RCMP museum should tell ‘the most difficult stories,’ report says

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A national museum dedicated to the RCMP should celebrate the police force’s “courageous contributions” to Canada while “telling even the most difficult stories” about its treatment of minority groups, a new report says.

The consultation document, which was posted online last week, features public feedback suggesting exhibits should tackle an array of subjects – including the Mounties’ reputation for forcing Indigenous children into residential schools, culling sled dogs used by Inuit in the Arctic and identifying gays as security threats within the Cold War era civil service.

The document – called A National RCMP Museum: Report on the National Engagement Project – includes the results of an online survey of 2,000 people and summaries of interviews with leaders of gay, Black and Indigenous groups. “The museum will inevitably offend some Canadians regardless of how it [is] designed,” the report says, summing up what was heard during the outreach effort.

The consultation exercise brings the planned overhaul of the current RCMP Heritage Centre in Saskatchewan a step closer to becoming reality.

Located in Regina beside the Mounties’ cadet training facility, the centre presents the force as an iconic Canadian institution. In 2019, the federal government announced plans to reinvent the centre as Canada’s 10th national museum.

While such a designation would lead to federal funding, it would also herald the arrival of a much more critical narrative about the Mounties. “The museum dedicated to the history of the RCMP would have to tell the full story, and not from some glorified version,” then-heritage minister Stephen Guilbeault told The Globe last year, after the government announced $4.5-million in funding for studies about the museum transformation.

Parliament will eventually decide whether to elevate the RCMP centre into a new national museum by voting whether to include it in the federal Museums Act. The consultation report was produced by an Ottawa-based contractor, CTLabs, on behalf of the RCMP Heritage Centre.

“It will be delivered to cabinet at some point,” Tara Robinson, the cultural centre’s chief executive, said in an interview.

She said there are no fixed timelines for the national museum project, but that the centre will continue seeking feedback from the public.

“What is very clear is we will need to have ongoing consultation with a variety of people and a variety of different groups,” she said. “What it boils down to, for me, is people want to see a true depiction of their understanding of what happened.”

The report says a total of 2,041 people participated in an online survey between August and November, with nine in 10 agreeing that “it is important for Canadians to have access to a national museum that honours the courageous contributions of the RCMP, while telling even the most difficult stories with dignity and compassion.”

The report says seven in 10 respondents agreed with the statement that “the National RCMP Museum should explore the historical and present-day relationship between the RCMP and marginalized communities and equity-deserving groups.”

Feedback from some survey respondents is included in the report though names are not made public.

“The RCMP hunted and terrorized the queer community for generations. To skip over that would be disingenuous,” one says.

Researchers conducted interviews with prominent Indigenous leaders and past Mounties whose quoted remarks appear in the report.

“I want to see Indigenous faces in the centre when I walk in. Black faces. Female faces. Not a lineup of white men” says Murray Sinclair, a former senator and retired judge instrumental in Canada’s continuing reconciliation efforts.

Retired RCMP chief superintendent Doug Reti reflects on controversies during the RCMP’s policing of the Arctic. “The Inuit were extremely angry and resented the RCMP for trying to restrict their movements by killing off the dogs,” he says. “For the RCMP, the dogs had to be put down because they were sick and there was a risk of spreading disease.”

The consultation report says an ambitious reboot of the RCMP museum could lead it to be considered a “site of conscience” similar to some globally famous museums.

“Juxtapose, for example, the role of a regional or municipal museum that is mostly a viewable storage of artifacts against Yad Vashem – Israel’s official memorial to victims of the Holocaust,” the report reads.

“They serve profoundly different purposes. Most Canadians do not have personal experience with these second types of museums, widely known in the trade as ‘Sites of Conscience.’ The RCMP Heritage Centre is in the process of becoming one of these sites of conscience.”