Annual Public Meeting 2023

 

Robert Vineberg, Chairperson

Welcome to the 12^th Annual Public Meeting of the Canadian Museum of Immigration at Pier 21.

(Translated from French)
I would like to welcome you to the Museum’s public meeting.

We’ve just seen a video of the stories of three people who came to Canada at different times, from different places, and for different reasons. There are, of course, as many immigration stories as there are people who have immigrated. Representing the diversity of the immigration experience is a key focus for the Museum. It is central to what the Museum does, and central to what Canada is.

Today’s meeting is taking place on the shore of Kjipuktuk, The Great Harbour, otherwise known as Halifax Harbour, which the Museum overlooks. Kjibuktuk is in Mi’kmaki, the unceded ancestral and contemporary home of the Mi’kmaq.

As I record this, some weeks ahead of the meeting, I’m at the Canadian Museum for Human Rights in my hometown of Winnipeg. Apart from our own Museum, this is the only National Museum outside of the National Capital Region.

Winnipeg is on Treaty 1 territory, the original lands of the Anishinaabeg, Cree, Oji-Cree, Dakota and Dene people, and the traditional homeland of the Red River Métis Nation.

(Translated from French)
We acknowledge that the water we drink in Winnipeg comes from Shoal Lake, and we thank the First Nations who care for it.

(Translated from French)
We are all treaty people and are fortunate to share in this land we call Canada.

Today we are reporting on the fiscal year April 1^st, 2022 to March 31, 2023.

This period saw a welcome return to the patterns of visitation and activity that we were used to pre-pandemic. I would like to thank the Museum’s staff, volunteers, and leadership for their work throughout this past year. It was not easy to return to pre-pandemic service levels while at the same time committing to maintaining the increased digital programming developed during COVID-related closures. But our resourceful staff and volunteers managed it with professionalism and grace.

The Museum collects and shares stories and artifacts that reflect the experiences of immigrants coming to our country. These stories tell us about the challenges and dreams of those who have come to Canada. But they also tell us about who we are as a nation. Moreover, they illustrate the contributions immigrants have made to Canada’s culture, economy, and way of life.

(Translated from French)
By studying these experiences, we shine a light on the human side of immigration. Immigration is not just a key economic and demographic factor in Canada. It also makes our country culturally richer, more diverse, and more inclusive. Canada, despite its imperfections, remains a wonderful country, attracting people seeking a new home, and a new society, where they can thrive.

We are profoundly thankful for our supporters, including donors and partners. As always, I would like to extend my thanks to the Government of Canada for its ongoing support of the Museum, and, for providing COVID-19 relief funding again this past year. Again, this supplemental funding has afforded the Museum needed stability during uncertain times.

I also want to thank our board of trustees, made up of members from all over Canada, for their service to the Museum. It’s an honour to serve with you.

I now would like to introduce Marie Chapman, the Museum’s Chief Executive Officer.

Marie Chapman, CEO

Thank you, Robert.

Welcome to the Canadian Museum of Immigration at Pier 21.

This place is a National Historic Site. During a brief 43-year window, nearly a million people arrived in Canada by sea and came through this building. It’s in this place that those newcomers took their first steps in Canada.

But this a place that is meaningful for more than just the newcomers who arrived here. The Museum shares the stories and experiences of people coming to this land, regardless of where and when they arrived: What they went through. Whether the transition was easy or hard. Whether they felt welcomed. And what finally made them feel like they could call this new country home.

(Translated from French)
The Museum’s stories and collection should be as diverse as our nation. That’s why we put in place a new Collection development plan in June of 2022, focusing on making sure under-told stories are represented and shared here.

The Museum is doing that in a number of ways. One way is through partnerships.

And one project we’re proud to be partnering on is called Hearts of Freedom. This is a multi-year project- the Museum became involved in 2016. One of project’s components is a travelling exhibition currently on display at our Museum. Hearts of Freedom captures the story of a Southeast Asian refugee migration that brought over 100,000 people to Canada from Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam between 1975 and 1985, a period that followed the Vietnam War, the Lao Secret War and the Cambodian genocide.

The project has been a long and deep exploration. In addition to the travelling exhibition, it includes 175 oral history interviews, a book, and a film.

(Translated from French)
The Museum also commissioned a project called Soft Landing, curated by Ian Keteku. The project consists of seven beautifully animated one-minute films, which showcase the words and stories of prominent living Canadians who’ve immigrated from another country. These are people who have contributed to Canadian society in meaningful ways and who’ve excelled in areas of entrepreneurship, environmentalism, science, and community activism.

Stephanie Bernard immigrated to Canada from Jamaica. This is her story.

I love Stephanie’s story because it is, to me, a delightfully surprising story of how and where she found her new home and the important contribution she has made to it.

(Translated from French)
We want this to be a place that feels inviting to all Canadians. To that end, we have been working to make sure our building, our exhibitions, website, programs and services are safe, easy to use and barrier-free.

In 2022, the Museum completed its first three-year Accessibility Plan. It can be found on the homepage our website. Just go to the home page and use the search function for the word “Accessibility”.

(Translated from French)
Making the museum more accessible is an ongoing project and we invite public feedback on ways we can improve. There is a form to share your input on that page.

Daniel Monzon is an advocate for people living with disabilities and the subject of another Soft Landing film, which we’ll watch now. All of the Soft Landing films were created with a described video option, for people who are blind or partially sighted. Here’s what the described video version of Daniel’s story looks and sounds like.

To see more of the Soft Landing project, visit our website and search for Soft Landing.

Over the last few years, the Museum has been producing two podcasts, one in each official language. The English podcast is called Countless Journeys and the French podcast is called D’innombrables Voyages.

(Translated from French)
Although the titles are translations of each other and focus on the same theme each season, each features unique stories from, respectively, Canada’s English and French-speaking immigrant communities.

In the fiscal year we’re reporting on, we launched season 3 of both podcasts, which focused on immigrant artists working in the visual and performing arts. We also began production on Season 4 which is all about food! That season is now out too. Have a quick listen to this clip from season 4 with Ann Hui, author of the book Chop Suey Nation:

(Translated from French)
The Museum’s podcasts are among the ways we’re delivering the Museum’s mandate on a national scale. We also held 52 virtual field trips and connected with nearly a thousand students all across Canada as they learned about Canada’s immigration history.

The Museum building itself was a busy place this year, which, after a few years of Covid-related closures, was very energizing for all of us.

(Translated from French)
We had 36 public programs which served 8300 participants. This included film screenings, encounters with authors, and dance and music performances. 25,000 people researched their family’s immigration and genealogical records with the help of our staff at the Scotiabank Family History Centre.

The visiting exhibition The World of Yousuf Karsh: A Private Essence, ended up being our most successful temporary exhibition to date in terms of visitation. The show featured 100 masterful portraits of 20th-century icons. Yousuf Karsh arrived in Halifax alone as a teenager fleeing the Armenian genocide and went on to become one of the world’s most famous portrait photographers. The exhibition was organized by the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts in collaboration with our own Museum. The Halifax exhibition was supported by Fred and Elizabeth Fountain.

The Museum hosted many kids and young adults.

During Holocaust Education week, over 400 students gathered to hear Holocaust survivor Fishel Goldig tell his own story of survival as a young person. With fewer and fewer Holocaust survivors around to tell their stories, this was an invaluable moment of remembering, and sharing, an important personal history. All of our Jewish Immigration education programs are supported by the Atlantic Jewish Council - Honouring Ruth.

Another of our visiting exhibitions, Kids Celebrate!, from the Canadian Museum of History, showcased 12 special times of year that kids across Canada celebrate, from Christmas to Hanukah to Diwali, to Halloween to Earth Day. While the exhibition was here, one of our Staff passed by and saw four boys sitting at the Hanukah section spinning dreidels while wearing butterfly wings and army helmets from the Halloween section.

We liked that image so much that we commissioned artist Colleen MacIsaac to recreate it.

While the building was full of people, our travelling exhibition Refuge Canada continued to tour the country, helping to deliver on our mandate as Canada’s national immigration museum. Refuge Canada looks at the experience of and dispels myths about refugees. To make sure we are sharing this important story widely, the exhibition has three versions, one larger, designed to tour to partner Museums, and two smaller formats, which have been shown in less likely locations like libraries, shopping malls, and even the CN Tower! Refuge Canada has been seen by over 130,000 Canadians in 30 communities across eight provinces and it has tour bookings through 2025. This is an important and timely project.

(Translated from French)
As the Museum’s curator, Dan Conlin said, “At a time when refugee crises have exploded, our exhibitions have travelled far to make Canadians think about what it means to be a refugee and how Canada can better respond to the challenges they face.” I want to thank the Birks Family Foundation for their support of the upcoming Refuge Canada Tent tour of Quebec.

We would not be able to do what we do without support. Individual donors, large and small, make a big difference in our work as a Museum. As do sponsors, partner organizations and charitable foundations. It was great to see and reconnect with the Museum’s longstanding supporters at our final annual California Wine Dinner fundraiser. This has been an important event for the Museum a special night in the calendar for over two decades. I want to take this opportunity to thank Alison Watson, the chair of this year’s event, and all those who have served on the event committee over the years.

We also hosted two of our Fascinating Canadian speaker events. In Halifax, our Breakfast with a Fascinating Canadian featured CIBC President & CEO Victor Dodig, who spoke about his parents’ journey to Canada in the early 1960s as Croatian refugees. In Toronto, our Luncheon with a Fascinating Canadian featured Calin Rovinescu. Calin was five when he left Romania with his parents and older sister as refugees. He went on to become President & CEO of Air Canada. Both Victor and Calin have had very successful careers, but beyond that, both focused on how their parents’ values and beliefs shaped the lives of their children and grandchildren and helped build the communities where they lived and worked. And both reflected on the conditions that will make Canada successful as we welcome greater numbers of immigrants, and the importance of this success.

(Translated from French)
At another Museum event in Montreal, Gina Cody spoke to a room of supporters about the importance of what we do. Gina’s own story is inspiring. Arriving from Iran in 1979, she became the first woman to graduate from the doctoral program in building engineering at Concordia University, where, after an immensely successful career, she now sits on the board and where the School of Engineering and Computer Science bears her name.

There are a few donors and supporters for 2022/23 that I would like to recognize now. Their support allowed us to carry on important programs and activities during this highly atypical year.

The Crawford Family Foundation supported our Virtual Field Trip program. And we are happy to say that the J & W Murphy Foundation has joined as a supporter of our educational programming as well.

Our Volunteer Program is presented by Scotiabank.

The Jarislowsky Foundation supported the popular luggage tag interactive programming in which Museum visitors write their own immigration stories on luggage tags, which get filed by country of origin and displayed in the Museum.

(Translated from French)
RBC and the R. Howard Webster Foundation supported our employment program for new Canadians called Welcome Home to Canada.

And the area of the Museum known as the Gateway- the spot where nearly a million newcomers took their first steps in Canada, was named for War Bride Anne Risley, who disembarked her ship from the UK and took those first steps in 1946. The naming follows a major gift from Anne’s son John Risley.

To acknowledge another major gift, from the Verschuren family, the section of the Museum called Treasures from Home, was named in their honour.

Lastly, TD continued its commitment to our Artists in Residence and Community Outreach Programs which includes all of our African Heritage Month and Asian Heritage Month events.

The support offered by donors and supporters, large and small makes possible the exhibitions and public and educational programming on offer at the Museum.

(Translated from French)
We are eternally thankful to those who help keep the Museum vital.

We invite you to visit us in person or online to see what the Museum has to offer. If you are in one of the many places where Refuge Canada is visiting in the next year, I hope you have a chance to check it out.

(Translated from French)
Wherever you come from, and wherever you are, the Museum has something for you.

We look forward to welcoming you!