The museum is giving Remembrance Day its full due on Tuesday with a special display of artifacts and a tribute showing the names of the city’s war dead.
“We’re going to bring out the honour roll of those who have served and died in a number of wars,” stated Shari Strachan, the museum’s director.
Opening the facility when it would otherwise be closed is a new tradition that has started only within the last five years. It has quickly become very popular, often seeing crowds of 100 or more, attendance figures that are most likely helped by the museum’s proximity to the city’s cenotaph, the focal point of the annual Remembrance Day activities.
Strachan continued that this is part of a growing trend.
“We’ve had people from all over. There’s starting to be more of a growing interest in World War I anyway, just a lot of documentaries on television and museums have been unearthing quite a bit of information that they didn’t even know that they had from World War I. A lot of it is even going online. That’s how we started our research: actually looking at the cenotaph and the names that were there for World War I. It grew from there.”
She gave credit to places such as Archives Canada, which offers a veritable treasure trove of information including attestation papers and death records and scans of actual documents in many cases.
“They mention what hospital they were in, where they were buried (if they were buried) and even in some cases, you can actually see they’ve scanned the actual page talking about how they were killed.”
The display will allow some guests to try on military uniforms, helmets, jackets, tunics and other gear. While this might seem glamorous to some, those who have done so often complain of the itchy wool and the heavy helmet.
The special display will also feature the Second World War uniform of Dorothy Chartrand. The Métis woman was born in St. Albert to one of the founding families. She was one of the first aboriginal women from Alberta to serve overseas during that war and was the third person ever to receive the Aboriginal Veterans Society of Alberta Patron's Award in recognition of her heroism.
Chartrand was reportedly so proud of her uniform that she wore it as an overcoat for years after the war.
The artifacts are already on display and will remain until the Sunday after Remembrance Day. This coincides with the timing of the other two exhibits – Joining Up: Our Men and Women in the First World War and Brigadier-General Raymond Brutinel and the Motor Machine Gun Brigades – that were previously unveiled to the public.
The Musée Héritage Museum will be open on Nov. 11 from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. during Remembrance Day. For more information, call 780-459-1528 or visit www.museeheritage.ca.
