which is going in Murray River. That’s not a problem. I think that we have to look beyond that. I think that we have the beginnings here of a larger idea which I think has been put forward several times by the Member from Borden-Kinkora when he said that we should have a museum of natural history. I think that we can join that together with this concept of having a provincial museum. We have a challenge here and I think this motion does not contradict what’s already been in place. I would hope that it would continue to support the concept that government continues to have with respect to museums across Prince Edward Island.