We Need a Major Museum for the Display of Heritage

All provinces, except P.E.I., have such a facility and these are generally located in the capitals

as published in The Guardian Sept 23, 2006
by Earle Lockerby

Editor:
An article in your newspaper reports that plans are afoot to relocate the provincial artifactory from Charlottetown to Murray River - within the riding of Premier Binns (Provincial artifactory may go to Murray River to boost area, The Guardian, Sept.19, 2006).

The article indicates that the relocation will result in a "major boom" in the Murray River region, will help bring people to the area and may provide a "destination attraction."

The current artifactory in Charlottetown is simply a warehouse for over 80,000 artifacts and is not open to the general public. While one would hope that any new storage facility would provide a much better environment for the long-term preservation of these artifacts than the existing artifactory, a new storage facility, by its very nature, will simply be a large, dimly-lit building which employs less than half a dozen people and is ill-suited (indeed not intended) to receive the public.

What this province sorely lacks is a comprehensive museum in which to publicly display and showcase a substantial fraction of those 80,000 plus artifacts. Instead of a major, centralized museum on P.E.I., we have seven provincially-owned, decentralized, little 'theme' museums scattered across the Island. These serve a useful purpose, but are no substitute for a major, or principal, museum which would be frequented by the public faciility and these are generally located in the capitals and which should be located in the province's capital city, Charlottetown.

All provinces, except P.E.I., have such a facility; and these are generally located in the respective capitals of the provinces, New Brunswick being an exception there the main provincial museum is located not in Fredericton, but in an even larger city, Saint John. While an artifact storage building need not be close to the museum it serves, proximity certainly makes for easier artifact management.

The notion of Murray River being the location of an artifactory which later gets turned into the provincial museum is ludicrous. It smacks of crass political manipulation. Would serious consideration have been given to locating the province's major health facility, the Queen Elizabeth Hospital, in Tignish?

What is required is a more thoughtful and comprehensive approach which focuses on a provincial museum. A new artifact storage facility is needed, but it should serve the museum, not vice versa. A major museum should be built in Charlottetown. Ideally, it should be of sufficient size to provide for storage of artifacts which are not on display in the museum at any given time.

Earle Lockerby of Darnley is on the board of directors of Keir Memorial Museum, Malpeque. He is also on the board of directors of the Lucy Maud Montgomery Society of Ontario, which operates the Leaskdale Manse National Historic Site Museum in Leaskdale, Ont.