PEI 2014 - Sesquicentennial Planning

Planning is underway -  in 2014 Prince Edward Island, and all of Canada will celebrate an important chapter in history, as we mark the 150th anniversary of the 1864 Charlottetown Conference. The report of the highlights from a forum that was held in December 2011 at the Confederation Centre of the Arts is available.  This forum involved over 100 invited representatives from all levels of government, high schools, PEI Museum and Heritage, Confederation Centre, regional tourism associations, etc.

Community forums were then held in Summerside, Charlottetown, North Rustico, Kinkora, Georgetown, Evangeline, Souris, O'Leary during the months of  February and March 2012.  The report from these community meetings will be out in mid-May

Three of the recommendations from the December forum included:

"Build a provincial museum that would include a mobile unit of roving exhibitions, displaying representations of Island people and culture."


"Focus on updating and maintaining our existing Memorial and Centennial infrastructure including libraries, schools, community centres, and theatres."


"A provincial museum should be built to serve the Island. Use technology to enhance and deliver content across the country. Incorporate a national centre for museum research that could support preservation efforts in other provinces."

As the website states - Honour the past. Celebrate the present. Plan a bold tomorrow.

What better way to ensure that a legacy is kept alive than strengthening and enhancing our cultural institutions with a central provincial museum.

Years Roll on By . . .

I recently came across a copy of the report of Public Consultations on the PEI Museum System conducted by the Institute of Island Studies at UPEI - and the date struck me. Is is really 5 years since the report was completed ? And are we no further ahead ?

While 2014 has been held out as a hopeful year for a major "legacy project" to the commemoration of the  sesquicentennial marking the 150 years since the Charlottetown Conference led to Confederation of Canada colonies into a nation - there are still no clear plans to move ahead on museum development, and with the expectation that someone else will pay - there seems to be a limited vision which is restricting the effort to raise funds locally along with the provincial government committing itself to play their appropriate role in funding the operation on an ongoing basis.

The mandate has clearly been given in legislation in 1983 to the PEI Museum & Heritage Foundation to be the provincial museum system of the province - but how can they move beyond the role of managing a series of historic sites and theme museums (which they do very well) - to tackle the role of operating a full provincial museum system. The mandate is wide covering all of human and natural history, but without ever having hired curatorial staff in the broad areas of natural history the mandate remains dormant decades after it was granted to the organization,

Birthplace squabble sets tone for 2014

Second Opinion by Paul MacNeill, publisher West Prince Graphic
as posted at PEICanada.com

There is a battle brewing in Charlottetown that would make John A. MacDonald reach for his whiskey flask.
On paper it sounds much a do about nothing. What’s the Birthplace of Confederation? Oh come on you moan. Any Islander with half a brain can answer that in a nano second. Charlottetown is the Birthplace of Confederation, you say with a hint of intellectual superiority.

If you are an Islander that concept is fully engrained. We are taught that John A. MacDonald and his crew of fellow nation builders used the Charlottetown meetings of 1864 as a springboard to the creation of Canada in 1867.

Charlottetown takes great pride in its place in history - sometimes to an annoying level.

But history in the hands of modern politicians is often a fickle thing. No need to look at it in context or with an eye to accuracy, especially when history gets in the way of a political pot of gold.

Premier Robert Ghiz and PEI’s lady at the federal cabinet table, Gail Shea, have taken to a little historical revisionism. Charlottetown The Birthplace of Confederation has become Prince Edward Island the Birthplace of Confederation. It’s a subtle change but one that has the City of Charlottetown hopping mad, although city officials are hesitant to publicly criticize.
So what is the big deal you say?

Well a lot if there is potentially $100 million at stake. That is how much the provincial government is asking from Ottawa to commemorate the 150th anniversary of the Charlottetown meetings. PEI figures if the feds can funnel $400 million to Quebec for 400th anniversary celebrations, we deserve a quarter as much.

Charlottetown fears that the subtle but important shift to Prince Edward Island Birthplace of Confederation is a strategic attempt to see 2014 funding flow out of the city and across all of PEI. And the city doesn’t like that because it has big plans itself.

A few weeks ago Mayor Clifford Lee floated the idea of replacing the Civic Centre with a new arena/provincial museum combination. No one will argue with the need to demolish the Civic Centre. It is a terrible venue; too small with obstructed sight lines. The city, and the province, need an arena where spectators walk down to their seat rather than up.

Adding a provincial museum is a novel idea but one with little merit, other than it affords the opportunity to tap into a bigger pot of federal cash.

If a provincial museum is needed – and that has yet to be shown – the site should be very carefully selected, something often ignored by city officials. Take for example the convention centre. It is being built on the wrong site, wasting for decades a prime piece of waterfront that would be far better served by other uses, including potentially a provincial museum.

Charlottetown should not simply assume it has a divine right for a museum. If rural PEI is too far for museum elites to drive, as they have repeatedly said, what about Stratford? A modern building on the waterfront would create a dynamic welcoming to the greater city area, similar to the Musuem of Civilization in Hull, Quebec across the river from Ottawa.

The spoils of 2014 should be spread, at least to some extent, across the Island. PEI supplied five fathers of confederation and not all of them came from Charlottetown. It’s easy to envision, for instance, programming in Georgetown, home to one of those five, AA MacDonald.

What is galling is the blatant attempt by Island politicians to rewrite history. It’s silly. It’s petty. And it sends a terrible message to our kids about the crassness of manipulating history to achieve an advantage.

Charlottetown is the Birthplace of Confederation. That is history Robert Ghiz and Gail Shea simply cannot change. It’s a history Islanders accept. Let’s not leave greed and petty infighting as the legacy of 2014. The Fathers of Confederation would not be amused.

Paul MacNeill is Publisher of Island Press Limited. He can be contacted at paul@peicanada.com