Breaking The Silence

"Our concern was, once you've gone through the Holocaust, you're going to be mostly devastated, and you're not going to really absorb anything from the other galleries, so the learning experience from that other gallery is diminished, if not lost."
George Shirinian, executive director, The Zoryan Institute

The construction site is bordered by trees. Several concrete structures are appearing in the middle of the construction site. In the foreground there is a street and in the background we see the cable structure of the Provencher bridge as well as office buildings in Saint-Boniface, a Winnipeg suburb.

"To say that we're not going to shine a light in dark corners on some of Canada's history, we absolutely will. We must, to be relevant. But there's always a balance. People are passionate about who they are, people are passionate about their culture, and we respect that. Frankly, this issue about controversy, we embrace it. Why do we embrace it? Because it comes with the nature of what human rights is all about."
Stuart Murray, Canadian Museum of Human Rights CEO

Originally conceived as a memorial to the Holocaust, when six million Jews perished during World War II as Nazi Germany sought to shed the world of the presence of Jews, devoting time, resources, funding and planning to the deliberate, finely orchestrated atrocity of extinguishing the lives of innocent men, women and children in the deadly ferocity of state anti-Semitism, the museum's intentions have widened.

Media magnate Israel Asper used his family foundation to contribute the original $22-million to the project, to build in Canada a memorial that other countries of the world have long since committed to, and a public appeal to Canadians to donate to the memorial went out, along with drawing in the federal government to name the enterprise a federally-approved one, as a national museum.

The original intention to focus on one area of human genocide was altered with the initiation of a wider project to highlight and give thoughtful memorial to all large-scale human atrocities genocidal in their intent. Breaking the Silence includes five genocides that have official recognition by the Parliament of Canada; the Holocaust, the Holdomor, the Armenian and Rwandan genocides and the Bosnian Srebrenica genocide.

Almost from the word go, loud criticism has emanated from within the Ukrainian-Canadian community fearing that the emphasis on the Holocaust would diminish the horror of the famine inflicted by Joseph Stalin on pre-WWII Ukraines when millions died of starvation, among them Ukrainian Jews.

"Our position was and remains that no community's suffering should be elevated above all others in a national museum that is funded by the taxpayer", stated Lubomyr Luciuk, Ukrainian-Canadian Civil Liberties Association member. Legislation was passed by Parliament in 2008 designating the Canadian Museum of Human Rights a national museum, with a commitment to paying its operating costs estimated at $21-million annually.

The Zoryan Institute, a think tank focused on Armenia, feels insufficient attention will be paid within the museum to the Turkish-inflicted Holocaust suffered by Armenians. A Palestinian-Canadian living in Winnipeg insists that the museum should also feature the suffering of Palestinians focusing on their dispossession with the creation of the State of Israel; a strange comparison of unequal perceptions.

And finally, Chief Murray Clearsky of Manitoba's Southern Chiefs Organization feels that the term "genocide" is not being used to describe the history of Canada's aboriginal peoples with the settlement of white Europeans who displaced First Nations from their status as the first inhabitants of the country, inflicted injustice and suffering on them in the process.

"As a proclaimed 'human rights leader', it is impossible for the state to admit to a genocidal foundation", wrote Chief Clearsky. "This is a genocide whose name dare not be spoken in the museum." Arthur Schafer of the University of Manitoba's Centre for Professional and Applied Ethics, a museum supporter, acknowledged that the museum required independence from possible government interference.

"Governments sometimes want everything to be whitewashed. There will be controversy. There is a risk of inappropriate influence. All of us have to be vigilant."  What is clear is that the best of intentions for the best of all possible reasons will always have its passionate critics in a pluralist society.


The Canadian Museum for Human Rights is located in the heart of downtown Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada at the forks of the historic Red and Assiniboine Rivers.