Museums Meeting the Challenge of the 21st Century

 A conference called Museums Meeting the Challenge of the 21st Century was hosted by Nature PEI / CMA-PEI October 28th, 2025 at the Rotary Auditorium, Charlottetown Library & Learning Centre 12:30 PM. 

This was the agenda: 

1:00 PM Welcome / Land Acknowledgement – Diane Griffin Opening Remarks – Minister Zack Bell 

1:15 PM Keynote Speaker   Biodiversity Collections as a Public Good and Scientific Resource  Sean Haughian (Nova Scotia Museum) 

1:55 PM Discovery and Conservation of Fossil Life of PEI  John Calder (St. Mary’s University) 

2:15 PM Archaeological Research and Collections on Epekwitk  Helen Kristmanson (L’Nuey) 

2:35 PM BREAK  3:00 PM The Role of Museums in the Education System  Jason MacNeil (PEI Museum and Heritage Foundation)  

3:20 PM  Challenges of Developing a New Heritage Site  Vicki Bryanton (Fanning School) & Angela MacFarlane (Seacow Head Lighthouse) 

3:40 PM  Reimagining the PEI Museum and Heritage Foundation  Matthew McRae (PEI Museum and Heritage Foundation) 

4:00 PM New Approaches to Sharing the Mi’kmaw Story  Julie Pellissier-Lush (L’Nuey) 

4:20 PM How to Increase Visitation and Audiences Janette Gallant (Parks Canada) 

4:40 PM ON YOUR OWN FOR DINNER  

6:15 PM Supply Presentations to AV Coordinator 

6:30 PM Keynote Speaker  (Re)-Imagining PEI Museums in the 21st Century  Ed MacDonald (UPEI) 

7:10 PM Discussion / Share your Ideas  

8:10 PM GOOD NIGHT -- Fill out conference questionnaire, or take home and send back Pre-register by email sent at: info@museumspei.ca  

https://museumspei.ca/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/Agenda-Museum-conference-2025.pdf

OPINION: Provincial Museum - Years of Procrastinating

As published in The Guardian, April 11, 2019

Rosemary Curley and Ian Scott

Science educator Laura MacNeil points out the dimetrodon fossil’s patterns to Finance Minister Heath MacDonald and Parks Canada superintendent Karen Jans. - Contributed to The Guardian

Guest Opinion

Perhaps it is time to ask hopeful candidates on our doorstep a perennial question. Do you intend to provide Islanders with a museum telling the cultural and natural history of their own province?

In May 2007 we were promised that,

“A Liberal Government will put Islanders first by, . . .putting greater emphasis on educating our children about the human and natural history of our province. . . consulting with P.E.I. communities, museums, and our arts and cultural communities to explore options for a Provincial Museum”.

Liberal Party of PEI policy identified the provincial museum as a key issue in 2011 when “working to establish a provincial museum” was their stated policy.

The PEI Museum & Heritage Foundation has statutory authority as the provincial museum covering both natural and cultural history yet they have been deprived of the ability to tell us of this unique land, its creatures, and its culture. A curator of natural history, a natural history collection, a permanent display or exhibit telling of the natural history of PEI have never existed.

We need a provincial museum worthy of this province telling both the human and natural history.

Museums play a key role in conserving and developing a sense of identity as we each learn our place as part of unique ecosystems forged of land and sea. Closeness to nature needs to be introduced early and museums are key places for learning what nature can teach. In a generic world, the culture and history of your home province remains a strong asset in development of identity and sense of place.

Local identity is part of the reason tourists seek authentic experiences amid people living in relationship with land and sea. Attracted to unique cultures, tourists typically view museums as the introduction needed to begin exploration. Being a provincial capital without a provincial museum is hardly the way to welcome visitors. This summer when we honestly welcome the ‘dear mainlanders’ to our shores, isn’t it time we help ourselves and our visitors discover the real story of this remarkable island.

The Dimetrodon fossils located in the National Park date back 290 million years. Canada’s first ‘dinosaur’ was found in Spring Brook, PEI in 1854; yet it was Americans who ensured a world-class find was placed in a Philadelphia museum, in the birthplace of . . . America. Gradually science revealed that we were once the tropical heart of Pangaea, the supercontinent and our Dimetrodon predated dinosaurs.

The largest creature in the world is the blue whale and when a massive Prince Edward Island specimen died it was British Columbia residents who ensure it went on display in their museum. Proudly they display an Island specimen, yet we lack even a basic show case or picture-panel telling our own story.

Our irreplaceable human and natural history should not be for sale. It is our story to preserve, and our story to tell. So when you see a candidate knocking, have your questions ready.

Rosemary Curley is president of Nature PEI and Ian Scott is the organization's past-president.

A timely call for long-overdue P.E.I. museum

Editorial published by The Guardian on December 30, 2015

© CBC photo

 Rosemary Curley

More than 13 months ago, then-Premier Robert Ghiz said a provincial museum was not an immediate priority for his government but hoped it would become a legacy project when Canada celebrates its 150th birthday in 2017. The museum was high on the list for P.E.I.’s sesquicentennial in 2014 but it failed to materialize.

In mid-November, 2014, the speech from the throne suggested the province was exploring options on a possible museum project. It was a promise first made by the Liberals during the 2007 election campaign which brought them to power and repeated again in 2008. It was pushed to the background for much of the following six years until it emerged in the throne speech in November 2014. A week later Mr. Ghiz announced he was stepping down as premier and the museum idea went out the door with him.

It’s impossible to speculate that if Mr. Ghiz had remained premier, he might have championed the museum and action would now be underway to fund, design and construct this vital missing piece of our provincial infrastructure.

Time is already running out since the start of 2016 is mere hours away. Projects for 2017’s celebrations have rarely been publicly discussed nationally or provincially.

The province decided the 2014 P.E.I. celebrations were going to be spread out across the Island, with a focus on a celebration zone on the Charlottetown waterfront while various smaller events across the Island received support and improvements. Critics saw it as a wasted opportunity when upwards of $29 million in public and private sponsorship money was in play. Yet when the party ended, there was little left but the cleanup.

To be fair, there was a huge boost in tourism during 2014 which fortunately carried over into this year with another record-breaking season. The spinoffs from the past two big tourism years benefit the entire province, but where is our permanent legacy? Could not the two have successfully co-existed?

In 1964 we were endowed with the national memorial to the Fathers of Confederation — the Confederation Centre of the Arts — the heartbeat of the city for the past 50 years.

The president of Nature P.E.I., Rosemary Curley, came out publicly this week in a guest opinion to The Guardian to put forward a case for the museum. She wants the province to tap into infrastructure funds when they are doled out early in the new year. She wants action now and maybe something might actually happen in time for the 150th national anniversary of Confederation.

There has been an uneasy quiet about plans for 2017 — both nationally and provincially. There is a feeling that these infrastructure dollars being announced early in 2016 might be our best and only chance to commemorate the 150th birthday of Canada on a major scale.

Ms. Curley ripped past governments for shirking their responsibility and is calling out the province to commit part of the promised federal infrastructure dollars to building a human and natural history museum. We are the only province without one.

 Charlottetown is again extending feelers for a new sports and entertainment civic centre. Is there enough money for both projects, or even one?

The museum proposal was raised in the recent fall sitting of the legislature but received scant attention from government, opposition or media. It was left to Green Party Leader Peter Bevan-Baker to speak to the issue in a statement to the legislative assembly that now might be the time for Islanders to begin to dream about a museum project.

Ms. Curley thanked Mr. Bevan-Baker for recognizing this golden opportunity to develop a museum. She is also imploring the province to move ahead on this project now that there is an interest at the federal level in funding joint projects that serve the needs of Canadians in the area of social infrastructure.

The needs are many on P.E.I. but few people can argue against this long-overdue and long-promised provincial museum.

Prince Edward Islanders have been waiting more than 100 years for a museum, says Nature PEI president

CBC News
As published December 29, 2015

It is not just recent governments who are to blame for the lack of provincial museum, says Nature PEI president Rosemary Curley. (CBC)

Prince Edward Islanders have been waiting more than 100 years for a museum, says Nature PEI president.  Rosemary Curley is calling on the province to commit part of the promised federal infrastructure dollars to building a human and natural history museum.

"We've longed for one for many a year and no government has delivered as they should have," said Curley.

"Governments have shirked their responsibility over the years, and I don't mean just in the last 20 years. I don't point the finger at any one particular government. It is for over 100 years that government has steadfastly ignored this."

A museum would allow things like fossilized reptile footprints, hundreds of millions years old and recently donated to the P.E.I. Museum Foundation, to be displayed.

Fossils found 3 decades ago on P.E.I. are returning to the Island
A museum has been discussed for decades, with commitments sometimes made by provincial governments but not acted on.

Curley noted a new museum of natural history in B.C., unveiled five years ago, had a price tag of $40 million. She believes a capital campaign could raise that amount for an Island museum.

A Golden Opportunity - Let's Develop Museum of Human and Natural History

by Rosemary Curley
Guest Opinion as published in The Guardian on Dec 28, 2015



With the P.E.I. Legislature now closed, there was an important topic raised which seems to have gone relatively unnoticed by the media, and it needs recognition. Decades have passed since the Legislative Assembly created the organization charged with museum responsibility, yet major areas of the provincial museum mandate like natural history have gone unaddressed. It was the watchful eye of Green Party leader Peter Bevan-Baker who noticed this and brought forward a statement to the Assembly on November 26th.

He stated:

“With the commitment of the new federal government to spend billions of dollars on social infrastructure, now might be a wonderful time for Islanders to begin to dream again about a project long discussed and advocated: and that is, the construction of a new Provincial Museum of Human and Natural History, a state-of-the-art institution to showcase and highlight the rich legacy, and promise, of our Island province. I foresee — I dream about — a must-visit facility for every Island school student, citizen and visitor.

“The Premier talks often about that very precious inheritance of Islanders, the Gift of Jurisdiction. In my opinion, that “Gift” is rather hollow — indeed, at risk — unless pains are taken, with each new generation, to shore up and reinforce Islanders’ sense of history and identity. Also, we need to continue to learn from our past – in particular, how human beings have affected the often fragile environment of this place, and vice versa. Thus we can equip ourselves to face the future with a higher consciousness, and a greater wisdom.

“In 1970, a visionary Island Government of the day took the bold step of establishing the Prince Edward Island Heritage Foundation. In 1983, the Museum Act changed the name of the organization, added a natural history mandate, and underlined the institution’s status as the Island’s “provincial museum” Now, almost half a century later, let us be bold to finish the job and build a lovely and imaginative new facility which will be the pride of Islanders.”

Kudos to Dr. Bevan-Baker for recognizing this golden opportunity to develop a museum that tells the full story of this province, its distant geological past,  its rich paleontological treasures buried deep within, and all life forms that call it home. Nature P.E.I. shares this vision of a museum with programs that help all Islanders and visitors understand the significance of both natural and human heritage.

We implore the Government of P.E.I. to move ahead now that there is an interest at the federal level in funding joint projects that serve the needs of Canadians in the area of social infrastructure.

Rosemary Curley, is a biologist who serves as president of Nature P.E.I.: The Natural History Society of Prince Edward Island.

Provincial Museum Promises Remain Unfulfilled

Letters to the Editor (The Guardian) Published on December 30, 2013

Letter of the Day by Ian Scott

Editor:
Recent statements by both the Board of Governors of the P.E.I. Museum and Heritage Foundation and by readers of this paper (Heritage Blues Back on Agenda by Andy Robb on Dec. 2) show the growing frustration from many quarters with museum development policy. The province has indicated both while in opposition, on the campaign trail and since forming government of the importance on moving ahead with provincial museum development —yet little tangible evidence of a clear plan exists years later. While five-year capital priority plans are updated to outline planning in other areas, the needs of our provincial museum continue to be avoided.

A provincial museum mandate was granted “to study, collect, preserve, interpret, and protect the human and natural history of Prince Edward Island for the use, benefit and enjoyment of the people of the province” by the legislature in 1983. Since then, many aspects of this mandate have not been fulfilled. Perhaps most evident is the lack of staff and resources to fulfil the natural history mandate. Every year the legislative assembly receives an annual report from the P.E.I. Museum and Heritage Foundation on progress in fulfilling this important mandate. Each year the report is adopted by the assembly as a matter of course, despite the fact that many of the activities mandated by the Museum Act could not be fulfilled.

Even without the ability to study, collect, preserve, interpret, and protect the human and natural history of our province, the need for these roles continues to increase with each passing year. Increasingly biodiversity grows as an important topic, as we see many species facing a variety of pressures. The spread of foreign invasive species and new diseases present challenges when we lack the basic science about the flora and fauna of our own province to know what species already exist here. It is not uncommon for researchers to discover species that have likely existed for centuries yet have never been recorded simply because of the lack of research in many areas of local biology. Complex environmental decisions are based on scientific data yet without basic data on many aspects of Island ecology these decisions are made without a complete understanding of their impact.

To grant a mandate without appropriate funding of the organization charged with fulfilling the mandate can only lead to frustration for staff and board members faced with the impossibly of moving forward. Museum development requires a clear, well-thought-out plan. It is only appropriate that government works with the Board of Governors of the P.E.I. Museum and Heritage Foundation, to ensure that a workable plan is in place.

Nature P.E.I. involves members from across the Island with an interest in natural history and is prepared to assist both parties in moving ahead with this planning process. Sitting on the fence is not a viable position when it is time for action in living up to promises that have been made. The time has come to address the real needs of our provincial museum system; there is a compelling story to be told and all Islanders deserve a chance to hear that story.

Ian Scott,

President,
Nature P.E.I.: The Natural History Society of Prince Edward Island

NaturePEI:The Natural History Society of Prince Edward Island

Check out the new website and blog for NaturePEI:The Natural History Society of Prince Edward Island.