Canada at the “Crossroads”: Global Citizenship, Narrative History, and The Canadian Museum

This essay considers the intentions of the twenty-first century narrative history museum in relation to the museological genre’s predecessor in eighteenth-century France. In particular, the example of the newly-founded Canadian Museum for Human Rights, Canada’s first and only museum dedicated entirely to the subject of human rights, and the first federal museum to be erected outside of the nation’s capital in 40 years, signals great change in the contemporary concept of “nation”. The globalized world we inhabit has given rise to a new historiography: one that is transnational and that addresses such universal issues as human rights, oppression, violence, and pandemic crises such as AIDS. In light of the new historiography and political landscape of our shared global community, this essay considers the impact of globalization on the museum institution, by examining the foundations and conceptual development of the most recent type of narrative history museum to appear in Canada. Broadly speaking, this article asks what it means to present the new historiography in the context of the contemporary narrative history museum, while exploring the implications of exhibiting thi