Anglophone communities have uncertain place in proposed history museum
Ruby Pratka, Local Journalism Initiative reporter
editor@qctonline.com
If all goes according to the Coalition Avenir Québec government’s plans, Quebec City will be home to a third major museum as early as 2026.
The Musée National de l’Histoire du Québec is expected to open in spring 2026 at the Camille-Roy Pavilion of the Séminaire du Québec, near the Basilica-Cathedral Notre- Dame-de-Québec in the Old City. Premier François Legault made the announcement on April 25 in Quebec City alongside culture minister Mathieu Lacombe, minister responsible for the Capitale-Nationale region Jonatan Julien, several local MNAs, Quebec City Mayor Bruno Marchand and Musée de la Civilisation CEO Stéphane La Roche.
“I’m very proud to announce the creation of the first museum entirely dedicated to the history of the Quebec nation,” Legault said. “Quebec City is naturally the place for it … be- cause Quebec City is where it all started.” He went on to wax lyrical about the “improbable” survival of the first French settlers and the francophone nation they gave rise to, and the “Indigenous peoples who were here before us and helped us through the years.”
“We had to fight for it,” Legault said, mentioning the Patriote rebellion; the 1838 Durham Report, which recommended the assimilation of francophones into Canada’s English-speaking majority; and the survival of French- speaking Quebec amid “a sea of English” in North America. “The fact we still speak French here is an exploit,” he said. “It’s important to share that with our young people.”
He said the state-of-the-art, interactive, child-friendly museum would trace 400 years of history through “great people and great events,” share the stories of eminent artists, athletes, statespeople and businesspeople and show off the “grandeur of our land” and collective victories such as the creation of Hydro-Québec.
“My objective is that when Quebecers come to see the museum, they’ll say, ‘I’m so proud to be a Quebecer,’” he said. “This museum will show us that we can dream big. I’m proud to be a Quebecer and what I want with this museum is for Quebecers to be even prouder.”
The museum is widely understood to be a scaled-down version of the CAQ’s Espaces Bleus project, which envisioned a museum of Quebec history, culture and identity in each region of the province, and was ultimately shelved due to ballooning cost estimates.
Legault read a long list of Quebec public figures, living and dead, who he expected the museum to honour, including singers Céline Dion, Robert Charlebois, Gilles Vigneault and Jean-Pierre Ferland; authors Michel Tremblay and Dany Laferrière; and sports legends Maurice Richard, Jean Béliveau, Marie-Philip Poulin and Mickaël Kingsbury. Laferrière and sprinter Bruny Surin, both born in Haiti, were the only immigrants mentioned, and no anglophones or Indigenous people mentioned by name. When pressed by CBC reporter Cathy Senay, Legault said, “I could see a place for someone like Leonard Cohen.”
The Ministry of Culture and Communications (MCC) could not provide a full list of organizations that had been consulted for the project by press time, but MCC spokesperson Catherine Vien-Labeaume said a yet-to-be-established “scientific committee” would ensure a diversity of perspectives, including those of First Nations and English speakers. As of this writing, the Quebec Anglophone Heritage Network and the Quebec English-speaking Communities Research Network (Quescren) said they had not been approached. The Huron-Wendat Nation and the Musée Huron-Wendat had not been consulted either, according to Huron-Wendat Nation spokesperson Rose- Marie Ayotte.
“I look forward to seeing how the new museum explores what a Quebecer is, how it explores that idea of nous,” said Quescren research associate and historian Lorraine O’Donnell. “I’d love to see a process where anglophones and other cultural communities are consulted. We’d be very interested to help develop quality content.”
O’Donnell and Guy Rodgers, a filmmaker and advocate for anglophone arts and culture who has consulted for Montreal history museum Pointe-à-Callière, both said they hoped the museum would incorporate anglophone history and avoid perpetuating the stereotype of anglophones as elitist and out of touch with the francophone majority. “Our communities are very diverse in terms of socioeconomic and regional background,” O’Donnell said. “The stereotype that equates anglophones [with] an economic elite in Montreal is part of the story, but it isn’t the whole story. I’d love to see a nuanced picture.”
“The CAQ launched this [Espaces Bleus] idea a few years ago, and it turned out to be a big boondoggle, so they scrapped it. This history muse- um is a way of saving face and centralizing it,” said Rodgers, who explored the rich and varied history of English-speaking communities in Quebec in the documentary What We Choose to Remember. “You do want people to feel proud of their history, but is the vision of history that’s going to be pre- sented positive and inclusive, or will it be resentful? A good history museum would make everyone feel welcome, but anything put together under this government is not likely to do that.”