Annual Public Meeting 2024

Promotional Video

We came from Ecuador with a bag full of dreams.

I grew up in Donegal in Ireland.

I came to Toronto by myself.

We came from Turkey to have a better life for our kids.

From Syria in 1908.

I am from Burundi.

I came to Nova Scotia in 1795.

Became a citizen, 2023.

I love being part of the history of Canada.

This is one of the most meaningful museums I've ever been to.

(Words on screen): More than a million moving stories. 

Cynthia Price Verreault, Chairperson

(Translated from French)
Hello, I’m Cynthia Price Verreault.

I am extremely honoured to have been appointed recently, as Chair of the Canadian Museum of Immigration at Pier 21.

(Translated from French)
I’m speaking to you from inside Pier 21, located on the shore of Kjipuktuk, the Great Harbour, otherwise known as Halifax Harbour. Kjibuktuk is in Mi’kmaki, the unceded ancestral and contemporary home of the Mi’kmaq.

This Annual Public Meeting is one of the ways we report to the public about what we're doing to serve Canadians.

Today we will be looking back on the fiscal year that began April 1st of 2023 and ended March 31st of 2024.

The museum's importance has never been greater, especially in these times of changing attitudes and misinformation about immigration.

(Translated from French)
In studying this country’s immigration history, we examine the significant contributions made by newcomers to Canada’s culture, economy, and way of life. Our job is to share the story of Canadian immigration in a way that’s engaging for all visitors. We want everyone to see themselves and their experiences reflected in the Museum.

The Museum offers exhibitions and programming to a large audience here in Nova Scotia, but we reach far beyond our home province with educational and virtual programs, podcasts, interactive web experiences, as well as traveling exhibitions and the valuable research and scholarship produced by the Museum's historians.

Our reach is truly national and even extends beyond Canada. I want to extend a huge thank you to the Museum's staff, its volunteers and senior leadership team for their dedication and hard work.

I want to thank my fellow trustees and note that since our last APM, we have been joined by a strong group of new members, including David Goldbloom from Ontario, Sara Hradecky from British Columbia, and Alison Murawsky from Saskatchewan. Also in the last year, Vivek Sood here in Halifax has taken over as vice chair.

Last but not least a big thank you to our past chair Robert Vineberg from Winnipeg, who concluded his term in March 2024 after serving in the role for over six years.

(Translated from French)
We couldn’t do what we do without our donors and sponsors. I would like to recognize and thank:
The Government of Canada for its ongoing instrumental support of the Museum.
The Crawford Family Foundation for supporting our Virtual Field Trip program through a donation matching program.
The J & W Murphy Foundation continued its support of our educational programming.

And the Longo family: in recognition of their significant gift, a section of the Pier 21 exhibition has been named the Longo Family Gallery.

And of course, there's the Verschuren family, where the Treasures from Home exhibit is dedicated to the Verschuren family. A special thanks to Annette Verschuren for her continued support and love for the Museum.

(Translated from French)
The R. Howard Webster Foundation and RBC extended their support of the Welcome Home to Canada program, which provides first Canadian work experience, right here in the Museum, to newcomers. Scotiabank continued to support our volunteer program.

And Emera and their generous contribution, which allowed the Museum to offer free admission to the public throughout March break.

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.

Something unique happened this year. We received two significant gifts to mark the birthdays of two of the Museum's cherished and passionate donors, Ralph Chiodo and Fred Fountain. To mark the occasion of Ralph Chiodo's milestone birthday, he and his lovely wife Rose made a significant gift to the Museum. And in celebration of Fred Fountain's birthday, he and his lovely wife Elizabeth made a contribution that allowed us to offer a program called pARTicipate, which included artistic workshops for the public over the month of January. We are touched by their generosity and the generosity of all our donors and supporters.

(Translated from French)
The contributions we receive, large and small, make possible the exhibitions and public and educational programming on offer at the Museum. The Museum continues to be a stable organization, striving to be best in class while being financially responsible, sustainable, and fully accountable to Canadians.

Thank you for being part of today's meeting and for your interest in the Museum.

We really look forward to seeing you soon.

Promotional Video
(Translated from French)

It gives me goosebumps to be where my 19-year-old father landed.

Pier 21 signifies home for my family who immigrated from Greece.

My dad arrived by boat from Colombia.

I’m from Algeria.

My parents were immigrants from India.

My grandfather was a 6-year-old refugee.

Visiting Pier 21 has inspired me to search for my family’s roots.

And I am just amazed at their bravery.

This is one of the most meaningful museums I've ever been to.

(Words on screen): More than a million moving stories.

Marie Chapman, CEO

This Museum means so much to so many people. When people arrived at Pier 21, their bags would have luggage tags like this.

It's a small object. It would've had a name, maybe an address on it - an address to what was going to become that person's new home in a new country.

(Translated from French)
Small, unsuspecting objects can carry much bigger stories. We use these luggage tags in the Museum to ask visitors to tell us about their own families. They also tell us how we’re doing as a Museum. Visitors write notes and draw pictures and flags of their home country. For me, and I know for many of the staff, it’s one of my favourite parts of the Museum.

Together the stories on these tags are a beautiful and moving portrait of this country. They're also one of the many ways we have of including the authentic voices and experiences of Canadians in the Museum.

A country as big, complex and diverse as Canada has countless stories to tell. So, we do a lot. If we're going to do our job well, we have to do a lot. 

I want to tell you about just some of the things we did in 2023-24.

(Translated from French)
Our two core exhibitions welcomed tens of thousands of visitors. One of these exhibitions is about the history of this national historic site. Pier 21 was the site of arrival for nearly a million immigrants during the brief 43 years it operated. It is a site of pilgrimage for many families. 

Our other core exhibition is about the history of immigration to Canada more generally. It tells the more than 400 year story of people coming to these lands, seeking a new life, and of the contributions those newcomers have made to this country, and touches on the impact of settlement and colonization on Indigenous Peoples.

The Museum also hosted a large range of visiting exhibitions.

These talked about migrations from different parts of the world and in different eras. They all took different forms and ranged from the global to the personal.

One of these, Hearts of Freedom, told the story of some of the 60,000 Vietnamese, Cambodian and Laotian refugees who came to Canada in the wake of the war in Vietnam. This was a highlight moment in Canadian immigration history - an early mass refugee movement to resettle visible minority populations, and the first time that ordinary Canadians, using private and group sponsorships, were instrumental in getting refugees to Canada and supporting their settlement.

(Translated from French)
We also hosted an exhibition that explored immigration through a personal lens. Artist JJ Lee’s exhibition In My Yesterday combined artifacts and artworks to tell her multigenerational Chinese-Canadian family’s story. This exhibition coincided with the 100th anniversary of the Chinese Exclusion Act, a piece of legislation designed to prevent immigration from China. This 1923 piece of legislation wasn’t repealed until 1947 and no more than 16 people were successful in immigrating from during this window.

Exhibitions can take many forms. We also hosted Destination Canada, which came to us from the Dutch consulate, and which tells two stories of Dutch immigration in the form of a comic book.

We want the museum experience to be interactive and approachable. We try to break down traditional museum experiences where everything is behind glass and you're not allowed to touch things. One of our visiting exhibitions, Towards a Foreign Land, which was about Yugoslav immigration in the 1920s, used three dimensional cubes that visitors could handle to tell the stories of several individuals.

(Translated from French)
Revealing Chignecto, an exhibition created by Parks Canada, was about a landscape in Nova Scotia that is historically and culturally significant to both Mi’kmaw and Acadian peoples. 

We also welcomed an artistic intervention called Hope and Healing Canada. The installation in red yarn by Metis artist Tracey Mae Chambers is an overlay onto this glass wall sized map of Canada. It's our second collaboration with Tracy Mae. Hope and Healing Canada will remain here until December of 2025.

This museum plays a role in the work of reconciliation with Indigenous Peoples. It's important that stories of this land's original peoples and nations, including the impact of colonization and settlement, are told here from an Indigenous perspective. We collaborate with Indigenous scholars and knowledge keepers to amplify stories of Indigenous resilience and achievement.

Our new Immigration and Impact digital timeline project is a really good example.

(Translated from French)
The timeline consists of three interweaving timelines, or lenses. There’s an Arrivals lens, a lens about laws and regulations that affected immigration, and a lens about Indigenous presence, with content created by Indigenous consultants and scholars.

We invite you to check it out at timeline.pier21.ca.

Digital projects like the timeline help us to reach more people than just those who come to the Museum. We produce two podcasts, one in each official language, and each featuring original content. Both shows boast listeners not only from across Canada, but around the world. In fact, by the end of the reporting period, we had just surpassed 100,000 downloads. In May of 2023, we launched season four and began production on season five, which is about humour.

Here's a clip from an episode about comedian and art therapist Sandy El Bitar.

(Podcast Host)
Sandy's father died just before the family made the move to Canada. Her relationship with him was a difficult one, something she draws on, again in a dark way, for her comedy.

(Sandy)
My relationship with my dad, uh, improved so much since his funeral because he became more grounded and down to earth.

I don't want to brag, but my daddy issues put the bread on the table of four therapists. I put their children in summer camp every year.

(Marie)
To find our English language podcast, go to your favourite podcasting platform and search for Countless Journeys. 

(Translated from French)
For our French language podcast, search for D’innombrables voyages.

Another way we reach beyond our building is through our traveling exhibitions.

Our current traveling exhibition is called Refuge Canada. It shares important truths and dispels myths about the realities faced by refugees. Refuge Canada continued to reach Canadians in all corners of the country in partnering museums, libraries, universities, and community centers.

As times change and visitation patterns evolve, we're working to understand our audience - who comes to the Museum and who doesn't and why. We used visitor surveys, audience analysis and local perception studies. The results of these studies are already influencing how we reach and speak to the public.

We have made progress in making the Museum more accessible. This is year two of our accessibility plan and we're projecting to meet all our annual goals before the end of December deadline.

(Translated from French)
Our Curator of Core Exhibitions, Kristine Kovacevic will tell us about just one thing we’re doing to improve accessibility.

(Kristine)
I'm really excited to share with you some of our sensory backpacks that we've made for our visitors who struggle with sensitivities to sensory items in our exhibits.

So I'm gonna show you just a few things. There's lots of goodies in here, but some of my favorites are sunglasses for visitors who are sensitive to light in certain parts of the exhibit.

We also have a social narrative in here. So this is a really useful tool that's also on our website that gives you a rundown of what to expect in the exhibits.

And then we also have these ear defenders that a visitor can pop on and can help to block out really loud noises so that they can enjoy their visit.

(Marie)
(Translated from French)
The Museum connects with a wide variety of communities through events and public programs. Here are a few events and projects that happened during the year:

The Fabric of Our Being quilt was created by Nadine Williams with students from Highland Park Junior High School. Nadine is a Jamaican Canadian poet and author. The quilt, inspired by a poem she wrote, featured drawings by the students. It was unveiled in February of this year as part of our African Heritage Month activities and remains in the Museum until October.

We were visited by the Fenix Museum of Migration, a museum in the Netherlands set to open in 2025. Fenix is located in a building quite like ours, where millions departed for new lives overseas. In a special event, Fenix came to collect suitcases from Dutch families who had settled in Canada, to integrate into their new large-scale suitcase maze.

Each May, we celebrate Asian Heritage Month. We hosted a very popular event, hosted by Pay Chen, called the Dumpling Summit.

(Translated from French)
Chefs from four different parts of Asia talked about their work and shared samples of dumplings from their culinary and cultural traditions.

Our Canada's Storytellers series spotlights authors, filmmakers, and creators of all kinds.

One of Canada's Storytellers events featured Salah Bashir for the launch of his book, First to Leave the Party. There's nobody like Salah. Born in Lebanon, he's a successful business executive, art collector and philanthropist. His event brought together many communities, including arts and healthcare workers, the local Lebanese community and 2SLGBTQI+ activists.

March break at the Museum, presented by Emera, featured daily programming including dance workshops that ranged from classical Indian to K-pop. It also included very popular daily food workshops.

We love food at the Museum.

Food is one of the first cultural experiences people have when coming to a new country. And the food traditions from home can stay in families for generations. Food and immigration are deeply tied together. That's why we've selected food as the theme for our upcoming traveling exhibition, which we are calling eat, make, share: a taste of immigration. It is in development and launches in May of 2025.

(Translated from French)
Education is central to what we do. We welcome thousands of kids into the Museum through school visits and family-oriented programming. We also reach students across Canada through our virtual field trips. 

This map shows all the different places that have participated in our virtual field trips since we started offering them a few years ago.

We hosted two events in our ongoing Fascinating Canadians speaker series. These are fundraisers featuring prominent Canadians who have a strong tie to immigration. Dr. Gina Cody was our Fascinating Canadian in Toronto. She was the first woman to earn a PhD from Concordia's Engineering School. Eventually, through her success and generosity, that very school was named after her. Our second event was a deeply personal and inspiring speech here in Halifax by Calin Rovinescu, past president and CEO of Air Canada.

(Translated from French)
In addition to speaking at our Halifax event, Calin co-chaired our Toronto event with Annette Verschuren. The Halifax event was chaired by Karen Hutt.

In the background, our team continues to build our museum's collection, working with donors and seeking out records and artifacts. As an example of the kind of collecting we're doing, this year, we added items from the Hadhad family. Tareq Hadhad arrived from Syria in December, 2015 with his family following a few months later. They went on to found the immensely successful Peace by Chocolate brand, based in Antigonish, Nova Scotia. We now have in our collection the sign from the tiny shed where the family first set up their business, as well as the original chocolate wheel they used.

(Translated from French)
The Museum remains a lively and important place for our visitors.

We continue to tell stories of the past. We reckon with both Canada's great achievements and uncomfortable truths. The Museum has an important role to play in how Canadians see and imagine this country now and in the future.

Thank you for joining us and we hope to see you at the Museum soon.