The Making and Unmaking of a University Museum: The McCord, 1921-1996 9780773571648

Table of contents :
Contents
Illustrations
Preface
Chronology
Introduction
1 Making History, 1760–1907
2 Making a Museum, 1908–55
3 Women's Culture in the Museum, 1921–75
4 A Public Museum, 1970s and 1980s
5 Missed Connections, 1987–96
Notes
Sources
Picture Credits and Sources
Index
A
B
C
D
E
F
G
H
I
J
K
L
M
N
O
P
Q
R
S
T
U
V
W
Z

Citation preview

The Making and Unmaking of a Unversity Museum The McCord, 1921-1996

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THE RAKING AND UNMAKING OF A UNIVERSITY MUSEUM THE McCORD 1921-1996

BRIAN YOUNG

McGill-Queen's University Press Montreal & Kingston • London • Ithaca

© McGill-Queen's University Press 2000 ISBN 0-7735-2049-1 (cloth) ISBN 0-7735-2050-x (paper) Legal deposit third quarter 2000 Bibliotheque nationale du Quebec Printed in Canada on acid-free paper This book has been published with the help of a grant from the Humanities and Social Sciences Federation of Canada, using funds provided by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada. McGill-Queen's University Press acknowledges the financial support of the Government of Canada through the Book Publishing Industry Development Program (BPIDP) for its publishing activities. We also acknowledge the support of the Canada Council for the Arts for our publishing program.

Canadian Cataloguing in Publication Data Young, Brian, 1940The making and unmaking of a university museum: the McCord, 1921-1996 Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0-7735-2049-1 (bound).ISBN o-7735-205o-x (pbk.) 1. McCord Museum of Canadian History-History. I. Title FC21.Y68 2000

o69'.097i4'28

€99-901639-3

F1003.5.Y68 2000

This book was designed by David LeBlanc and typeset in 10.5/12.5 Minion

To Isabel Barclay Dobell (1909-1998) For two decades the McCord Museum's mainstay, she understood the multiple connections of the McCord Museum, McGill University, Montreal's English-speaking community, and Canadian history.

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Contents

Illustrations

ix

Preface

xi

Chronology

xiv

introduction

2

1 taking ^History, 1760-1907

16

2

^Making a ^Museum, 1908-55

48

3

Women s Culture in the ^Museum, 1921-75

80

4

J^ ^Public ^Museum, 19705 and 19805

112

5

^Missed Connections, 1987-96

148

Notes

177

Sources

207

Picture Credits and Sources

213

Index

215

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illustrations The McCord Family Tree 17 Cavalry Officer in the Montreal Dragoons (c. 1827) 22 View of Montreal (1840) 24 Temple Grove (c. 1872) 26 Jane Davidson Ross 28 Judge John Samuel McCord 29 David Ross McCord and Letitia Chambers 31 W.D. Lighthall 35 Establishing Provenance 38 Interior of Temple Grove 40 Redpath Museum (1925) 45 Front Campus 49 William Dawson 53 Members of McGill's Physics Department (1905) 54 Joseph House 57 The Wolfe Room (1927) 61 Percy Nobbs 63 H. Noel Fieldhouse (1966) 67 Robert Vogel (19 81) 67 Dignitaries at a McGill Convocation 70 Alice Johannsen 75 Hodgson House 78 The Collection in Storage at Hodgson House (1954) [2 photos] 79 Eleanor Birnie Davidson and Porcelain Tea Set (c. 1800) [2 photos] 85 Mary Dudley Muir (1905) 88 Native Headdress and Costume Exhibition (c. 19205) 91 Isabel Dobell, Mrs Walter Stewart, and Beatrice Molson (c. 1970) 98

J. Russell Harper (1969) 101 The Student Union Building Converted into the McCord Museum 107 Stanley Triggs (1983) 109 Organization Chart of the McCord Museum, 1970 117 Demonstration in "Operation McGill francais (1969)" 126 Shirley Thomson (1982) 133 Stanley Frost 135 David Johnston 135 David Bourke 135 Bruce Trigger 137 Marcel Caya, with Colleagues in the McGill Archives in 1983 144 J.W. McConnell and His Wife Lily May Griffith, Received by Princess Elizabeth and Prince Philip (1951) 151 The Inauguration of the McCord Museum, 8 May 1992 155 Museum Renovation (1990) 156 The Library and Archival Research Area 157 Luke Rombout (1992) 159 David Lank and Derek Price 158 Claude Benoit 162 Pamela Miller 166 Tables 4.1 McCord Museum Finances, 1984-85 130 4.2 Direction of the Museum, 1975-97 !32

x

Illustrations

(Preface

This book results from a failed political struggle in 1996 at the McCord Museum of Canadian History. Decisions made at the museum and condoned by McGill University destroyed people's work, struck at the research role of museums, and disconnected the McCord Museum from its scholarly base in the university. Among those at McGill prominent in the campaign to restore the archives and to retain university teaching and research at the Museum were Annemarie Adams, Catherine Desbarats, Suzanne Morton, Sherry Olson, and Steve Watt. Alex Roshuk, an MA student in history, not only helped in the campaign but won a seat on McGill's board of governors to defend the rights of students for access to university collections in Canadiana. Several interviews were crucial to this work: Judith Berlyn — daughter of Isabel Dobell - met with me several times and opened her mother's papers to me. The illustrator of Dobell's books, Cecile Gagnon, brought copies of her correspondence with Dobell to my house. Anthropologist Bruce Trigger, wise in people and university politics, took an afternoon to explain his perception of the museum and his failed struggle before 1987 to integrate teaching and research between museum and university. His insistence on historicity - that is, the McCord Museum itself as part of history - is fundamental to the arguments herein. Architect Guy Desbarats combined a crystal-clear memory with passion for the issues surrounding the renovation of the McGill Student Union building into the McCord Museum. Former costume curator Cynthia Eberts offered sherry in Toronto and insights into the history of the McCord in the 19605. Always thoughtful, Stanley Triggs, longtime curator of

the Notman Photographic Archives, helped me understand the archivist's perspective. Luke Rombout, director of the museum during its renovation, accorded a peppery interview. In separate interviews, Derek Price, head of the McConnell Foundation, David Lank, former chair of the McCord board, and David Bourke, the present chair, sat down with me and explained their perceptions of the museum. Over lunch at the McGill Faculty Club, Stanley Frost shared his memories of his viceprincipalship and McGill's history. Marcel Caya, former director of the museum, took care in explaining his perspective of museum politics during his mandate. Peter McNally of McGill's Graduate School of Library and Information Studies commented on my draft manuscript and enriched my text with his knowledge of Canadian Studies at McGill. Historian and former dean Michael Maxwell read parts, offered important improvements, and gave me access to his unpublished research on the History Department. Beatrice Kowaliczko kept insisting on the fine line between an academic book and pamphleteering and pushed me to link the McCord experience to larger cultural and intellectual phenomena in Canadian life. Members of the Montreal History Group helped with both theory and research. Don Fyson helped with research and my understanding of the McCord family. Tamara Myers read a draft and emphasized the twinning of gender and class in Montreal's English-speaking community. Research in the McGill Archives was completed by Jarrett Rudy and particularly Mary Anne Poutanen. Always accessible, archivist Gordon Burr of the McGill Archives was generous in helping with photo research. The theoretical underpinnings of this work benefited from multiple conversations with Kathryn Harvey, who is herself completing a thesis on David Ross McCord. At McGill-Queen's University Press, Aurele Parisien pumped up the author on blue days and shepherded the manuscript over several significant bumps. The manuscript was edited with wisdom, grace, and a strong sense of the mot juste by Mary McDougall Maude. The anonymous comments of two readers for the Aid to Scholarly Publications Programme were of immense use in my revisions.

xii

Preface

All of these individuals helped greatly in improving my text; I remain solely responsible for errors. Mentally incapacitated and resident of a Westmount nursing home during the writing of the book, Isabel Dobell - to whom this book is dedicated - could not be interviewed. As an historian whose normal turf is the nineteenth century, I found it surreal to write of a person living close by but who had lost the capacity to speak for herself. But I did come to know her well as I read her papers in the quiet of her study in the Linton Apartments, followed her paper trail across McGill and the museum, and interviewed people around her. She died in April 1998. Researching and teaching seminars in the McCord Museum, I learned much from observing archivist Pamela Miller. Besides professional expertise, she had passion for the work of students and researchers who came to the historical archives. Like Dobell who hired her, she moved with surefootedness in the English-speaking community in which the museum is rooted. I associate her intellectual vigour, tolerance, and generosity towards the work of others as essential attributes of the curator or archivist. In January 1996, the position of archivist at the Museum was abolished and Miller's work summarily terminated. I was angered to see her punished for resisting museum authorities and for standing up for her profession and the work of her fellow curators. As I watched the firing and its aftermath, I came to realize that the crisis at the McCord had professional, institutional, and human parallels in museums across Europe and North America. I want to remind university, museum, and philanthropic authorities of the important histories in the bones and mortar of their institutions by documenting the work of Pamela Miller, Isabel Dobell, and their predecessors back to David Ross McCord. These individuals perceived the social value of historical artifacts, encouraged collaboration between university, museum, and community, and insisted on the centrality of intellectual work in a history museum.

Preface

xiii

Chronology c. 1760 John McCord emigrates from Newry, Ireland, to Quebec 1792-93 Thomas McCord leases Nazareth Fief and Sainte-Anne 1826 establishment of the Literary and Historical Society of Quebec 1827 Natural History Society established in Montreal 1838 completion of Temple Grove, the McCord family home 1844 birth of David Ross McCord 1855 John William Dawson becomes principal of McGill 1857 South Kensington Museum (Victoria and Albert Museum) established in London 1860 establishment of the Art Association of Montreal 1865 John Samuel McCord dies 1882 Redpath Museum opens 1893 era of Principal Dawson ends at McGill 1895 Chateau Ramezay Museum opens 1900 W.D. Lighthall elected mayor of Westmount 1908 McCord first offers his collection to McGill 1909 design of Student Union Building (present McCord Museum) by Percy Nobbs 1912 establishment of Royal Ontario Museum, Toronto 1919 McCord collection given to McGill University 1921 McCord Museum opens in Joseph House on McGill campus 1922 McGill's Faculty of Graduate Studies and Research established 1930 David Ross McCord dies

1932 Carnegie study of McGill Museums 1933 first volunteer guides at McCord Museum; Musee du Quebec established as first state museum in Quebec 1936 McCord Museum closed to the public 1944 ethnological collection moved to storage in Joseph House alongside McCord collection 1947 Canadian Museums Association formed 1954 McCord collections moved from Joseph House to Hodgson House 1955 Isabel Dobell begins working as volunteer at McCord; collections available to some university researchers. 1956 Notman Photographic Archives presented to McGill 1957 Costume and Textile Collection established. 1958 Province of Quebec Museums Association founded 1964 Russell Harper named chief curator at McCord 1968 McCord Museum moves from Hodgson House into Student Union Building on Sherbrooke Street 1969 Operation McGill fran500 for library education. Carnegie did not, however, respond to McCord's proposal to construct a Greek temple to house the museum.^ Closer to home, R.B. Angus and Lord Strathcona responded to McGill's appeals for endowments, particularly for increased faculty salaries. Wealthy shipper, art collector, and philanthropist Robert Reford endowed a chair of anatomy and gave strong support to the Montreal Diocesan Theological College.25 Sir William Cornelius Van Home, chair of the Canadian Pacific Railway, lived just off the McGill campus. He painted, subsidized art galleries and parks, and collected Asian porcelain and pottery,

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The Making and Unmaking of a University Museum

much of which he left to Toronto's Royal Ontario Museum.26 Sir William Macdonald had deep pockets from tobacco and a strong interest in Protestant education. But, although Macdonald funded McGill's Kingsford Chair in History, his austere Methodist view of history differed fundamentally from McCord's emphasis on ritual, pageant, and ceremony. In 1901, Macdonald built Canada's first crematorium, locating it in Mount Royal Cemetery, the garden cemetery of which McCord's father had been first president. The crematorium, according to Philippe Aries, was another hallmark of "modernity" serving to remove death from public view and reducing the significance of the cemetery pilgrimage.^ Angered that the rich didn't share his view of history, McCord complained that Montreal's sixty millionaires were willing to let his collection be "banished."28 McGill authorities shared this ambivalence. Although Principal Peterson described McGill as Canada's "National University," he was reluctant to accept McCord's "National Museum." Faculty salaries were his first priority and Joseph House, which McCord wanted for the museum, was slated as a library site. He rebuffed McCord telling him that the collection might best remain at Temple Grove.29 A campaign to raise $25,000 to buy Learmont House for the museum failed and McCord was unenthusiastic about the Dawson House on University Avenue: I will go see it [Dawson House] but I do not take to it at all. Here I am in a dignified position on the finest site on the island - with the only collection on the continent - even if I have the misfortune to live a century too soon. It is not the question of the beginning of something - it is the housing in a becoming manner of a fine collection ... McGill is evidently in a very poor nerveless condition. No main spring to the watch.3°

Although McGill was his first choice, McCord dabbled with other locations. One possibility was Westmount, an elite English-speaking Montreal suburb incorporated in 1879. Both McCord and Lighthall served on its council and the latter was elected mayor in 1900. Constructed in 1897 to commemorate

Making a Museum, 1908-55

57

Queen Victoria's Diamond Jubilee, Westmount Park's garden landscape, ponds, and sports fields were a witness to British civic culture. It was Lighthall who presented the motion to build the Westmount Library designed as the park's centrepiece.31 In 1898, McGill librarian Charles Gould was named consultant for its construction. In 1908, McCord drew up plans for a Grecian museum in the park and in June 1909 - amid his McGill negotiations - he presented his project to Westmount's council. As with McGill, his conditions were steep. The municipality would build a museum replete with Doric columns and assume security, maintenance, and secretarial costs; for his part, McCord would "take possession of the museum as fully as if it were my own home."32 When Westmount balked, McCord devoted his full energies to McGill. In December 1909, the university expressed a willingness to accept the collection and to house it in Joseph House. Acceptance however, came with stipulations and it fell to Lighthall to inform McCord that he had to raise $5000 to equip and operate the museum.33 An angry McCord called in journalists: A Western University has approached me with regard to it. McGill has had every opportunity to acquire it. If I were a more wealthy man I would give it to them, build them a place to house it, and endow it. But I cannot do it all. I will hand it over and I will endow it, for that is the most important thing, but I must have a building.34

Negotiations dragged on into World War i. Joseph House remained a problem for insurers who, as late as 1930, described it as a "poor risk," "inflammable," and "ready for a 'total loss' at a moment's notice."35 Another site, but remote from the campus, was the Molson mansion near Fletcher's Field. In 1913 and 1914, McGill refused to provide a secretary and the $5000 needed to renovate the Molson house. Frustrated, McCord again told the press of his "weariness" and called for immediate action by McGill.36 Worried by his threats to move the collection to Toronto, a university committee consisting of Dr Thomas Roddick, Judge John Sprott Archibald, William Massey

58

The Making and Unmaking of a University Museum

Birks, Lighthall, and Gould tried unsuccessfully to find a suitable building on the campus. In 1918, almost a decade after negotiations with McGill began, McCord was corresponding with Ottawa concerning use of the George Stephens mansion on Dorchester Street.37 McGill's acceptance of the collection in 1919 did not end disagreements. McCord continued fundraising, approaching the Royal Bank, Dominion Textile, Royal Securities, Dow Brewery, the Montreal Star, and the Gazette - companies that McGill wanted to reserve as university patrons. Tirelessly promoting his "intellectual and spiritual gift to the university," McCord stated that if business supported his museum "the radium will be eternal." Another potential donor was told that he was building "an Art Gallery plus the History," "a museum into which you may take your friends with pride." He corresponded with the Bank of Montreal president, Sir Vincent Meredith, and its general manager, Sir Frederick Williams-Taylor. The latter replied that McCord's letters gave him "great pleasure" and that "men like you should be immortal." McCord was savage in his description of McGill: the university's "screws are very loose," he told a bank president, while he confided to Major George Hooper of Dow Brewery that McGill's "short-sightedness is phenomenal."38 He wrote to Sir Charles Gordon, president of Dominion Textile and Montreal Cottons, that his "inestimable" contribution was not being treated with sufficient respect by the University - the official intercourse has been rather based upon the theory that they are conferring a favour on me in the matter of my donation, rather than my having the good fortune to present them with what will place the University in a first rank historical place in the world39

In 1920 when McCord announced his fundraising plans, he was told to delay it in favour of the university's campaign^0 McCord's attitude brought inevitable clashes with McGill authorities, particularly the university committee established to oversee expenditure of $10,000 collected in McGill's name for the museum. Although chaired by Lighthall, this committee

Making a Museum, 1908-55

59

with its minutes, its control over budget, and its responsibility for matters such as framing and moving expenses angered McCord. In January 1920, a blowup occurred over design of display cases. Concerned with costs and aesthetics, the committee instructed Percy Nobbs to prepare two sample cases. Nobbs's status as a prominent architect did not deter McCord for whom display cases were a critical issue. He told Nobbs that for twenty-five years he had been experimenting with display cases, testing security and the merits of glass design versus wood. Determined to make artifacts the focus in the museum, he rejected plans for uniform cases, arguing for cases designed individually for particular objects. Offended, Nobbs reminded McCord of spending guidelines, of his committee's "kindly interest" in the collection, and of the danger that he might withdraw his help in installing the collection.41 These conflicts were only settled by McCord's declining health; a spent force by 1921, he was unable to attend the Museum's official opening. * A UNIVERSITY MUSEUM •

Mental illness destroyed McCord's last years and he was declared legally insane in June 1922.42 Three months later, after multiple assaults on his wife and an attempt to murder her, he was institutionalized, first in the Protestant Hospital for the Insane, and then in the Homewood Sanitarium in Guelph, Ontario. Predeceased by Letitia Chambers in September 1928, he died at Guelph in April 1930. In the years before and after McCord's death, it fell to Lighthall to build the collection, to serve on museum committees, and to fight on its behalf at McGill. The museum opened on 13 October 1921. In McCord's absence, Lighthall explained the meaning of the museum and its value for "properly illustrating Canadian history." He described the museum as "part of something larger" within the university; in tandem with the library it could be shaped for "the teaching of history in the University."43 He envisaged students, for example, comparing native artifacts in the museum with pottery, bone implements, and earthen vessels they might unearth at local archaeological sites.44

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The Making and Unmaking of a University Museum

The Wolfe Room (1927) The exhibition cases were designed by McCord. A Victorian, he favored large numbers of objects with meticulous documentation.

Lighthall's passion to protect Canadiana and to promote teaching about Canada found some echo at McGill. Although the university emphasized its standing as an international institution - for example, the Faculty of Graduate Studies and Research, established in 1922, drew 90 per cent of its clientele from outside Quebec - Canadian nationhood (as opposed to French Canadian nationalism) was an important part of McGill's public discourse and was expressed across the campus through university sports and military cadet programs. Speaking in 1909 to the Women's Club, Dean of Law Frederick Parker Walton referred to "England's liberal attitude to Roman Catholicism and to her French-speaking citizens."45 Principal Peterson emphasized that, in contrast to provincial institutions like the University of Toronto, McGill, had "national" qualities: if ever there was an educational institution in Canada fitted to become really national in character - free from all denominational interferences and government control, and with a programme of work that

Making a Museum, 1908-55

61

may be said to overleap all provincial boundaries - that institution is McGill, standing at the gateway of the Dominion she stretches at the same time friendly hands across the sea and takes the whole empire for her province.46

Lighthall's goals were synonomous with those of university officials. In recommending acquisition of the McCord collections by the university in 1919, a committee had cited the example of Harvard's Germanic Museum and the importance of historical museums to the teaching of history in European and American universities; it reported that the McCord collection "affords an almost unique opportunity for offering very extensive courses at McGill on the history of Canada and the Empire."47 This emphasis on Canada was seconded by the university's museum committee which Lighthall himself chaired. It stated the importance of a Canadian - as opposed to an imperial - focus at the museum. Concerned by the removal from Canada of early Canadiana, the committee mandated the museum to acquire artifacts of a "distinct national value"; objects of larger empire interest were to be collected only as they threw "light upon the history of the Dominion ..." The committee's report in 1924 emphasized two objectives at the museum: collecting Canadian artifacts and teaching Canadian history. It urged authorities to encourage use of the museum by students in Canadian history.48 A 1932 Carnegie Corporation report, part of a Commonwealth museum survey, made the same point. Cyril Fox, director of the National Museum of Wales, spent two weeks at McGill, meeting officials and reviewing its museums. His report described the McCord, with its "priceless historical material covering the whole of Canadian history," as "a magnificent nucleus for a great historical museum."49 Across the university, the McCord received support from individuals with an interest in Canadian history, collecting, or ethnography. We have met Percy Nobbs, prominent professor and architect of the first Student Union Building - the present home of the McCord. He played a key role in installing the museum in the Joseph House and was prominent on museum

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The Making and Unmaking of a University Museum

committees.50 Even better placed that Nobbs was Sir Arthur Currie, commander of the Canadian corps in World War i and principal of McGill from 1920 until his death in 1933. Whatever his alienation from the professoriate, the principal was strongly attracted by the museum's strength in both Canadian and military history. Before his health broke down in 1928, he gave powerful administrative support, sitting as chair of the museums committee and participating enthusiastically in Percy Nobbs acquisitions such as General Wolfe's Born in Scotland and founder of pistols.51 McGilPs School of Architecture, Nobbs was responsible for the Not surprisingly, McGill authoriScottish baronial influence at ties associated the history museum with the discipline of history and McGill, the design of many particularly with those teaching Montreal commercial buildings about Canada. In 1926, director of and churches, as well as buildings libraries Gerhard Lomer tried to shift at the University of Alberta. In responsibility for the museum, telling the museum's first years, he was the principal that the McCord "needs its strongest supporter on faculty. as its head a competent and enthusiastic historian."52 The university consistently named a member of the History Department to the museum committee. However, a half-century of historians from the 19208 to the 19705 - Charles W. Colby, Charles E. Fryer, Basil Williams, WT. Waugh, H.E. MacDermot, E.R. Adair, and J.I. Cooper - do not appear to have strongly defended the museum. Some may have lacked sharp elbows for university politics, others may have been unconvinced of the museum's teaching and research vocation, and a few like Basil Williams saw little importance in the study of Canada. Canadians, Williams told the principal, "should be encouraged to take broader views of the world."53 Some, like MacDermot, used the McCord collections; Fryer, a Harvard historian who

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63

came to McGill in 1907, co-authored a History of Quebec and in 1923 was paid $50 by the museum to publish a paper on the War of 1812.54 He served as secretary of the museum committee, 1926-29, but the minutes do not portray him as powerful. This minimal interest in the museum on the part of McGill's historians can also be traced to their view at the time that their discipline was essentially political and often strictly constitutional. History as a discipline at McGill can be dated from 1895 when Charles William Colby was promoted to a professorship in history; in the same year, European history was separated as a course from English literatures By World War i, history was in full professionalization and was increasingly committed to the social sciences, an academic readership, and what Peter Novick calls "the disinterested search for objective historical truth" - goals quite contradictory to the passionate, commemorative, heroic, romantic, and character-building histories espoused by McCord and Lighthall.56 The two friends were amateur intellectuals in the tradition described by Suzanne Zeller: collectors and cataloguers, they saw local place as physical, tangible, and reformable.57 Religion, the classics, and subjective experience entered freely into their history. While professional historians focused increasingly on written evidence, the amateurs ranged widely in their sources using objects and oral tradition alongside the written: "We are not merely citizens of our city or townships," Lighthall proclaimed, "but servants of a great people, builders of a great empire, and standard-bearers of humanity."58 Their empathy with native societies has already been remarked. Both McCord and Lighthall had long struggled with municipal morality, public health, and the nature of civic space be it the Westmount Public Library, Mount Royal Cemetery, or McGill. A well-known urban reformer, founder of the Union of Canadian Municipalities, and fierce opponent of utility monopolies like Montreal Light, Heat, and Power, Lighthall worried over urban blight, the ugliness of telephone poles, and what he called "an insane rush in the cities."59 He saw an affinity between Westmount's manicured urban landscape - "pictured dale and fruitful sod" - and the same space occupied by natives

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The Making and Unmaking of a University Museum

in pre-historic time.60 Native concepts of natural beauty, he argued, were similar to his own: Undoubtedly the Hochelagans must have taken great pleasure in the magnificent woods, the immense trees, the mosses and dells and springs, of Mount Royal, which are such happy memories also for many of us who have long lived in the neighbourhood. In later days their descendants of the Mountain Mission loved its beautiful nooks. In the Westmount portion the shade of an ancient elm of vast size, situated in what is now the Argyle and Sherbrooke corner of the Argyle School grounds, was one of their favourite camping-spots.61

The native history they wrote about and portrayed in exhibitions came with vivid lessons: the Hurons of Montreal, for example, had "virtues." Protecting their memory and material culture was a responsibility of twentieth-century learned institutions. McGill, the Natural History Society, or the Chateau Ramezay should establish a museum of Indian archaeology, Lighthall told the Montreal Women's Club.62 Professional historians who attended the McCord Museum opening in October 1921 were undoubtedly startled to hear Lighthall insist that the museum would "stimulate the imagination" in Canadian history.63 Nor could they have seen much affinity between the constitutional histories they embraced and the patriotic exhibitions prepared in Joseph House by McCord. Aimed at educating children and the general public, his Indian Room, the Wolfe Room, the McGill Room (history of the university), the Spiritual Pioneers Room (French and British ecclesiastical artifacts), and the McCord Room (family history) were moral in tone, social in content, and commemorative in their connection of imperialism and Canadian nationality.^ There were some attempts to narrow the gap between professional and amateur. In 1925, the fledgling Canadian Historical Association met at McGill's Royal Victoria College. To bring historians into the museum, a special exhibition was organized - not, however, of objects from the McCord collections but of documents from the Public Archives of Canada.6? And, although the museum prepared occasional displays for

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65

the History Department, such as a 1942 exhibition on the Iroquois and Haida, the incompatibility between museum and History Department was well known. After its closing in 1936, university reports continued to criticize the History Department for not using museum resources adequately for teaching and research.66 Despite Principal Currie's urging, the employment of Canadians in the History Department, much less the addition of specialists in Canadian history, occurred only reluctantly. There were three major appointments in history in the 19208 eighteenth-century European specialist Basil Williams (1921), medievalist William Templeton Waugh (1922), and Edward Robert Adair (1926). Williams and Waugh were English and Adair, the grandson of a Civil War general, studied at Cambridge.6? In 1928, Waugh published James Wolfe, Man and Scholar, "a zealous servant of his calling, a self-sacrificing lover of his country, and not least among the founders of the Dominion of Canada and the British Commonwealth of Nations."68 Although Waugh used illustrations from the McCord collection and pointed out the museum to students, his main interest remained European history. Adair took a strong interest in Canadian history, served as president of the Canadian Historical Association, and directed theses on Canadian subjects. His interest, however, was in French Canada, while the museum's primary strength was in ethnology, iconography, military history, and the history of English Montreal. Adair had a prickly personality and his promotion to professor was blocked until, as a dean put it, he showed "more regard for the rights of others."6? Adair did take an interest in the McCord but found that social niceties compounded the intellectual gap between university and museum. Donors described him as "promiscuous" in his organization of materials and insensitive in not associating their names with objects they donated.?0 Although John Irwin Cooper, a Canadianist with an interest in Montreal and McGill's first PHD graduate in history, was appointed to the Department in 1934, McGill's commitment to the study of Canada remained problematic over the next gener-

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The Making and Unmaking of a University Museum

H. Noel Fieldhouse (1966)

Historian Robert Vogel (1981)

ation. While Queen's University and the University of Toronto gave increasing prominence to Canada, anti-Canadianism persisted at McGill until the early 19608. For some, this attitude represented British intellectual superiority; in others, it was rooted in hostility to French Canada. European historian and Dean of Arts Robert Vogel had a profound distaste for nationalism in any form. Historian H. Noel Fieldhouse, who served as both dean of arts and vice principal, dismissed Canadian history as dull and of little value; Myron Echenberg, a student in history in the period 1958-62, remembered Fieldhouse as "fostering antiCanadianism in me."?1 Museum officials scorned the vice-principal's narrow approach to history and his disdain for Canada: Why don't we study the development of the Canadian arts as part of our history and society studies? If we did perhaps we might eliminate the kind of conflict that arises with men like Fieldhouse at McGill who says: "My students are not interested in Canadian art. Why would they be?" Why indeed, as Fine Art historians but surely for social historians it would take on a totally different and highly relevant dimension.72

In its first years, the museum was controlled by a committee dominated by friends and benefactors - Lighthall, R.W. Reford, and Francis McLennan. Percy Nobbs was the fourth member

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and the only academic on the committee.73 With Lighthall as chair, the committee met twice in 1921, three times in 1922, and four times in 1923. Although an acquisitions policy and access for researchers were discussed, its main task was receiving reports from the museum's employee, Mary Dudley Muir. In these years, it was Lighthall who controlled the museum. In the same authoritarian mould as McCord, he was angered that Muir did not inform him of an attempted break-in in October 1923: "your failure in your duty to immediately notify me, as Chairman of the Executive, is of so serious an occurrence, and in the exercise of my own duty, I must immediately report this extraordinary negligence to the Chairman of the committee of the museum, and I must ask you for an immediate explanation.'^ By 1924-25, the university, through a reorganization of its museums committee, had taken control of the museum. Principal Currie presided over this committee and university librarian Gerhard Lomer acted as secretary. In contrast to the sporadic meetings held by Lighthall, this committee met monthly and, by 1928, had printed agendas. Lomer drew up museum regulations, including a job description for Muir who was promoted from secretary to assistant curator. Lomer replaced Lighthall, meeting regularly with Muir to settle issues such as exhibits. In addition, two subcommittees (administration and accessions) were formed in 1924 to supervise the McCord. The administration committee met monthly at the museum and minutes, at least for the accessions committee, were kept. Regular reporting by museum staff accompanied this integration into university bureaucratic structures. In the first years, Muir reported only quarterly to Lighthall's committee; after her resignation in 1928 because of ill health, the two employees who replaced her - Dorothy Warren and Isabel Craig were required to make daily log entries in the "Monthly Record": "cannon ball put in the chiffonier in the old office," "Miss Craig away with cold," "DW in the office.'^ The museum's research regulations were first drawn up in 1924 by the university librarian. Access to the collections was by written application. Using a letter code, curator Mary Dudley Muir was to note whether the research materials were (D)

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Duplicate, (o) Ordinary, (F) Too Fragile for handling, (v) Too Valuable for ordinary examination, or (u) Unique. Female curatorial staff could not grant access; this authority was the prerogative of the university librarian, the bursar, and the director of the Art Association, two of who had to sign permission. Research was conducted in the presence of the assistant curator, her assistant, or another university authority; photographs or tracing were only allowed with permission. A daily log kept until the museum's closing in 1936 records the regular presence of researchers: "Mr. Robertson studied at the Museum"; "Dr. Lighthall studied at the Museum." Few university students frequented the museum with the McGill Daily noting in February 1928 that, over the last three months, not a single McGill student had visited the museum.76 The Great Depression of the 19308 exposed the vulnerability of McGill's museums.77 As university authorities cut costs, the McCord, with minimal support within McGill, looked for external support. The Carnegie Report of 1932 named the McCord as possessing the university's most important museum collection. In spite of overcrowding, its lack of a director, its unsuitable and fire-prone building, its failure to publish a guide to the collections, and its unilingual exhibition labels (despite McCord's express wish for bilingual labels), the McCord represented "a magnificent nucleus for a great historical Museum."78 The same report cited McGill for "backwardness" in not utilizing its museums' "unique, valuable, and important material for teaching and research within the University." The university lagged in museological techniques and lacked "appreciation of the value of museum service to the larger community"; the university had neglected "the community without its walls."79 The Carnegie Report, written early in the Depression, rejected expansion of the Redpath Museum into an all-purpose university museum, favouring its preservation as "an historic document, marking a phase in cultural evolution." Instead, a seven-storey, comprehensive university museum should be constructed. Its core, built around the McCord and ethnological collections, would feature man's activities in Canada. This would lead out to a study of the world environment. A new

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Dignitaries at a McGill Convocation: to the left General Arthur Currie and in front of him Chancellor Sir Edward Beatty A strong supporter of the McCord Museum, Principal Currie, according to Stephen Leacock, "knew nothing of scholarship in the narrower sense of the term. His dusty, shabby professors were always a sort of mystery to him. He could never understand whether they were researching or loafing ... They were like hens who wouldn't lay" (quoted by D.M. Legate in Stephen Leacock [Toronto: Doubleday 1970], 189). The first Canadian-born president of the Canadian Pacific Railway, Beatty as chancellor and then principal was determined to apply corporate principles to the university.

museum director, the report suggested, should enjoy the same status as the university librarian and be an academic, preferably an ethnologist or anthropologist and, failing that, an historian or archaeologist. The report saw the museum's public and university functions as complementary. Collections, while being open to the public, would exist primarily "for the service of the University" and museum galleries might be temporarily closed to assure priority for university teaching.

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This vision for a large university museum featuring research and teaching on Canada as its centrepiece disappeared as the Depression deepened. Principal Currie, who prefaced the Carnegie Report with the declaration that efforts would not "cease until we have at McGill a first class museum," died in 1933. Collapse of the accessions and administrations committees after 1930 weakened the McCord's non-university support. By 1932, the university museum committee consisted of ten professors, the curator of museums, the principal, and only one non-university member - EC. Morgan, a collector and member of the Art Association.80 Further restructuring in 1932 established an executive committee drawn from the university museum committee. As these committees languished in the 19308, museum policy was increasingly determined by administrators like bursar A.P.S. Glassco. He warned Lighthall, as university finances worsened to adopt a "conservative policy" at the McCord, particularly with acquisitions. The museum was pressured to show some income. Glassco proposed printing 60,000 postcards of 120 McGill motifs, including 15 from the McCord; another official suggested raising money through sale at the door of a tencent pamphlet on the museum's history.81 These money matters were complicated by conflicting interpretations of the value and form of McCord's bequest: the collection donated in 1919 and the balance of his estate - particularly nine lots and buildings in Westmount and west-end Montreal - willed to McGill in 1921. After McCord's death in 1930 and the evaluation of his estate, Lighthall was told that the museum had, over the decade of its existence, accumulated a $12,000 debt to the university; this debt would force McGill to dip into the capital provided in McCord's legacy. Until the museum's closing in 1936, Lighthall protested furiously against this action by McGill's bursar, lawyers, accountants, and university secretary. Demanding what he called a "correction in arithmetic," he contested the university's evaluation of the estate at $186,000. Among the McCord properties left to McGill were several stores on Sherbrooke Street and, after McCord's death, the university spent $19,000 on renovations. This sum,

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Lighthall argued, was wrongly entered as a debt on the estate. He also argued that the university had seriously undervalued the collection by some $200,000. Lighthall was particularly insistent that the university was acting unethically and even illegally in charging museum upkeep against the McCord capital. His will had specified establishment of an "endowment" and this legally obliged McGill, Lighthall argued, to maintain a perpetual capital from which revenues would be generated.82 Lighthall made little headway as authorities made cuts across the campus. The survival of the Department of Chinese Studies and the Gest Library of Chinese Studies, both established in the 19205, was in doubt. In 1934, McGill dismissed the curator of the Gest collection, her assistant, and the professor of Chinese studies. Donor Guion Gest exercised his option to repossess the collection of 130,000 volumes for the original purchase price of $15,000 and the collection was moved to Princeton University.83 Currie's death brought McGill under the direct control of Chancellor Sir Edward Beatty, who acted as principal until 1935. He proposed the establishment of a guarantee fund to which university governors subscribed to balance McGill's books.84 To hold university units to strict accountability, Beatty relied heavily on George McDonald, a chartered accountant and chair of the board of governors' finance committee. By March 1935, McDonald, newly appointed bursar F. Owen Stredder, and the "economy committee" had recommended closing the McCord Museum in light of a museum deficit of $29,371 for the period 1931-34. Closing the museum would result in an annual saving of $4993, 88 per cent of which would result from the dismissal of employees.8? In May, the execution of this recommendation was postponed for one year and the museum remained open. Some economy was achieved by moving the curator of the Ethnological Museum into Joseph House with the McCord. Hearing of the proposed closing, Lighthall telephoned the bursar to remind him that, under the terms of McCord's gift, McGill was obliged to keep the museum open and to staff it with a secretary and janitor. He repeated that the university had undervalued

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the estate and pointed to improving revenues.86 His protests failed. Citing the personal generosity of the governors in providing $170,000 to keep the university functioning and the importance of not "sacrificing the efficiency of the University," the board of governors announced the museum's closing for 31 May 1936: The Canadian collection in that museum is in some respects unrivalled. Unfortunately, the university is not in a position to utilize this museum to the full at the present moment and therefore the museum will be temporarily closed to the public. All steps will be taken to safeguard the collections which have been entrusted to the university, and all possible arrangements will be made for serious scholars to utilize the material kept there. It is to be hoped that the time will not be far off when improving conditions will enable the university once again to make these interesting collections open to the inspection of the general public. It should be widely known that the policy of the university remains what it was, and that the present action is dictated merely by the financial difficulties of the moment.8?

McGill's policy of not firing regular faculty during the Depression, rendered delicate the dismissal - or "retirement" as the university preferred to call it - of the museum's two female employees (Dorothy Warren had worked full-time at the Museum since 1928). Bursar P.O. Stredder urged a common front in which the museums committee, which included faculty, would "place itself on record" as approving the firing. Professor of geology and director of the Redpath Museum Thomas H. Clark replied that the committee preferred not to acknowledge Warren's dismissal publicly but, as the bursar reported to the principal, it recognized "the full implication of its recommendations."88 • THE M U S E U M CLOSED • For almost three decades, the McCord Museum remained closed to the public and, although occasional research was permitted, it was virtually an invisible institution on the McGill

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campus. Annual reports of the museums committee did regularly lament the closure and the university reported deficits between revenues from the McCord estate and the cost of maintaining the museum in eleven of the eighteen years from 1937 to 1954; in May 1955, the university declared that it had absorbed costs of $106,577 since 1931. It reported selling the McCord properties and calculated the value of the endowment in 1956 at $56,292.89 The closing did generate some protest mostly from Protestant school authorities who used the McCord to enrich the teaching of Canadian history in grades five and six. Seven thousand Protestant pupils a year would be affected, one-sixth of these from Westmount schools, an alderman told the Montreal Standard; the McCord "tied up their history studies in a practical way, for the museum contained many objects so strongly identified with the earlier days of Canada."9° Within the university, Lionel Judah, director of museums, pointed out that the McCord collection was in physical danger. Although the Joseph House served as headquarters for the university's night watchman, the building, dating from the i86os, was dilapidated and a firetrap: fire extinguishers were inadequate, and there was no electric fire alarm. In 1938, the board of governors refused a museums committee request to reopen the museum suggesting instead that its Canadiana be displayed through the Art Association.91 Although the university had closed the museum with the understanding that collections would be available to researchers, little service could be provided: "We are a little slow in dealing with matters," a Vermont museum was told in 1949; "we have gone through files and found nothing "92 Through much of the period, administration of the closed collection was the responsibility of Alice Johannsen Turnham. Born in Havana, Johannsen was raised in New York, coming to Montreal as a teenager in 1928. Graduating from the Trafalgar School for Girls, she completed a bachelor of science degree in geology in 1934. With an interest in natural history museums and the protege of Lionel Judah, director of McGill Museums, she took the Newark Museum's "Apprentice Course" and then, benefiting from Carnegie Museum Travelling Fellowships,

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Alice Johannsen, seated under Principal William Dawson (nd) Her long career at McGill left Johannsen resigned and accepting of separate gender spheres in museum work: "Women are definitely not at a disadvantage in museum work. They have a particular aptitude for housekeeping, the curatorial part of the job, which involves the care and marshalling of specimens. Men on the whole are better at research than women, simply because they can lose themselves more completely in it without disrupting family life. But women, I think, are as good if not better than men at interpretation, the translation of hard scientific facts into language understandable to the layman" (Chatelaine, November 1959).

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worked at the National Gallery of Canada for two years and then in rural Manitoba establishing a travelling museum and art gallery. Back at McGill as a demonstrator in zoology, she served as a volunteer in the McGill Museums, 1939-41. Only one McGill museum, the Redpath, was open to the public, although she arranged to take school groups through the closed Ethnological Museum. Named full-time assistant curator in the Redpath Museum in 1942, her duties included exhibitions, administration, and training volunteers. In 1944, she and a volunteer, using beer cartons donated by Molson's, packed the ethnological collection - displaced from its storage space in the Medical Building - and moved it across campus to Joseph House where it was warehoused alongside the mothballed McCord collection. In 1949, Johannsen became curator of ethnology, in 1950, director of the Redpath Museum and assistant director of McGill museums, and, in 1955, director of McGill museums.93 She was a founding member of both the Canadian Museums Association (1947) and the Province of Quebec Museums Association (1958). Like Maude Abbott in the Medical Museum, Johannsen believed fervently in the teaching and research potential of the McGill museums. She worked particularly to modernize the Redpath as a science museum condensing the collections, adding staff, and presenting exhibitions: "I think the turning point for the museum," she told the Montreal Star in 1968, "came in 1950 when we got electricity in the exhibition areas. Prior to that if a person wanted to see anything after 4:30 in the afternoon, he had to bring his own flashlight."94 Although she oversaw expansion of McGill's museum staff from four in 1942 to fifteen in 1968, Johannsen was acutely aware of her isolation and of McGill's parsimony towards its museums: The various members of the museum committee were tolerant of me over the years. They never stood in my way, but, except in special circumstances, they gave only moral support. McGill had its own financial problems. I could do what I wanted - if it didn't cost anything and if I could find the time to do it in. As it was, we worked from Monday through Saturday noon, and I rarely left for home before 7 p.m.95

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Her pessimism was well placed. McGill authorities remained sceptical of the public function of their natural history museum and her emphasis on school visits: vice principal Stanley Frost described the Redpath as "second rate."?6 Nor was she able to generate strong faculty support for her museum. She did try to introduce a muscology program at McGill and to raise muscology to the status of a profession. Determined to obtain teaching status for McGill's museum professionals, she arranged a summer course, "Exhibit Design for Museums." Offered in June 1959, the course was not repeated.97 As director of McGill museums, Johannsen had the task of reviving the McCord. In January 1965 she organized a meeting between interested faculty and the museum staff telling them that they had "a far more important asset in the McCord Museum than is generally recognized by the Faculties.'^ These efforts came to naught and in 1970, faced with an $8 million deficit, McGill announced the closing of her beloved Redpath Museum and a delay in reopening the McCord. Disillusioned, Johannsen resigned her museum functions, ending her career as director of the University's Gault Estate at Mont St Hilaire.99 Despite the dismal fate of McGill's museums during her tenure, Johannsen at least succeeded in keeping the McCord collection intact. In October 1954, she supervised the "evacuation" of the 30,000 objects in the McCord Museum from Joseph House, a site slotted for the expansion of the university library. While non-Canadian artifacts in the ethnology collection were taken to the basement of the Redpath Museum, Canadian ethnology and the McCord collections were moved to the A.A. Hodgson House, a building recently acquired by McGill. Movers wrapped the artifacts and, in twenty-seven truckloads spread over eleven days, moved them up the hill. The two-storey Hodgson House, elegant in its time with grounds that included fruit trees and tennis courts, was jammed full. Paintings and maps were strung on chicken wire in the attic; part of the costume collection was stored on bathroom shower racks.100 The small staff hired to unpack and inventory the collection formed part of a quiet renaissance at the museum, sparked in

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Hodgson House Located on Drummond Street, Hodgson House was elegant in its time with grounds that included fruit trees and tennis courts. Home of the McCord Museum from 1954 to 1971, the house was demolished to construct McGill's Biology Building.

part by growing interest from ethnologists and historians. In 1956, Empire Universal Films and the Maxwell Cummings Foundation presented McGill with the Notman Photographic Archives, a remarkable collection of some 700,000 items, including glass negatives, prints, lantern slides, photo albums, daguerreotypes, tintypes, photographic equipment, and painted photographs. At the base of this collection were 400,000 photographs taken in the Notman studios between 1856 and 1935. Originally stored in the basement of the Redpath Museum, they later became part of the McCord Museum. In 1957, the Costume and Textile Collection was established. Built around female fashionable dress in Montreal, this collection expanded rapidly from donations in the 19508 and 19608, soon surpassing collections at the Royal Ontario Museum and museums in Nova Scotia and New Brunswick.

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The Collection in Storage at Hodgson House (1954) These photos illustrate conditions in the museum's new home. Archives' labels describe the one on the left as "crowded picture storage under leaky roof" while the one on the right is labelled "un-co-ordinated storage."

Responding to this interest in its collections, McGill announced its intention to hire a curator for the McCord. Dissatisfied with responses to its advertisement for a curator with both archival training and a specialization in Canadian history, it named Gordon R. Lowther as acting curator in 1954.101 A Cambridge MA and a scholar of Arctic archaeology, Lowther had been employed first at a Montreal insurance firm and then at McGill in both the Arctic Institute and the Department of Geography. In his decade at the closed museum, Lowther did much to stimulate research; he was not, however, an administrator, lacked connections with Montreal philanthropists, and was untrained in Canadian history. In 1955 Isabel Dobell was hired to work part-time. Moving up the hierarchy as curator, chief curator, director, and emeritus curator, she dominated the museum's history for two decades.

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CHAPTER THREE

Women's Culture in the ^Museum 1921-75

McKinnon, Victoria Laurier (Laura) - Gently at Belmont House, on Wednesday April 17,1996, surrounded by those that loved her and cared for her. Laura was born on June 26, 1897 to the late Neil and Elizabeth Brown McKinnon in Priceville, Grey County and is predeceased by her beloved sister Elizabeth Alexandra (Ella), and her brothers ... Miss McKinnon served the University of Toronto for 40 years, for much of this time as Curator of the Boyd Museum in the Department of Pathology and in no small part was responsible for the development of the museum as one of the outstanding pathology museums of the world. She moved to Belmont House in 1983 ... Globe and Mail, 23 April 1996 The problem for the intellectual is to try to deal with the impingements of modern professionalization as I have been discussing them, not by pretending that they are not there, or denying their influence, but by representing a different set of values and prerogatives. These I shall collect under the name of amateurism, literally, an activity that is fuelled by care and affection rather than by profit and selfish, narrow specialization. Edward W. Said (19 9 4) J

I have emphasized how McGill only begrudgingly accepted the McCord Museum and then operated it in an increasingly bureaucratic frame. Indeed, in the very period in which it accepted the museum, the university was turning away from Principal Dawson's concept of involvement with a larger public constituency and away from the religious and social debates of Darwinianism to new definitions of science, intellectual life,

professionalization, and disciplinarity. As McCord, Lighthall, Currie, and Nobbs moved off stage in the 19208 and 19308, the museum lost strong conservative voices that had asserted its place in the university. In 1936, the museum's closing brought little protest from academics, themselves vulnerable in a depression institution dominated by the principal's ideology of operating the university like a railway. After 1936, the closed museum represented little more than a warehouse facility; by 1954 McGill documents described the collection as "unco-ordinated storage" and the "former McCord Museum."2 But within the McCord Museum itself, the view of Canadian history and perceptions of the museum's social utility were radically differnent from those of the university. From the McCord's very opening in 1921, the ambivalence of McGill faculty and administrators, with the exception of amateur historians like Lighthall and a few others, had meant that the museum was relegated to the hands of women - staff, donors, and benefactors. The secretaries and assistant curators - the title of curator being reserved for McCord and then left vacant - who constituted the paid employees in the years 1921-36 were entirely female. Most donors of artifacts, and all volunteers within the museum, were women; female benefactors were strongly attracted to the McCord. Urban, well-educated, English-speaking and Protestant, these women came from the sheltered ethnic and class enclaves around the McGill campus. Many had studied at McGill themselves; others had husbands who taught there or who were professionals in the city; most lived close to the campus. While the museum floundered within university strictures, they developed it as a parallel institution within the patriarchal, authoritarian, and professional culture of McGill. Within the university, professionals like Maude Abbott (medicine), Virginia Murray (library school), and Carrie Derick (botany) saw their careers systematically subordinated to those of male colleagues.3 One example of McGill's chilly climate for women occurred in the library system. Beatrice V. Simon worked at McGill from 1928 to 1969 teaching in the Library School and running the Commerce and Law libraries. Her appointment as assistant university librarian in 1947 was

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unacceptable to the newly appointed university librarian, Richard Pennington. For some eighteen years, until his retirement in 1965, the university librarian and the assistant university librarian did not speak to each other, publicly or in private. The situation at McGill was a reflection of the prevailing gender hierarchy in universities and museums in North America. In forty years, 1905 to 1945, only ten women achieved full curatorial status in major American art museums.4 Institutional positions with power, pay, and status went to men; non-professional university work, often grouped under the rubric of secretary, was reserved for women, preferably unmarried. • W O M E N I N T H EM U S E U M •

Most women associated with the McCord Museum cannot be identified among the cohort of feminists in Montreal who battled for changed gender, class, and institutional relationships, for access to the professions of law and medicine, for women's suffrage, for rights for female workers, and for improved conditions for female students at McGill. Women we meet at the McCord appear rather as part of a conventional elite characterized by social and political conservatism. They understood, benefited from, and accommodated themselves to the values and privileges that came with birth, with status associated with the university, or with the professional or business wealth of their husbands and fathers. Few could have harboured illusions as to David Ross McCord's sense of gender hierarchy be it in the home or museum. Many accepted ill-paid or volunteer museum work as appropriate work for women outside the home. But within these parameters, women at the museum experienced a certain empowerment in a socially acceptable and semiautonomous world outside the home. For English-speaking women with intellectual aspirations, a need for female friendship, and a desire to work and contribute outside the home, the museum represented a scholarly, conservative, safe, and female on-campus work site. These social realities had ideological counterparts. Women at the McCord had a view of history different from historians

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in the academy. "Amateurs" and untrained in graduate schools, they were comfortable accessing Canadian history through material culture, such as dress, or through study of the McCord family and its intersections with social, military, or constitutional moments. Resisting the "impingements" of professionalization with "a different set of values and prerogatives," their approach fits Edward Said's definition of amateurism as activities "fuelled by care and affection" rather than by "narrow specialization.'^ Excluded from the teaching, laboratory, sports, commercial, and military activities of the university, they settled in at the museum with ease and pleasure. Quietly shelving David Ross McCord's obsessions with Wolfe, imperialism, commemoration, and sacrifice, they used his books, miniatures, photographs, drawings, chairs, paintings, sugar bowls, clothes, artists' tools, cartoons, wedding gifts, and menus to reshape the museum to themes that interested them: daily life, childhood, the family, domestic objects, the lives of natives, and broad sweeps in Canadian social history. McCord himself confided to the principal that it was his "plan is to make this Museum a refined rendezvous for the education of women, also for the students of the Royal Victoria College and of Trafalgar School, for the nuns and their pupils.6 Nor, unlike academicians, were women at the McCord embarrassed by the broader teaching potential of museums that occurred through school visits, field trips, exhibitions, or the simple presence of children on campus. They saw no incompatibility between educating children and conducting research in the same institution. And, like McCord, they envisaged the museum as a cultural centre where objects on display joined with architecture, furnishings, curators, and volunteers to form an ensemble for the visitor. These conceptions were not foreign to feminists who saw the links among object, home, and female understanding: "every house ought to possess a 'museum,'" was how one feminist expressed it, while, in Chicago, Jane Addams included a "Labour Museum" in Hull House.7 Across North America, women had played a central role in the expansion of libraries and, after 1899, in the establishment of children's museums.8 The Women's Institutes of Ontario were established

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in 1897 and, in the following decades, thousands of women from rural communities acted as "caretakers and guardians of the local heritage" through the compiling of local histories.9 Nor did women at the museum share the prevailing indifference of academic historians to material culture. Dear, we have had such a strange day. We have gone through Nannie's boxes, and it has been so strange. It seemed almost desecration to touch the things she loved so well, and it is not astonishing that she kept the things so closely under her eye, as she had some most valuable things ... an opera shawl, a baby's cap, and her mother's nightcap, a half-written story, and heaps of other things. There were locks of hair of all the children except Harriet and Dick .. .10 Many of the collected objects spoke to particular experience. The decorative arts and collecting of "feminine" objects (ceramics, fans, or lace), exhibiting them in their homes, and passing them on were important activities of middle-class women and had always been respected by David Ross McCord who had inherited this interest from his mother. Women working in the museum might well feel empathy cleaning, preparing for exhibit, or documenting the tea set given to McCord's mother in 1822 at age fifteen when her grandmother left Montreal to live out her widowhood in her native Ireland: My dearest Anne I am highly gratified to learn that you wish to possess anything for my sake, for it is only that could make your [sic] desire to have my china as you have much better already, therefore I beg your acceptance of it, but not as an emblem, for it is much too brittle, of the affection and friendship I have ever felt for you, which will last as long as the life of your truly affectionate grandmother. Eleanor Davidson11 McCord saw women as the keepers of family material culture and was unabashed in soliciting donations from them. Women responded, obviously feeling comfortable offering family

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Eleanor Birnie Davidson and Porcelain Tea Set (c. 1800) Left in 1822 to Anne Ross by her grandmother Eleanor Birnie Davidson, this Worcester tea set, can be examined at the McCord along with its acquisition letters and inventory papers.

artifacts: "Miss Featherstone" of Featherstone Boots and Shoes on Ste Catherine Street offered a pair of foot rubbers; "Miss Angus" sent a Moscow streetcar ticket. In forwarding a portrait of Sir James Kempt, "Lady Benson" included a useful note for establishing provenance: "the little one to the left (as you look at the Picture) is taken from a crayon I think. On the back is written in my grandfather's hand, 'This portrait of my dear old friend Sir James Kempt, he sat for and presented to us in September i854.'"12 The museum's reliance on part-time volunteers tapped into strong philanthropic, artistic, and volunteer traditions among English-speaking women in Montreal. As early as 1871, McGill had been linked to the Montreal Ladies' Education Association, the Montreal Women's Club was founded in 1891, and a year later the Ladies' Morning Musical Club was formed to give female musicians an opportunity to perform publicly in chamber groups and concerts.^ We have already noted the three generations of service by McCord and Ross women to the

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Montreal Protestant Orphan Asylum; other Protestant women had mother to daughter volunteer traditions in the Art Institute, Women's Auxiliaries, Girl Guides, or the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals. In 1933, the Junior League founded the McGill University Museum Auxiliary. Freeing up full-time staff for "duties directly related to the needs of the university," the volunteers cleaned, catalogued, researched, prepared exhibits, and served as guides for school visits.^ Women from powerful families like the Molsons had influence at the McCord. Its daily log records Mabel Molson's frequent visits in the 19205 and 19305 and the careful attention she received from employees: "Miss Molson telephoned to find out Mrs. Baines address and will telephone again."^ Wealthy and unmarried, she contributed money, objects, and suggestions. In 1924, Mabel Molson proposed that a donation box be placed at the entrance to fund acquisitions. This, she told the staff, was common practise in museums without admission fees.16 Donor records in the McCord archives confirm that women, often entrusted with family 'heirlooms' — a suggestive word in itself- favoured the McCord as a repository. Donations, a curator remarked, result from the spring cleaning of attics when "boxes of Aunt Ella's things keep turning up."^ Of twenty-two donors acknowledged by David Ross McCord in the period May 1921 to October 1924, seventeen were female, four were male, and one was an institution (Henry Morgan and Company). Among female donors, ten were unmarried (Miss), four were married or widows (Mrs), and three were specifically identified as widows.18 Among male donors, one was a physician, another an author, and a third was vice-president of the Grand Trunk Railway. All donations in this period appear to have come from English-speaking Montreal. In addition to this gender, class, occupational, and ethnic specificity, most donors lived near the museum. While their donations represent the varied Canadian experience, the community of female donors was neither pan-Canadian nor even a citywide phenomena. Acknowledgment letters reveal that most lived around the university on streets like Lome, Aylmer, or Prince Arthur in what is now the "McGill ghetto," or immediately west

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of the campus at Square Mile addresses on Peel, Mountain, or Ste Catherine. Brothers, husbands, and fathers lived, of course, in the same physical environs. Philanthropist Robert Reford lived in David Tor ranee's mansion, Sir William Macdonald lived adjacent to McGill in the Prince of Wales Terrace, while Sir William Cornelius Van Home's mansion was just along Sherbrooke Street. But their sense of physical place, of Montreal, and the resonance they felt with the history represented in the McCord collections was somehow different. Reford crossed the Atlantic eighty times; Van Home died in Montreal but he left collections to the Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto and instructed that his body be buried in Joliet, Illinois. And Macdonald, who supported so many McGill, and Protestant causes, was apparently never attracted to the museum. The volunteers, donors, and leisured women who supported the McCord represent only part of female culture at the museum. For its female staff, the McCord represented their livelihood and work environment. To help move his collection from his Temple Grove home to McGill and to assist him in the opening exhibition, McCord convinced Mary Dudley Muir to become his secretary and to leave her $ioo-a-month job at the Art Association. As part of its 1919 agreement to accept the museum, McGill agreed to pay his secretary throughout his lifetime.1? McCord obtained a university contract for Muir, reminding the new principal that he had met "my faithful A.D.C. Miss Muir" at McGill's garden party. "Simply give her the keys," he told Principal Currie.20 For the next eight years, she was the museum's sole employee, working first at Temple Grove and then in Joseph House. In contrast to its limited success in attracting faculty or undergraduates, the museum was popular with the general public, particularly schoolchildren. In 1932, it sponsored an exhibit, "The Artist in Canada from the late Eighteenth Century." As well as sixty-four paintings that included Cornelius Krieghoff, James Pattison Cockburn, William Henry Bartlett, James Wilson Morrice, Tom Thomson, and A.Y. Jackson, the

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Mary Dudley Muir (1905) Muir is standing at the far right, second row, in this her McGill graduation photo. Fifteen years later, she received strong praise from McCord in his recommendation to Principal Currie (9 August 1920) that McGill employ her as his secretary: "She is a Christian. She is educated. She is a first-rate judge of art ... Her manners are gracious. Just the woman to aid in such a work as this Museum" (MMA, McCord Museum Papers, Administrative Papers, file 7233).

exhibition included works in silver, woodcarving, and iron. Alongside works from the McCord collection, paintings were lent by Lighthall, the Art Association, and Lady Julia Drummond. McCord was dead by the time of this exhibition but, in keeping with his insistence on the didactic value of objects and on the fundamental differences between an art gallery and a museum, particular care was taken with the preparation of instructive exhibition labels.21 Acquisitions and the archives remained important even as the university moved to close the museum. In 1933 assistant curator Dorothy Warren spoke on French radio station CKAC encouraging the contribution of documents and artifacts. Tel-

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ling listeners of McCord's emphasis on inventorying, of the link between Canadian history and document preservation, and of the university's responsibility for the collection, she described the archives as a collection which would give posterity a coherent picture of every period of Canadian history ... Sometimes a paper or pamphlet which gives the key to a motive or an action of the time is thrown away and can never be replaced. The university makes itself responsible for the records giving a truthful story of the life of our country ... Carefully protected in drawer after drawer in the museum are sorted articles, documents, costumes and portraits which are waiting to illustrate some crisis in Canadian history or show the gradual development in art or industry. Perhaps in some more fortunate time, space may be added to the museum whereby whole rooms may be given up to the environment of one century.22

The museum's bread-and-butter constituency was class visits, particularly from Protestant schools. Isabel Craig told the Teacher's Magazine that "during the school year the needs of the teacher are kept in view, and the constant stream of children who visit the museum bears witness to their interest."23 Visited by some 6000 schoolchildren in 1932-33, the McCord worked with school principals to organize visits in which Canadian History would "live." Tours were conducted by the assistant curator who ended the visit with a written test to evaluate student observation.2^ Younger visitors, lacking a knowledge of heroes like Champlain or Wolfe, were shown exhibits of native life that included children. Older boys were interested in the headdress of Tecumseh, "which made more real the exploits of that 'warrior.'" While Wolfe's life and death were explained to boys, different visits were organized for girls: A few days ago I went with the girls in my class to the McCord Museum. Miss Muir took us around and made our visit very interesting by telling us all about the different things collected there. One thing I liked very much was the little papoose doll who was all ready to be strapped to its mother's back and taken for its outing.25

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Into the 19605, Isabel Dobell diverted attention away from the pistols and military paraphernalia in the Wolfe collection to objects illustrating a broad Canadian social history. Although a journalist had been promised a look at a lock of General Wolfe's hair, she "fished out instead a locket containing a likeness of Wolfe's intended, Katherine Lowther." En route to the costume collection, she pointed out that "fashion is one of the most telling mirrors of an age": Here Mrs. High Society's 1920 ball gown hangs between the dark green corded silk coat legend ascribes to the Marquis de Montcalm and the blood-stained military coat worn by Malcolm Fraser when he went up the cliffs September 12-13,1/59-26

This manoeuvring to subvert commemorative and military history in favour of a different, more female, and more social Canadian history that included papooses, fashion, and lockets took place in an institution characterized by strict hierarchical and gender relations. We have seen Lighthall's angry, written redress to Mary Dudley Muir. This was in keeping with McCord's position that a secretary held her job "so long as she may be approved of by me."2? Female museum employees, despite their university degrees, were classified as secretary or assistant curator, occupations with lower pay, security, and pension benefits. In 1924, Mary Dudley Muir wrote complaining of her status as a secretary and the lack of any job definition for her work.28 Four years later, sick and unable to work, she retired. Incapacitated and living in the "McGill Apartments" on Mansfield Street, Muir asked for a university pension, a plea taken up by Lighthall. Describing "her moral claim" on McCord's estate, his suggestion of $40 a month was negotiated down by McGill officials to an annual pension of $400. A thankful Muir agreed to be discreet, writing Lighthall that "as you suggest I will not talk about this matter."29 The same paternalism characterized Lighthall's dealings with Muir's successor. As recognition of Dorothy Warren's overtime museum work in 1931, he gave her a gold watch and enamel case from Anne McCord's estate.3° Gold watches for female employees disappeared with the

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Native Headdress and Costume Exhibition (c. 19205)

Depression and attempts by McGill to cut costs and to reduce the autonomy of departments across the campus. Assistant curator Dorothy Warren resisted the director of museums' 1935 decision to route all museum mail through his office. "I see no reason," she protested, "why the McCord Museum, and my own personal mail should be delivered to you to give to me." Defending her right to sign museum letters, she objected to a policy whereby carbon copies of all letters were to be initialled by university officials before filing: "my ability to carry on the correspondence of the museum," she protested, "has not been questioned by the university." She was particularly angered by restrictions on her accessibility to researchers. Under new rules, answers to research inquiries required approval of the secretary of the museums committee: "I protest that the Assistant Curator should be capable of answering questions on historical

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subjects, without reference to the Secretary ...31 Acquisitions were another litmus test of curatorial autonomy, and she opposed plans to relegate accessioning to the University Museum Office: these, she argued, were functions of the curator "who is in charge of the material."32 Forced to take periodic sick leave because of an eye ailment, Warren's work was increasingly assumed by part-time employee Isabel Craig. Unmarried and one of five McGill BA graduates in history in 1927, Craig lost her job in June 1935 and wrote the dean of science looking for work; in 1937 she was awarded an MA and she eventually found administrative work in the Law Faculty. Also in June 1935, Warren was told that the Museum was closing and that she would be dismissed, a decision reversed two days later. However, her wages for Sundays and holidays when the museum was open were reduced from $3 to $2.50 a day. In June 1936, Warren was again given one month's notice. Concerned about her personal responsibility for the collection and for informing donors with objects on loan of the closing, she asked university officials for a "written statement" absolving her of liability. * ISABEL DOBELL •

For two decades, until her retirement in 1975, the museum was dominated by Isabel Dobell. Hired part-time by Alice Johannsen in 1955, she began inventorying and organizing the dusty, boxed collections. Middle-aged, divorced, and with grown children, the museum became her mission: "I became obsessed with the idea that there must be a museum again, that one of the great collections of Canadiana in the country should not be kept buried like the gold in Fort Knox."34 She was named curator of prints and drawing in 1957, chief curator in 1968, and director from 1970 until mandatory university retirement at age sixty-five in 1975. She was then named the university's first "emeritus curator." With the museum clearly not "in the mainstream of McGill's interests," she sought outside money.35 Using her female networks she tapped philanthropic support from the Stewart, Molson,

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and McConnell families. Like McCord in 1919, she imposed the museum onto a reluctant university and saw its reopening eventually in 1971. She hired and trained a generation of employees, often female and increasingly professional. Irascible and an author of popular Canadian histories, she contested the military, constitutional, and often European histories favoured in the History Department. Although she encouraged research in the collections, popular education, particularly of children, remained her lifelong enthusiasm. Born in 1909 near the McGill campus in a rented house at 3625 Durocher, Isabel Barclay grew up on the fringe of the Square Mile, close to but not part of Montreal's old money. Her grandfather, the Reverend James Barclay (1844-1920), had been Queen Victoria's chaplain at Balmoral Castle before emigrating to Canada in 1883 as minister at St Paul's Presbyterian Church. A powerful force in her childhood, and a moral figurehead in Montreal's Scottish community, he was a founder of the Trafalgar School for girls. A church plaque commemorates him as an administrator, preacher, advocate of religious toleration, liberal thinker, Christian educator, and an individual of "strong personality, broad culture, generous sympathy, and enthusiastic interest in everything that affected human welfare."36 Her father, Malcolm Drummond Barclay, was less distinguished. He was a McGill graduate and land surveyor, but his life was marked by alcoholism. Her father's binge drinking and violence in the home terrified Isabel and her two younger brothers. To escape what she called her father's "sad disastrous lifetime," she transferred her loyalties to school.37 A pupil at The Study, an elite girls school, from age eight until entering McGill in 1926, she was strongly influenced by headmistress Margaret Gascoigne. Eight years after her graduation she described Gascoigne as perhaps the greatest influence for good that we have had in our lives. From the earliest years of our childhood she always strove to teach us to be true to the best in ourselves. To be simple and sincere; to think for ourselves and form our own values; to hate all sham and shun the second-rate were the influences she brought to bear upon us.38

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Reflecting a half century later, she placed Gascoigne as a greater influence than her father, husband, or university teachers: "She set the bedrock of my itinerary as she did for nearly all of us at The Study."39 Her school years contributed to her interest in writing, to her enthusiasm for other cultures particularly native, and to her romantic view of nature. Female friendship was, of course, important at The Study. The staff was entirely female and it was here she built lifetime networks among elite families like the Morgans, Lymans, and Molsons. Member of a Greek sorority at the school, she became president of the school's Old Girl Association and co-edited its magazine, The Study Chronicle. In 1962, she was still active at the school, reading to a class from her history of Canada.4° Less is known of her McGill career in the years 1926-1930, where she took a degree in English and history; she did name creative-writing professor Harold Files and historian W.T. Waugh as her most influential university teachers. Married a year after graduation to civil engineer Curzon Dobell, she moved first to the Montreal suburb of Dorval and then in 1943 to New York City. Seven years later, with her marriage disintegrating she returned to Montreal with her two children. Her attitude to the end of her marriage was mixed, and looking back thirty years later she denied its influence on her thinking: "My divorce? - strangely No - It devastated me but I do not se it as affecting my thinking in my attack on life and life for me has always had to be an attack - it has been my way of survival since my grandfather died while I was sitting on his knee on a sleigh on the mountain."!1 Early in married life, Dobell began writing. In 1934 she expressed obvious ennui with herself and her Study classmates - "Committee Women, Feminists, Guide Officers, Actresses, Canary Breeders and Sportswomen" - who might have accomplished "a sensational record of amazing deeds, instead of the usual deadly chronicle of names and nurseries." Unfortunately "news" can only be as entertaining as the people it concerns; and in spite of our desire to be dumbfounding we have not succeeded individually or collectively in being very different to what we

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have been in by-gone years. Our lives, though of considerable fascination to ourselves become somewhat dull when viewed in retrospect. In short most of us are still jogging along in the same old rut.42

Her short stories, which she was selling by 1939, emphasized romanticism and respect for the world of children. Written from the perspective of a boy, "Imagination" attacked the insensitivity of the drawing-room world of mothers, big hats, and nannies to the fantasy of boys. Her poems imitated Wordsworth - "O for the sight of trees cool and green /And sounds of water murmuring in a forest glade" - and recalled W.D. Lighthall's contrast between country and city: "a scorched and breathless town ... a molten flame in a glaring summer sky."43 At age twenty-five and an "Old Girl," she agreed to work alongside a teenager in co-editing the Study yearbook; it published her poems alongside that of eight-year-old students. In Manhattan a decade later, she began writing children's textbooks. Researched in the New York Public Library and published in several languages, Worlds without End: Exploration from 2000 Years B.C. to Today (1956) was a history of exploration. Back in Montreal she wrote The Story of Canada in 1964. A well-illustrated history for young people, it presented a romantic nationalist Canada, a "land of hope where men are free." Rejecting cartoon techniques and "cute" drawings in the Disney tradition, she told her illustrator to draw "vivid pictures that give the feel and image of the land, and the people who gradually gained a foothold on it."44 The book also demonstrated her growing interest in ethnology; one-third of the book is devoted to natives, a weighting which contrasts sharply with her political narrative. She subordinated themes such as Confederation, canals, and railways to social history, daily life, building bees, the history of potash, immigration, and gold rushes. The British Conquest was reduced to a paragraph: These years (after the Conquest) were difficult times for the Canadians. It is always hateful to live under enemy rule. The British tried to govern well. They let the Canadians keep their religion and their language and many of their laws, but it was not happy time for anybody.45

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Her respect for children was apparent across her career: Even those who say they "don't like history" become involved with an exhibit that gives them a greater understanding of their land and the people to whom they belong. Children seeing an exhibit that tells a story suddenly come alive to much that may have escaped them in the school room, or even in their books.46 She later became concerned with instructing children in native cultures. In 1969 she prepared a children's catalogue, The Art of Canadian Indians and Eskimos, for an exhibition held in Ottawa and Paris: I've always felt that children should have catalogues with a guide they can use themselves. I'm not suggesting that guided tours by an adult are inadvisable but I think children should be given tools that they can use independently - so that they can understand what they're looking at.47 Finally, she published Song of the Forest, twelve Indian folk tales drawn from anthropological studies, and The Native People of Canada, bilingual pamphlets published as part of the McCord's celebration of the International Year of the Child.48 Dobell's concentration on children and in writing popular history separated her from professional historians. She did give drafts of her histories to McGill Canadianists J.I. Cooper and Hereward Senior and signed herself "Associate Historian, McCord Museum, McGill University." Her network, however, was outside the university and included William Taylor, director of the National Museum of Man, Katherine Lamont, headmistress at The Study, and Cecile Gagnon, her illustrator for the Story of Canada and an important author of popular histories in French. In her writing and museum work, Dobell struggled with both the gendered reality of museums and male preoccupations in the presentation of history. She wrote her illustrator in 1966 that she was drawing material from the Woodlands Indian mythology since "their stories are not as bloodthirsty as some of the others."49 In 1980, she wrote her friend Taylor at the

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National Museum of Man objecting to plans for the War Museum in Ottawa, since it too often emphasized the "heroism of battlefields" over the "shattered lives, ruined cities, and ravaged countrysides." For the fortieth anniversary of the end of World War n she suggested an exhibition that showed war "as a part of man's total experience" and that included "the hells of Leningrad and Hiroshima," "the senseless bombing of Bath and Dresden," and "our handling of the Japanese in B.C." Emphatic that it "not be military historians - at least not all" who were named to curate its exhibition, she suggested finding "somebody with imagination" "that might start to change the sentimental and romantic vision ... of battle that is still perpetuated by toy manufacturers and military museums!!!"?0 By the 19705, Dobell had a precise understanding of small museums, their function and management, and of the history they presented. Evaluating the Moose Jaw Art Museum in 1975, she argued for balance between the various bodies of governance. Board members, for example, should not interfere with a museum director and should never give instructions to museum staff. Both staff and the public should participate in budget and exhibition committees. She accepted that curators in small museums would perform differing functions. These responsibilities, however, had to be carefully defined, along with museum priorities.?1 Although marked by a pan-Canadian nationalism, her attitude to acquisitions was influenced by regionalism. Small museums in Canada should abandon pretensions to establish European collections, building instead regionally based collections of Canadian art, ethnology, and social history. Local themes should predominate in exhibitions; in Moose Jaw's case, artifacts of the Plains peoples and pioneers might be exhibited in "relation to time and use."?2 No fan of contemporary art, she favoured "traditional" exhibitions: prints and paintings "of an earlier day, not only give insight into the past but afford the opportunity to study the development of painting in Canada." Hired part-time in 1955 to inventory the overflowing collections at Hodgson House, Dobell brought energy, toughness, and perhaps most importantly, networks to the benefactor

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Isabel Dobell, Mrs Walter Stewart, and Beatrice Molson (c. 1970) Beatrice Stewart married T.H.P. Molson. On 2 March 1973, she wrote to Dobell on the death of her mother, linking female friendship and the Stewarts' philanthropic support for the museum (Dobell Papers): Dear Ibby: This is a memory of Mum's last day when she was so pleased with the McCord. I am really the last link of the 'old school'. No one will have the memories of the trials and thoughts that went into the idea of the old Union to house the collection. Whatever happens it has been put on the map and really Ibby it is due to you and your great imagination and dear Dad's feelings for anything to do with Sir William. I feel mother would approve of a 'nest-egg'. She was not extravagant at any point of her long life. Later I shall send my usual for the museum. Love Bea

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community. At school she had known Beatrice Molson, second wife of T.H.P. Molson and daughter of Walter Stewart, the heir of Sir William Macdonald's tobacco fortune. The Stewarts' home, "Prince of Wales Terrace," was just along Sherbrooke Street from the Joseph House, first home of the museum. It was Macdonald who bought Joseph House for McGill.53 Financial support from the Stewarts was crucial to the museum's survival. It enabled Dobell to study at the Radcliffe Institute on Historical and Archival Management and, at McGill, facilitated her promotion in 1957 to full-time employment as curator of prints and drawings.54 New funding encouraged new professionalism, a revived interest in exhibitions, and establishment of the costume collection. This outside support gave Dobell muscle at McGill; at the same time, her increasing influence made the McCord a force competing with Alice Johannsen's plan for a comprehensive university museum. In 1943, with funding anticipated from postwar federal work programs, the museums committee prepared a plan for a four-storey "McGill Museum." The McCord collection would be lodged on the fourth floor. This project, described later by Johannsen as "a very pleasant pipe dream with a faint tinge of reality," never materialized.55 By 1961, Dobell was urging Johannsen to abandon her "ideal" of an all-purpose university museum and to focus instead on a museum of Canadian history and revive the McCord in a renovated Student Union Building. Dobell pressured McGill to adopt this policy and to "be willing to announce it."?6 • MUSEUM REVIVAL •

By the 19605, museum staff faced growing public interest in the collections. At the Notman Photographic Archives, requests increased after the 1967 publication of Russell Harper and Stanley Triggs' Portrait of a Period: a Collection of Notman Photographs.V As early as 1957, exhibitions from the museum's collection were being organized for display, both at the museum and elsewhere: "Beaver, Bourgeois, and Bison" received enthusiastic picture coverage in the press. Held in the Redpath

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Museum and co-curated by Dobell and popular historian Marjorie Wilkins Campbell, this exhibition, replete with a birchbark canoe and voyageur hunting knives, highlighted Scottish and French Canadian exploits in the Canadian west.58 Dobell always courted journalists who came to review exhibitions. Most came with notions of the McCord's concentration in Wolfe and war but left with lessons in social or native history. As well as bringing out a North West Company gun and Montcalm's silver wine goblet for a visiting columnist in 1965, Dobell showed him "simple objects" reflecting "the day-to-day life of yesterday": a child's kaleidoscope, a goldsmith's tools, and a shingle-maker's bench.59 In 1962, the National Gallery in Ottawa organized an exhibition of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century paintings of Canadian origin from the McCord collection, the first major exhibition of works from the museum held outside Montreal. The McCord received further publicity with the publication of J. Russell Harper's exhibition catalogue, Everyman's Canada: Paintings and Drawings from the McCord Museum of McGill University.60 In 1964, Harper was named chief curator at the McCord. Strong-willed and committed to building collections, he was greatly respected by Dobell. After receiving his MA in 1947 from the University of Toronto, he had worked as chief cataloguer at the Royal Ontario Museum, as archivist and curator of the New Brunswick Museum in Saint John, as acting curator of the Beaverbrook collection in Fredericton, as special archaeologist for excavation on the Louisbourg site, and as curator of Canadian Art at the National Gallery of Canada. On staff at the McCord, Harper benefited from research grants from McGill's French Canada Studies Program. While at McGill he published Painting in Canada: A History (1966) and, back at the National Gallery, he published Early Painters and Engravers in Canada (1970) and books on Paul Kane, Cornelius Krieghoff, and William G.R. Hind. Committed to interdisciplinary studies, directing graduate students in the history of art at Concordia, and interested in social history, daily life, and artifacts of dress, games, and work, Harper boosted the museum's intellectual credibility and added greatly to the collections. He

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/. Russell Harper at his home (1968)

was instrumental in the appointment of Stanley Triggs as curator of the Notman Photographic Archives and, with Triggs, wrote William Notman: Portrait of a Period (1967). Like museums, department stores were major exhibitors of objects and their very survival depended on attracting the public to their showcases. As marketing took new forms, the big stores found it in their interest to associate themselves with the activities of their female clientele. By 1965, Eaton's was supporting Museum Week in Montreal, an event sponsored by the Ladies Committee of the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts. On the McGill campus, students began supporting the museum. Touting the McCord as a "showcase" and "research centre," the McGill Daily drew attention to its need for a new facility.61 At a Student Society meeting in November 1961, architecture students Morris Charney, Rudy Javosky, and Derek Drummond suggested conversion of the old Student Union Building into a new McCord Museum.

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Canada's centenary in 1967, the International Exposition in Montreal, and To Know Ourselves: The Report of the Commission on Canadian Studies (1976) all brought attention to the study of Canada at McGill and to the significance of its Canadiana collections. As the university expanded in the 19605 and 19708, hiring reflected this interest in Canada. History became the strongest department in Canadianists with the addition of Laurier LaPierre (1963), Carman Miller (1971), John Thompson (1971), Louise Dechene (1973), and Richard Rice (1973); I joined the department in 1975, the last Canadianist added in that period of expansion. Across the university, scholars like Jean-Louis Roy, Bruce Trigger, Maurice Pinard, Alec Lucas, Michael Stein, Daniel Latouche, Don Bates, Louis Dudek, Hugh MacLennan, James Mallory, Tom Naylor, Jean-Ethier Blais, Peter Buitenhuis, Lillian Rider, John Archer, Nellie Reese, and Peter McNally brought voice to the study of Canada and to the use of McGill's resources in Canadiana. McGill's French Canada Studies Program and its Centre for Northern Studies were established to teach about and to research particular regions. Reports in 1973 and 1980 outlined McGill's Canadiana holdings, particularly in the Department of Rare Books and Special Collections, the French Canadian pamphlet collection in the McLennan Library, the Percy Nobbs room in the BlackaderLauterman Library of Architecture and Art, the Rare Books collection in the Faculty of Law Library, and the Osier Library of the History of Medicine.62 These collections and those in the McCord Museum gave McGill rank as a major resource for research on Canada. Between 1965 and 1975 the university's Canadian collections were enriched by addition of the Lawrence Lande Collection with its 12,000 items, its dedicated research and storage space in the McLennan Library, and its excellent catalogues. In December 1971, a newly established Canadian Studies Program Committee was mandated to contribute "to the preservation and development of the Canadian heritage and to McGill's role in fostering this heritage."63 The committee proposed a fifty-four-credit major in Canadian studies. Separating from North American studies, where its courses had previously been listed, the new major offered Canadian courses in anthro-

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pology, architecture, economics, English, French, geography, history, political science, religious studies, and sociology. In 1974, there was discussion of establishment at McGill of an Institute of Canadian Studies: a multi-disciplinary centre for research and graduate studies which would further the study of Canada by undertaking specific research projects, conducting graduate seminars, stimulating and assisting Canadian studies and research in other parts of the University and organizing lectures, conferences, and other events in the field of Canadian Studies.64

Part of graduate faculty and with funding anticipated from Lawrence Lande, the Max Bell Foundation, or the Molson Foundation, the institute would coordinate and develop the use of McGilPs archival, library, and museum research resources. Although the institute did not materialize, this expanding interest in Canada was grist for Dobell's mill and, using the media, she kept up pressure on university authorities. Her photograph and, more importantly, her opinion that the McCord Museum had been neglected by the university, surfaced regularly in the press. While the Montreal Gazette lamented that the McCord was "an invisible museum," the Montreal Star, a McConnell newspaper, described the McCord as "one of the world's most inaccessible museums." It went on to emphasize the importance of material culture and museums in preserving memory in Canada: if we are to have any history, we can't let things like these get away from us. The world may be choked with papers, but we ought to be careful of what we destroy. Too much has been lost already. Coming up to our hundredth birthday as a nation, we should give a thought to the danger of losing our memory. And that's where museums come in.65

While McGill agonized over its position as an elite, Englishspeaking institution in a francisizing Quebec concerned with equality in its universities, Dobell emphasized that the university's Museum of Canadian History was open to the community and

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that its staff welcomed researchers: "Anyone with a bonafide research project can consult our material. But you can't telephone for information. People ring up and ask what Wolfe had for breakfast. But we don't answer questions. You have to come in - and we'll direct your research."66 Dogged promotion by Dobell, the hiring of strong curators like Russell Harper and Stanley Triggs, revived philanthropic support for the McCord, publication of books based on museum collections by academics like Bruce Trigger, and growing faculty, student, and public interest in Canadian studies and the museum forced attention from McGill. In 1961, the university Senate asked the museums committee to evaluate the teaching role of McGill museums. Noting that collections such as the ethnology collection were attracting international attention and bringing collaboration with the National Museum and the Public Archives of Canada, the committee emphasized the collections' importance for graduate students. Rating McGill's museum resources as the best of any Canadian university, it described the McCord's "paintings, prints, objects and documents" as "national treasures" providing "a unique insight into the social history of Canada."67 Rejecting establishment of a general art gallery on the campus as peripheral to the university's primary functions, the report identified the McCord and ethnological museums as "needed for teaching and research." The same committee pointed to ongoing "faculty apathy toward university museums." This is caused, it reported, by the extraordinary persistence of the Victorian notion of museums, which restricted their function to the preservation and (sometimes) exhibition of objects for which no one else could think of a profitable use ... In spite of rapid evolution of modern museums in recent years toward live institutions of teaching and research, a development in which McGill museums share, the concept of a museum as a place of teaching, research, inspiration and even entertainment is slow to develop in the lay mind.68 In 1963, with construction underway on the new student centre, the university ordered a feasibility study into converting

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the old Student Union Building into a home for the McCord Museum. It was Stewart family money, solicited by Dobell and contributed anonymously, which permitted the renovation and move. Designed by Percy Nobbs and erected in 1905, the Student Union was constructed of steel and solid masonry, was fireproof, and had a heritage stone facade. Its Sherbrooke Street site opposite the campus might serve to bridge the museum's double functions of research and public programming.^ Responsibility for design and liaison with the architect fell to three women: Alice Johannsen, Nancy Dunbar, and Isabel Dobell. Technical and financial issues in the $3 million renovation were handled by Philip Gross, head of building and grounds. Dunbar, a graduate of Skidmore College and the University of Delaware, had been curator of exhibits for McGill museums since 1959. Johannsen, Dunbar, and Dobell were instrumental in the choice of Guy Desbarats as architect; he had met Johannsen as a McGill student writing a thesis in architecture. The three struggled with the competing research, teaching, and public uses of the building and made on-site decisions with the architect. Particularly complicated was preservation of the vestibule and foyer as well as the ballroom ceiling. The renovation was shaped to give place to each collection: photographic archives, costume, ethnography, prints and drawings, and the archives and library. Organizing the museum in the Student Union was the high point of Dobell's career and it recalled David Ross McCord's determination in locating his museum in Joseph House. To give character to the Museum, she insisted on the importance of the broad central stairs and the three-storey totem pole they encircled.?0 On moving day, 26 February 1968, and enjoying her nomination as chief curator, Dobell wrote down her feelings and the merging of her life with that of the museum: "It is true. I have given the McCord all I had to offer these last 12 years but it is also true that the museum has offered me the means to a life of good purpose. The McCord Museum and I owe one another no debt."7i Despite the renovations, move, and announced opening for 1971, the museum's opening was still precarious. In 1970, a

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shocked Dobell learned that McGill was cutting all financial support to its museums. With the likelihood that the McCord would remain closed, an angry Dobell met with friends at the Ritz Carlton Hotel.?2 Following lunch, she visited Beatrice Molson, who organized another Stewart family donation. With an additional $100,000 contribution, given anonymously by the McConnell Foundation, Dobell forced the university to grant public access to the McCord three days a week.73 The McCord's opening in 1971 permitted Dobell, in the last years of her career, to articulate her vision of museum culture. Critical of the prevailing professionalization and specialization in universities and museums, she accepted a balance between amateur and professional. A curator could still learn the profession on the job but was expected to be a jack of all trades; the costume curator, for example, handled social events and publicity for exhibitions. Cynthia Eberts, who started work at the museum in 1968 and ultimately became costume curator, got her start after meeting Dobell in the lobby of the Linton Apartments, where both of them lived. She started in Hodgson House, cleaning objects, inventorying, and recording gifts. As the costume collection grew, Dobell sent her to London to train at the Victoria and Albert Museum. Sometimes begrudgingly, Dobell accepted the place of volunteerism in museum culture. Helping out for one afternoon a week or part-time archival work at minimal wage were a form of apprenticeship that, for the determined and university-educated, might lead to a fulltime professional appointment. Pamela Miller had a McGill BA, a postgraduate degree in archival administration, and two children. She started in 1970 as a volunteer, before being hired by Dobell as archivist in 1973. Hired by Dobell in 1969, designer Clifford Williamson helped with the move into the new building: I helped unpack everything. It's the best way to know a collection ... I believe in the social factor in museum display, in the background furniture, artifacts - of the society that wore them. People come to a museum to see and feel the past. They don't want to come to just a storage place for old things.

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The Sti,dent L uion Building Qvn'i'r/e*/ into the McCord Museum Taken from the campus side of Sherbrookc Street, this 1978 photograph emphasizes the physical integration of museum and university.

Under Williamson's tutelage, the museum presented the bestdesigned exhibitions in Canada. Sparing in their use of artifacts and with intelligent labels, the McCord's two permanent exhibitions illustrated the origins of Canada: archaeologists from the National Museum of Man wrote the script for the ethnographic and archaeological gallery, while "The land of the St. Lawrence," was prepared by historian William Eccles. Dobell's hiring was eclectic. Conrad Graham began working at the McCord as a volunteer in the Notman Collection; hired full-time in 1972, he went on to become registrar and curator of prints and drawings. In 1977, Jacqueline Ross-Robertson became costume curator. From 1965 until his retirement in 1993, Stanley

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Triggs was the museum's best-known curator. After study at the Brooks Institute of Photography in Santa Barbara and in the University of British Columbia's Fine Arts and Anthropology Program, he was hired by Russell Harper as curator of the Notman Photographic Archives. At his retirement, Triggs emphasized that "what interests me is social history ... people." What pleased him most as curator was "catering to people off the street," and he rejected suggestions that the Notman Archives was elitist and geared to university researchers74 Difficult for authorities, researchers found him generous to a fault: "I have spent many hours at the Notman," a researcher in the history of medicine wrote in 1989, and have been helped ably and willingly by Stanley Triggs, Nora Hague, and Tom Humphry. This is a truly remarkable photographic archive, and from my point of view it is well organized and accessible, and the staff has full use of the collection. It is noteworthy that the researcher can work in the midst of the collection and be immediately accessed by the people there. This is an enormous strength of this collection and the most efficient way for it to work in my opinion. It is facilities like the Notman Archives which make McGill great and make it the research centre that it is.?5

Both Russell Harper and Dobell enthusiastically adopted David Ross McCord's view of the crucial relationship between collections and archives, between object and documentation. In 1964, Harper launched a centennial project in which the museum would organize "a systematic collection of documents relating to Canadian art history."?6 Under Dobell, the historical archives, along with the Notman Photographic Archives, remained open to researchers during the move into the Student Union. Much of Dobell's directorship was spent struggling with McGill over autonomy. She worked to obtain increased operating funds from McGill while maximizing the museum's independence from university control. She continued to expand the McCord's influence in the community. With her plans for a television studio in the museum and exhibitions that would travel across Quebec, she troubled university authorities.

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Stanley Triggs (1983)

Proud of her accomplishments, she was sensitive to faculty indifference, particularly from friends like law professor Frank Scott. Angry, she transcribed, in what she called "Notes in Desperation," her recollections of a conversation with Scott: "How," Scott told her, "can you expect McGill to worry about the McCord when its whole future as an institution is at stake. After all, the McCord has been closed since when? 1932? 1936? Well, we had a pretty good university without it." I stuck to my point that McGilPs central problem was not money, but its own wooly thinking since the end of World War n, its present finger-in-the dike-approach to its problems and what I call the World War i general's mentality of the administration. Frank, getting visibly more angry every moment and sounding like a refugee from the Pentagon, positively shouted that he had been around McGill longer than I had. I said, "naturally, but remember I have been close to the

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university's modus vivendi for more than 15 years and I certainly am very, very close to it now and I feel there is merit in what I have to say." "No doubt" said Frank with sarcasm and left to pour himself another drink. Marian [Scott's wife and Dobell's cousin] just shook her head and said she thought it was time to eat... The whole episode left me convinced that (a) I could count on McGill for NOTHING, (b) Frank did not care to discuss issues with anyone not his intellectual equal, (c) that Frank almost unnoticed had suddenly grown old. The whole thing was rather a shock, but I grow shock proof with the years77

Dobell was just as determined to protect McCord funds from McGill raiding. Just months from retirement in 1975, she accused vice-principal Dale Thomson of transferring funds from the Friends of McCord to balance the museum budget. Insisting that these funds were in her discretion as director, that they were to be used for conservation and special exhibitions, and that she had given assurances to Mrs Gerald Bronfman and Mrs T.H.P. Molson that these donations would "never" be used for general budget purposes, she gave the vice principal a moral lesson: "If the University does not consider its use of this money a betrayal of trust, I do, and since the assurances given to various donors were given by me in the University's name, I feel my integrity is involved in this matter and I have no intention of letting it rest as it now stands."78 Similar financial considerations often represented the bottom line between McGill and the museum. In 1970, Stanley Frost tried, apparently unsuccessfully, to have Dobell's $13,780 salary as director transferred from McGill's budget to that of the McCord.79 Indeed, with several McCord personnel on the McGill payroll, the university often had the last word. In 1974, convinced that curator Stanley Triggs, a father of four, merited a $5000 raise Dobell had to turn to the university. At her own retirement in 1975, at the mandatory retirement age of sixty-five, Dobell, whose paid career had spanned nineteen years, learned that her monthly McGill pension would be $380. Despite the

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intervention of her lawyer and a long letter outlining the money she had raised for the university, her plea for an exceptional pension was turned down.80 Named emeritus curator, Dobell's influence waned after 1975 and her retirement freed the university to seek new solutions for its museum predicament.

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CHAPTER

FOUR

!A Public ^Museum, 19705 and 19808 My spirits were given a negative push by an invitation I received today from (the) McCord. This is to a cocktail reception for a commercial fashion show of a spring collection of dresses... it dampens my enthusiasm ... I find it difficult to reconcile my responsibilities to promote research activities at McGill with partial responsibility for sponsoring a fashion show at the McCord ... McGill vice-principal Gordon Maclachlan, 1983! Rarely has history been so socially impotent. And some responsibility must lie on its own shoulders, on the reticence of historians, their ambiguities, their reluctance to accept the social responsibilities that their subject imposes on them, and their adamant conservatism towards the teaching of history. J.H. Plumb, 1988^

To the 19708, this book represents my reconstruction of the McCord family, establishment of a university museum, and the work of curators like Isabel Dobell. The process of writing this history necessarily changes in 1975. In that year I came to McGill to teach Canadian history; and from the History Department's location in the Leacock Building, the McCord Museum can be seen across Sherbrooke Street. Interested in the history of Montreal and particularly its middle class, I saw the museum as an extremely valuable resource on the campus. Over two decades, I researched and published from its collections, taught seminars there, co-curated two exhibitions, collaborated on two books based on the collections, and for five years in the early 19905, sat on its board as one of the university's statutory representatives.

Recapitulating the museum's history to the 19708, we see that it resulted from David Ross McCord's obsession with commemorating his vision of the entwined histories of his family and of Canada. He bequeathed to McGill a superb collection but an inadequate endowment. With the university's ongoing ambivalence towards museums, the McCord was sustained by its staff; after its closing, it was kept on life support by museum authorities at McGill, and by persistent support from English Montreal's female elite. The latter had strong traditions of voluntarism and philanthropy, of preserving family artifacts, and of fascination with the Canadian past, particularly material culture and the history of family, natives, and daily life. Working in the dilapidated Hodgson House or in the basement of the Redpath Museum, where the Notman Photographic Archives were first housed, staff and volunteers worked to maintain the collections. And, although the museum was closed to the public, increasing numbers of researchers were given access to collections. The connection between women's culture and a university museum was inauspicious for the McCord's future. In the gendered corridors of McGill, it was ominous that defence of its museums fell principally to three women: Maude Abbott, director of the Medical Museum, Alice Johannsen, director of McGill museums, and, Isabel Dobell at the McCord. Sharing a passion for the institution of McGill, the three never attracted consistent support across the university. In 1924, the pathological museum was transferred from the Strathcona Medical Building to the Pathological Building leaving Abbott in charge of a reduced Medical Historical Museum.3 We have seen the mothballing of the McCord Museum; it reopened in 1971, the very year the Redpath Museum was shut to the public. Dobell's achievement was in harmonizing the female elite's need for social, intellectual, and philanthropic gratification with the McCord's research and public service functions. Sixteen years after starting at the McCord, she succeeded in opening the museum permanently to the public and in bringing philanthropist, volunteer, curator, researcher, and visitor under the same roof. With its rich collections, strong exhibitions, expanding curatorial staff, and effective renovations, which provided

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state-of-the-art storage facilities, lighting, and climate control, the McCord in the 19708 had a well-deserved international reputation for excellence. The shift to social history and the study of material culture transformed the McCord collections from the category of stuffy to the avant-garde. The irony was that, as its collections moved to the research forefront, the museum's mission in the years after Dobell's retirement in 1975 became more problematic. State cultural policies, sharpening administrative focus on the accountability of curators, and a museum board with little empathy for the culture of the university were disturbing omens for an ongoing museum environment in which university research and public programming might remain compatible. This situation was not unique to the McCord as museums throughout Europe and North America shifted focus to democratize and market their facilities. This process of democratization in the museum milieu took particular form in Montreal where McGill became a target of sharpening nationalism in Quebec. Until the 1960$. McGill had functioned essentially as a private university, British in inspiration, pan-Canadian in aspiration, and corporate in operation. Stephen Leacock, a wily observer of his campus, noted that while "state universities" like the University of Toronto had "to teach everybody, McGill doesn't have to teach anybody. In Medicine, McGill from the richness of its soil, restricts its crops as they restrict coffee in Brazil and hogs in Missouri"! Until the 19605, the public functions of McGill's history museum were concentrated almost entirely on Protestant Montreal, particularly its children, responsibilities gladly entrusted by the university to energetic women at the museum. Caught up in the social, linguistic, and economic transformations of Quebec's Quiet Revolution, McGill found itself an anomaly unilingual, elitist, and proprietor of a museum celebrating Canadian history; as late as 1969, as the McGill Daily pointed out, McGill's administration was entirely Engish-speaking and no student services were offered in French.5 This fact was embarrassing for a public institution increasingly dependent on the goodwill of the French-speaking majority for funding; federally, the Royal Commission on Bilingualism and Bicultura-

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lism called for increased university services in French. Confused as to its place in Quebec society and the social function of its museum of Canadian history, McGill's only consistent museum policy was to search for partners to share the financial and public responsibilities of the now-reopened McCord. In 1970, it offered to cede the McCord collections to the Quebec government as part of a national museum that the province might build in Montreal. When this proposal went nowhere, the university turned to Ottawa, trying to attract federal funding by uniting the McCord in 1975 to the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts. This unhappy marriage produced inadequate financial results and, dissatisfied, McGill ended the relationship. In 1980 the university took a different tack, incorporating the museum into what it predicted would be a self-financing corporation. Incorporation in fact did little to resolve museum funding while greatly complicating administration and personnel matters between university and museum. Once again, McGill found itself absorbing deficits at the McCord. Only in 1987 did the university find a solution with the McConnell Family Foundation's announcement of its intention to fund a major renovation of the museum. • U N I V E R S I T Y , M U S E U M , AND STAFF •

After 1963, as government funding of higher education assumed new proportions, McGill operated increasingly as a public university. Between 1950 and 1970 McGill's student population more than doubled to 16,818 while, in the same period, the university budget increased over seventeen times from under $854,011 to over $i5,228,858.6 In 1966 Ottawa ceded the handling of university financing to the provinces; this move placed McGill firmly under Quebec control, and over the next years McGill struggled to explain how, given its endowments, it deserved equality in funding with other Quebec universities. Alice Johannsen's departure as director of McGill museums in 1970 coincided with the reorganization of McGill under a new system of vice-principals - academic, administration, professional faculties, and, later finance. The Budget Planning

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Group became a powerful university committee. In the 19805, this bureaucratization expanded further with professional administrators increasingly replacing academics in positions of financial and decision-making power. Hired to make units more rational, efficient, and accountable, these administrators regularly questioned the cost and purpose of the university's several museums. While the doors of the Redpath Museum could simply be shut, the McCord, with its reputation, the increasing prominence of its collections for research, its powerful benefactors, its place in Canadian studies, and the persistence of tough lobbyists like Dobell, was a more delicate institutional situation. Whatever its support, the museum to administrators represented an expensive and an odd university unit whose teaching and research functions were ill-defined. Nor, with important exceptions like Bruce Trigger, did the museum raise faculty passions. Adding to the complexity and irony of the situation, the McCord, encouraged by state cultural policy, the widening of its public, and McGill's withdrawal, became increasingly autonomous. This transition towards independence from the university was not accompanied by lessened demands for funding, a contradiction not lost on McGill officials struggling for minimal recognition on the Museum's letterhead: "Your stationery, which I have now seen for the first time, is very tasteful," vice-principal Stanley Frost told Dobell, "but when you are reprinting, could I suggest that however discreetly, the words McGill University should appear somewhere. I am very anxious that the link of the Museum with the University should be clearly recognized because I have had to persuade the Administration that you are a legitimate call on University funds.7 Other McGill authorities chafed at the McCord's independence. In 1980, vice-principal E.J. Stansbury complained of a "fait accompli' in an unauthorized museum equipment purchase of $50,000. Referred to the Budget Planning Group, this appropriation was declared an "overdraft."8 A year later, the museum and the university's visual arts committee quarrelled

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Part-time assistant, archivist, and budget officer

Director Isabel Dobell

Secretary

Departments

Volunteers

Design

Collections

Notman Photographic Archives

Costumes

Organization Chart of the McCord Museum, 1970

over control of paintings given to McGill but housed at the McCord.9 This conflict involved deaccessioning, the selling of art owned by the University, and the authority of curators. Within the university, the reopened McCord was the responsibility of vice-principal Stanley Frost and, after 1974, his successors as vice-principal administration or finance. Always unsure of the museum's research and pedagogical place, these authorities had no difficulty reading the balance sheet. McGill's financial contribution to the museum rose from $40,000 in 1973 to $218,000 in 1980-81; although under the entire supervision of the museum director, several McCord employees, including curators Stanley Triggs and Conrad Graham, were on the McGill payroll. In 1980, the university warned the museum that, with teaching and research units a priority, services offered to the McCord would be reduced as "not central to the University's prime function" and that its contribution for the following year would be cut to $118,ooo.10 In 1980 and again in 1981, the university drew up "scenarios" to close the McCord.

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These memos invariably had Catch 22 overtones, and included warnings that the loss of government grants and other revenues would render a mothballed museum - with its building, security, and ongoing McGill salary costs - more expensive than the costs of keeping it open.11 Faced with these realities, authorities postponed a closing in 1984, and McGill's Budget Planning Group agreed to absorb the McCord's accumulated deficit of $106,ooo.12 This museum crisis at McGill coincided with international changes in museum financing and in the social mandate of museums in democratic societies, and ultimately the establishment of a "new" muscology. Established in 1947 in a context of decolonization, the International Council of Museums gave central place to the social role of museums as well as to their historical function of conserving the past.^ In 1968, the International Council broadened the definition of museum to include natural and historical parks. "Heritage" replaced narrower definitions of "History," and natural, architectural, industrial, and cultural sites were brought under the museum umbrella. New attention was given to interpretation centres or ecomuseums with their emphasis on local identity, the outdoor environment, and industrial or agricultural heritage. Meeting in Chile in 1972, the International Council again denounced elitism, insisting on the democratization of museums. Two years later, the council expanded the mandate of museums to include a responsibility to influence the future development of society.1! These currents were reflected in Canada. Montreal's Expo 67 had demonstrated a public appetite for multimedia exhibitions that educated and affirmed positive national feelings. The Museum Act of 1968 and the National Museum Policy enunciated in 1972 by Secretary of State Gerard Pelletier established new Canadian norms that emphasized democratization and public programming. As multiculturalism moved to centre stage in federal cultural policy in the 19708, it brought further pressure on museums "to preserve and nurture our cultural heritage" through travelling exhibits, ethnic studies, and media presentations.^ In 1973, the Canadian Heritage Information Network was established to develop reference databases accessible to a

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large public. A federal publication in 1990 praised museums as "Temples of the Human Spirit" that had "evolved from being elitist shrines; sacrosanct and inaccessible to being democratic institutions that are open to all."16 In its Quebec division, Parks Canada invested heavily in "heritage," opening over twenty sites and parks. Site development was preceded by public hearings, museum exhibitions moved to multi-media presentations, and artifacts became "demonstrative."1? In Quebec, the provincial government was quite aware of the capacity of museums to attract a large public and to contribute to cultural identity. As early as 1964, Quebec announced plans to establish museums "pour servir a 1'etude de 1'histoire, des sciences et des beaux arts."18 Election of the social democratic and nationalist Parti Quebecois in 1976 accentuated the commitment to the new muscology: "accessibility" and the preservation of cultural heritage became bearing walls of provincial museum policy. The two-volume White Paper, La politique du developpement culturel (1978), defined museums as institutions that transmitted values: "heritage is pedagogy."1? Ecomuseums spread rapidly across the province. The first, a "13-village collective," was developed in the Upper Beauce: Instead of a museum building, there is a territory ... Instead of a collection, there is a collective heritage - "heritage" in the broad sense of the word, the everyday, humble things that are rich in information about people's lives. Collective memory, more concerned with the preservation of knowledge than with the "museumizing" of objects, is the primary heritage. Instead of a visiting public, there are local people. Citizens are no longer seen as visitors but as prime participants. Individuals from the community are responsible for activities. Strengths emerge, new alliances are created, and the social fabric becomes more cohesive.20

Along with new state subsidies, this emphasis on the social and ultimately political role of museums was accompanied by changing forms of accountability. Until the 19705, the McCord was typical of university museums in calculating its value in terms of its collections, curators, benefactors, and research potential.

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These criteria were replaced by new evaluations in which polls, "performance indicators," and consultants assumed new importance. A 1974 federal inquiry, "The Museum and the Canadian Public," undertook 7230 personal interviews to determine popular perceptions of museums. Beginning with the statement that "the museum is a medium of communication," the report showed "the pattern of democratization," "who are the goers," and differences in museum habits between French and English Canadians.21 None of this boded well for the McCord, a traditional history museum, collection-centred, conservative in origins, staff, and host community, and part of a university that was marginal to French Quebec and proud of its role in elite education. Whereas earlier the museum had suffered primarily from the indifference of the McGill administration and of its academics, the situation was now more complex. New museums sprouted everywhere in Canada. In Quebec alone, the number of museological institutions increased from 125 in 1972 to 382 in 1994.22 Worse, the McCord, which its founder has envisaged as a "national museum of history," found itself competing for funding with two national museums, Ottawa's Museum of Man and Quebec's Musee de la civilisation, and theme museums ranging from skiing to firefighting. And while the McCord pointed to its collections as barometers of its worth, new museums developed competing strategies. The Musee des Religions which opened in Nicolet, Quebec, in 1986 without permanent collections, described itself as a simple repository, a "clearinghouse and collaborator."^ By the 19705, the state provided 80 per cent of museum funding in Canada. From 1972 to the mid 19805, Ottawa's annual subsidies to non-federal museums averaged $8. million.24 The bulk of this funding was devoted to "associate museums," a category for which the McCord as a university museum was ineligible. Noting his "strong bias" against funding university museums, the director of the Museum Assistance Program in Ottawa urged McGill to separate the museum from the university since the latter "usually have access to education funds within the province, something that most other museums do not have. Further, they generally serve a very limited clientele

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and are not usually attractive to the public within a wider community."2? Committed to the democratization of museums, another Ottawa official was brutal in his dismissal of McGill and research: if McGill plays the McCord as a research institution, in lonely isolation, carrying on without adjusting to the need to open to the people of Montreal and by extension in the province, or if McGill searches for some half-hearted solution to the McCord's problem, setting it up as some kind of separate corporation but coming under McGilPs thumb ... [it] will in effect mean that nothing has changed .. ,26

Federal funding came with caveats that McGill not reduce its own financial support to the McCord and that it open the museum to the public at least three days a week. These were accompanied with the private warning not to play "hard to get or ask me to dance, please." The ethnic card was also played: if public programming was not increased, Ottawa would cut its support and the museum "would in effect become a French institution."2^7 Despite these threats, the McCord did obtain significant federal funding. The museum's subsidy in 1973-74 of $84,000 under the Secretary of State's National Museum Policy grew to an annual grant of $150,000 in the 19808. The museum also successfully applied for federal grants from the Upgrading and Assistance Programme (to expand the costume and archival storage areas) and from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council.28 Just as McGill, a post-secondary institution, came under the Quebec Ministry of Education, the McCord, as a cultural institution, was subject to provincial jurisdiction. Quebec's 1978 White Paper left no doubt as to the province's intention to control culture and heritage in particular: the Quebec government claims entire responsibility for the protection and the presentation of our heritage and insists that the federal government return the cultural properties that it possesses or manages in Quebec, as well as those public funds devoted to this area of Quebec life.29

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Ottawa's decision to respect provincial museum priorities in federal funding meant that even federal grants to the McCord involved discussions with provincial officials.3° In Quebec City, McGill conducted its museum business with the "private museums unit," a branch of the Ministry of Cultural Affairs established in 1974 with a budget of $325,000. Quebec support for museums escalated rapidly and, by the 19805, provincial grants to the McCord surpassed those of Ottawa. McGill's networks with Quebec authorities, despite the appointment to a vice-principalship of Dale Thomson, a political scientist with strong Liberal connections, remained tenuous. University secretary David Bourke produced a memorandum urging McCord directors to "become immediately aggressive in contacting politicians and civil servants in order to secure and improve our Quebec funding.'^1 Other McGill officials such as Stanley Frost, who had witnessed tortuous negotiations between McGill and the Ministry of Education, were suspicious that Quebec coveted McGill's property, including its Macdonald College campus, the Mount St Hilaire estate, and the Redpath and McCord museums.32 Like Ottawa, Quebec pushed the McCord to increase public accessibility and criticized its limited, elite public. A1986 evaluation report, while lauding the museum's "generosite intellectuelle" and its role as the "locomotive" of the Quebec museum network, criticized the narrowness of its public programming: opening the museum "a la communaute montrealaise en general doit devenir une priorite absolue."33 Provincial subsidies were based on public programming and by the 19908 grants were determined by the size of a museum's exhibition space.34 The McCord would also face competition from new history museums in Montreal. Opened in 1992, Pointe a Calliere, a well-designed and attractive Museum of Archaeology and History, was described by one of its administrators as "culture for everyone," "a young," "dynamic," "interactive" museum in the heart of Old Montreal.35 Democratization and the changing public function of museums were accompanied by the development of a "new muscology" and of a competing profession to that of curator. Part of

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this new muscology was subordination of the object in favour of the educational and social values it represented. To Jean Trudel, past president of the Canadian Museums Association, this meant interdisciplinarity, community involvement, and new forms of research.36 Other proponents were less generous, emphasizing a "shift away from entrenched professionalisms towards greater self-reflection." Dismissed as unreflective, static, and incapable of interacting with its public, the old muscology was likened to "a symphony playing of some master (and often dead) composer's work." This contrasted to an emerging museum environment that represented a "jazz ensemble," giving interpretations that represented "a shifting, imaginative, spontaneous, and personal expression among composer, musician, and audience." As described by Kersti Krug in the Canadian Museums Association's review Muse, the new muscology represented "an active seeking-out of those outside professional and institutional walls, because they are sources of new melodies, fresh interpretations, and ultimately, the revitalization of our professions and our organization.'^/ In breaking down what they saw as "walls between the museum and society," many new practitioners were comfortable with visitor centres, tourism, ecomuseums, museums without objects, and information management. As marketing, development, and exhibitions that aimed primarily at entertainment became priorities in some museums, curators, researchers, archivists, and librarians found themselves peripheral and even expendable. A 1995 Canadian Museums Association brief noted that one thousand museum jobs had been lost over the past recent years.38 jn tne same year, the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts announced the closing of the library, the oldest museum library in Canada, while at the opposite end of the city, four much younger institutions - the Botanical Garden, Insectarium, Biodome, and Planetarium - were touted as bringing together "muscology, science, education, and ecology"; instead of a library, visitors were urged to participate in a discovery room.39 The increasing weight given in museums to democratization, communication, and education departments did not pass unchallenged. As early as 1984, the Societe des Musees Quebecois

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contested precepts of the new muscology insisting that the museum visitor acquired understanding through the object and reiterating that the primary function of the museum was to manage, conserve, and present its collections^0 Trained as historians and working in museums, Thierry Ruddell and Herve Gagnon spoke out against the declining intellectual integrity of museums and the marginalization of collections, conservation, and curators. Gagnon argued that the "communications approach" was threatening the place of artifacts in exhibitions and questioned the prominence being given to education departments within museums: "It is important," he insisted, "that the historian maintains final control over the form that a historical memory takes in a history museum, and is not shackled by the imperatives of education.'^1 Comparing the deterioration of research and the increasing dependance on contract work to lavish $100,000 press conferences used to launch exhibitions, Thierry Ruddell called for a "role for universities," emphasizing their historical alliance with museums and their "common ideals and similar functions": our job, he insisted, "is to depict the past as accurately as possible."42 A Quebec observer, Laurier Lacroix, took to the columns of Muse to insist that collections represented "the identity" of an institution and that the essential intellectual work of curators was in the interpretation of artifacts.43 Curator Greg Barr, describing his work as "the most impossible profession on earth," criticized graduates in muscology as generalists who "placed excessive emphasis on the whole range of museum activities with the exception of the central intellectual responsibility for collections."44 The debate still rages. In 1999, curator McAllister Johnson described curators as "becoming janitors." Another Toronto curator, Adrienne Hood, left her job as curator of textiles at the Royal Ontario Museum, complaining that borrowed exhibitions had "destroyed" the curator's "real work": "increasingly," she came to conclude, "even curators with graduate degrees are babysitting."45 This crisis over democratization, the new muscology, and the place of university and research within museums came at a particularly thorny conjuncture for McGill, caught in the struggle between Ottawa and Quebec. State funding involved provincial

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and federal funding, and both university and museum were, as we have seen, caught up in the national question: Les musees ne sont pas des institutions neutres, innocentes, qui evoluent en dehors des luttes socio-politiques. Us sont davantage des refuges pour les debris d'un passe revolu. Fenetres ouvertes sur FAutre et miroirs d'un Nous collectif, ils sont les cellules vivantes d'une memoire sociale qui creent et recreent sans cesse un passe accorde a ce que nous croyons etre.46

The cauldron of Canada's language and school crises, Montreal was site of the October Crisis of 1970. A year earlier, the very space of the university as an English-speaking and elite institution had been contested in "Operation McGill fran^ais," a campaign which culminated in a major public demonstration at the gates of the campus on 28 March 1969. Throughout the 19708, Quebec nationalists were not tender with the museum. In 1975, Le Devoir complained that McCord personnel were unilingual, its exhibitions paternalist, and its social history simplistic.47 It was in this environment that authorities in the newly opened McCord had to determine how their museum, with its collections largely originating from English Montreal, was to expand public programming in French Quebec. Caught between Trudeau's Ottawa and Levesque's Quebec, officials became skilled at dancing to different orchestras. In 1969, reflecting the Royal Commission on Bilingualism and Biculturalism and with memory fresh of Operation McGill fran9ais, they began touting the museum as a public, bilingual part of the university with collections of great value for both French and English Canadians. In his 1966 history of Painting in Canada, J. Russell Harper, chief curator at the McCord, noted the "prime importance" of reflecting "the bicultural traditions of our national life." Emphasizing interdisciplinarity and "interdependence," he linked Quebec portraiture to the nationalism of the Group of Seven.48 We have traced the establishment of McGill's Canadian studies committee which united Canadianists from different

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Demonstration in "Operation McGill fran$ais (1969)" McGill's increasingly symbolic place in Quebec society as a rich and English-speaking institution made university leaders nervous. With roots even deeper in English Montreal, the McCord Museum might have seemed particularly vulnerable. Dobell, however, felt that the McCord's cultural distinctiveness should be proudly displayed.

departments, libraries, and archives: one of its mandates was "the preservation and development of the Canadian heritage and to McGill's role in fostering this heritage."49 Dobell used the political crisis to advantage, telling the McGill News, that the museum could be "McGill's window to the French community.''?0 She also criticized the university's timid support for the study of Canada, noting that "English Canadians have underestimated their history and that McGill's position on the McCord

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has reflected that national inferiority complex."?1 The McCord's essential character grew out of the historical experience of English-speaking Montrealers, she argued, and was a reality that French Canadians understood and supported. In 1970, vice-principal Stanley Frost suggested incorporation of the McCord collections, what he called McGill's "magnificent treasure," into a new National History Museum evisaged for Montreal on the site of Expo 67. Describing the arrangement as a model "working partnership of government and museum," he suggested that McGill might deposit its collection on a long-term basis with the Quebec government, which would assume all operating costs.52 The project progressed only slowly but, in 1974, Quebec confirmed its interest in making the McCord collections a nucleus of its national museum. During the interim planning and construction period, the Minister of Cultural Affairs suggested that the McCord make a temporary arrangement with the Musee du Quebec. Attitudes at McGill were changing, however, and alienation in English Quebec was palatable by the mid 19708. Frost had left his vice-principalship, and the university was entering into collaboration with the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts. There were fears for McGill's federal funding if it moved too close to the provincial government. The election of the Parti Quebecois in 1976, and the announcement that Quebec's national museum, the Musee de la civilisation, would be built in Quebec rather than Montreal ended any possibility of a McGill collaboration in a national museum in Montreal. The Montreal Star was typical of the English press in depicting national projects in Quebec as synonomous with exclusion: a "Museum of the Quebecer," it reported, would inevitably concentrate on "the FrancoQuebecois" with other elements of the Quebec population not "afforded much space."53 In 1975, McGill joined the McCord with the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts in a five-year agreement that might attract new federal funding through improved public programming at the McCord. McGill's annual contribution to the museum would be limited to $100,000 a year while emeritus director Dobell obtained annual pledges for five years of $50,000 from David

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Stewart, Mrs T.H.R Molson, and Duncan Hodgson. The Montreal Museum of Fine Arts' status as an associate museum under Ottawa's guidelines brought an annual grant of $150,000 under federal Museum Assistance Programs. The union with the Fine Arts was short-lived however; unwilling to cede ownership of the McCord collections to the Museum of Fine Arts, McGill allowed the arrangement to lapse in 1979. In May 1980, with an operating deficit of $68,000 from the previous year and with reductions announced in Ottawa's core funding for museums, the university incorporated the museum. Although the new corporation would manage the museum, raise funds, and hire staff, the building and collections remained McGill property and museum management remained under university control. Former McGill chancellor Conrad Harrington became chair of the museum's board, and viceprincipal E J. Stansbury was named president of the new corporation. When David Bellman resigned as chief curator, university secretary David Bourke was named temporary director of the museum. The board of directors was named by McGill's board of governors.54 One result of incorporation was the weakening of McGill's influence in the museum, particularly its ability to defend university teaching and research. Despite the pressures we have seen in the 19705 from both Ottawa and Quebec to link the museum to tourism, heritage, and public programming, McGill authorities had maintained that research and university teaching were the McCord's primary mission. Negotiating with the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts in 1973, vice-principal Frost argued that the Fine Arts' expertise was in public programming while "the McCord has a strong interest in research which the University would naturally want to retain and further provide for."55 Another vice-principal confirmed that McGill wanted to make the museum "more accessible to researchers and the public."?6 And although the museum's annual reports in the early 19805 genuflected to public programming, they continued to emphasize the museum's research function as a "museum of Canadian social history concerned with anything of significance made or used in Canada, but with special interest in the Province of

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Quebec and in particular, the City of Montreal and its environs. It is a source museum for scholars from around the world."57 Several neo-conservative museological principles came to the forefront by the early 19808. Transformation of the museum visitor into a paying customer was foremost; visitors, the theory went, appreciated a museum more if asked to make a voluntary contribution or pay an admission fee. This theory reflected the conclusion of the Bovey federal task force that a paying visitor was somehow more critical.58 In 1980, a donation box was placed at the front door and in its first year some $2000 was collected. A year later, the McCord introduced a membership program. With the program run by a part-time staff member, board members, and volunteers, membership grew slowly from 100 members in 1981-82 to 301 in 1984-85; donations from members increased from $17,600 in 1981-82 to $40,586 in 1984-85.59 In 1983, despite curatorial opposition, the museum introduced paid admissions: $1.00 for adults, $0.75 for students, and free entry for McGill students and staff. These admissions never produced significant revenue: $10,500 in 1983-84 or 1.34 per cent of the museum's total revenues, $7520 in 1984-85 or 1.02 per cent of the total budget, and $17,563 or 1.83 per cent of the budget in 1986-87.60 During my years on the board in the early 19908, it could never be shown satisfactorily that admissions even covered the cost of collecting them. The principle, I came to understand, was not one of financial return; rather, people should pay to visit a museum or historical site, just as they paid for bread or a video. While pressure to make the visitor pay increased, Ottawa's annual $150,000 grant for public programming came into question.61 The Quebec government's contribution rose from $118,432 in 1981-82 to $129,400 in 1984-85, but this money was reserved for public programming. The Montreal Urban Community contributed $15,000 annually. Support from foundations varied from $6000 in 1981-82 to $116,500 in 1984-85. The reality of McCord financing did not change with incorporation in 1980; the university remained the most important single source of museum funds. While admissions brought in a few thousand dollars, the university's contribution exceeded

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that of either Ottawa or Quebec: $285,226 or 37 per cent of the museum's budget in 1983-84 and $217,301 or 30 per cent of museum revenues in 1984-85. Reporting a deficit of $6569 for 1984-85 and an anticipated shortfall of up to $35,000 in 1985-86, D. McRobie, chair of the finance committee, despaired that "we are barely afloat": "our problem - we need more revenue" (see table 4.1).62 Table 4.1 McCord Museum Finances, 1984-85 Donations Friends Companies Foundations Grants McGill Canada Quebec Montreal Urban Community

$

40,586 6,000 116,500 217,301 150,000 129,800 15,000

Investments Admissions Other Total

12,187 7,520 37.912 732,806

Expenditures

739,375

Deficit

(6,569)

Source: MUA, RG4, FioS/S, 0532, "Examination of the financial situation," 2 April 1986.

Incorporation also left unresolved important problems of museum management. New museum staff, for example, were not university employees. This created two tiers: older Englishspeaking staff, often in curatorial departments, with McGill health and pension benefits, and younger, usually French-speaking employees, often in administrative departments, with different

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salary scales and fewer benefits. There were other jurisdictional disputes. Coordination of fundraising between university and museum remained a problem. In 1984, with McGill launching a major fundraising campaign, Principal David Johnston suggested that the "competitive impact" between the two institutions might be minimized by a two-year postponement of the McCord campaign.63 An angry Conrad Harrington, chair of the McCord board, reacted by threatening resignation: While there is no thought of doing anything to hurt the progress of the McGill Advancement Program, there are undoubtedly people who either as individuals or as heads of corporations might not want to support McGill overall but who have a definite interest in the McCord as a museum ... I feel that as Chairman I would not be honouring my obligations to the dedicated people at the McCord were I not to bring this to your attention, and to tell you that were the Board to suggest some course of action such as I have outlined, I would have very little choice between supporting such action or resigning, and I don't think such a resignation would solve anything!64

Alongside these unresolved problems of financing, personnel, and fundraising, there were clear divisions between the mission of research and that of public programming. Anthropologist and board member Bruce Trigger continued to lobby for the McCord's research vocation. In 1982, he and Dobell proposed a collaboration with the National Archives of Canada in microfilming the McCord scrapbooks. In the search for a new McCord director two years later, Trigger emphasized the intellectual links between museums and universities. Noting the lack of specialists at the McCord in ethnography and in the fine and decorative arts, he argued that the new McCord director should be cross-appointed at McGill in anthropology, art history, or history. Failing this, the director should at least demonstrate research interests in Canadian social, artistic, or ethnographic history.6? Others told the board that without resident academics in disciplines like history, the McCord was losing its standing in the academic community.66

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Table 4.2 Direction of the Museum, 1975-97 Harriet Campbell David Bellman David Bourke Shirley Thomson Marcel Caya Luke Rombout Derek Price Claude Benoit

Acting Chief Curator Chief Curator Acting Director Director Director Director Acting Director Director

1975-76 1976-80 1980-82 1982-85 1985-88 1989-93 1993-94 1994-97

Appointed director of the McCord in 1982, Shirley Thomson worked to reconcile research with public programming. She strongly protested the university's weak commitment to the study of Canada and complained of the faculty's "sporadic" use of the McCord collections. She proposed the relationship of McGill's medical school with its teaching hospitals as a model for collaboration between museum and university. Like a university teaching hospital, the McCord could train Canadianists in social history, the history of Montreal, or serve as a "research and learning laboratory for McGill faculty and students in the field of Canadian ethnography, prints and drawings, painting and decorative arts and more generally in the field of muscology."67 She also promoted joint faculty-museum research applications to the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council. In 1986, the archives were awarded $55,025 under the Research Tools Program of the Social Sciences and Humanities Council to publish a two-volume research guide and inventory, McCord Family Papers, 1766-1945. This work was carried out under the archivist's supervision by graduate students in history.68 Annual reports continued to emphasize that "our association with McGill" and "the accomplishment of our teaching and research mission" are "fundamental to us."69 Others, however, were publicly pessimistic about the future of research at the museum. In 1983, the museum's policy committee noted the weak liaison with departments like history

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Shirley Thomson (1982) Holder of a McGill PHD in the history of art, she directed the museum from 1982 to 1985.

and art history and regretted the fact that McGill faculty were not researching at the museum; nor could it suggest any means by which "research might be both institutionalized at the McCord and integrated with university projects."?0 With important exceptions like Bruce Trigger, much of the research in ethnography, history, and the Notman Photographic Archives was conducted by researchers from outside McGill. The study of Canadian social history and material culture through collections of family and photos, women's clothing and diaries, natives and wampum belts were beyond the pale for many traditional McGill historians and art historians as

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unacademic, antiquarian, feminine, and perhaps frivolous. The vice-principal of graduate studies - a scientist - complained of his embarrassment at being associated with McCord activities: I was therefore feeling quite upbeat about the prospects for a more academically inclined McCord to which McGill could seriously relate when my spirits were given a negative push by an invitation I received today from McCord. This is to a cocktail reception for a commercial fashion show of a spring collection of dresses ... it dampens my enthusiasm ... I find it difficult to reconcile my responsibilities to promote research activities at McGill with partial responsibility for sponsoring a fashion show at the McCord, as a member of your policy committee. The two images seem incompatible to my mind, and I do not see how McCord can successfully sponsor both.71

This attitude contrasted with McGill administrators like Stanley Frost, David Johnston, and David Bourke, each of whom expressed strong interest in the McCord. They respected Dobell's influence with philanthropists: Frost remembered her as an "elemental force who never dealt in shadows or shades."72 Each of the three had a strong sense of McGill's history and wrote about McGill or the museum. As well as writing the official history of the university, Frost wrote a biography of university founder James McGill. Depicting the McCord Museum as a "national treasure," Frost described himself as "sensitive to the responsibility which the university undoubtedly has to make its splendid collections available to the public as soon as possible."73 Frost acknowledged the central place of archives in the writing of his history: James McGill was a great man in his day, a few years later he was quite forgotten, and remained so for a century or more. But fortunately archivists stored unconsidered legal records and librarians preserved the correspondence and occasional papers of obscure persons ... The fact that we now have on campus a life-sized statue of James McGill striding out from his farm to serve his city and his province, symbolizes a resurrection made possible by archives and archivists, libraries and librarians, and we gladly acknowledge our indebtedness.74

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Stanley Frost Longtime university administrator and director of the history of McGill project, Frost wrote McGill's twovolume history.

David Johnston Johnston was principal of McGill, 1979-94, during the critical changes in the relations of university and museum.

David Bourke Trained as an architect, Bourke had connections with the museum over two decades as university secretary, acting director (1980-82), longtime board-member, and chair of the board.

As principal, Johnston researched the history of the law school, helped Frost with his McGill manuscript, and spoke out strongly on the contribution of university benefactors like Peter Redpath.75 As secretary general, Bourke was often the principal's emissary for embarrassing or difficult missions. He had responsibility for McGill's archives, and at the McCord he served in multiple capacities, including longtime board member, interim director, and member of the building committee. Retired from the university, he became chair of the Museum's board. These overlapping and sometimes conflicting roles for university and museum make him an ambiguous force in the recent history of the McCord. Frost, Johnston, and Bourke each prepared laudatory histories of parts of McGill. They depicted the university as engaged in struggle and production, particularly in the faculties of science, law, and medecine. Frost, for example, described university founder James McGill as a model entrepreneur who "knew

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that a solid amount of money and some tangible real estate could often achieve what lofty ideals can only dream." In his interpretation, the university was "dedicated to its primary purpose of 'the advancement of learning,' and would continue to win the loyalty of those who taught, and those who learned, and those who served within its broad community."?6 Male, competitive values formed the core of social relations within their university. Principal Johnston, for example, summarized Dobell's contribution to McGill in war-like terms: "Through the dedication of warriors like you, the battle for a higher quality of civilization in our society will be successfully waged."77 They agreed that the museum should pay its own way and that its fatal flaw was lack of endowment. In separate interviews, Bourke and Frost both emphasized that the issue between university and museum was economic: Frost, for example, reduced his struggle with Dobell to money: "She wanted funds: we had no funds."?® The museum's most important academic support in the 19708 and 1980$ came from Bruce Trigger, and his resignation from the museum as honorary curator of ethnology in 1987 signalled the collapse of academic influence at the museum. Like professor of architecture Percy Nobbs two generations earlier, Trigger brought a forceful McGill presence into the McCord, researching in its ethnological collection, exchanging ideas with curators, and, within the university, strongly defending the museum's scholarly and research functions. Trigger coauthored Carrier's Hochelaga and the Dawson SiteJ? Evaluating William Dawson's interpretation of the Hochelaga site, Trigger in this book brought international attention to the McCord. Dobell was a great admirer of Trigger and his work. In the familiar world of English Montreal, they both attended St Andrew and St Paul Presbyterian Church where she sat near the stained-glass window dedicated to her grandfather. In 1974, she and vice-principal Frost agreed that Trigger would be the best choice as her successor. Although some discussions apparently occurred, Trigger was never formally offered the directorship after Dobell's retirement.80 He did persist with the museum, serving on its board, 1980-85, and becoming honorary curator

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Bruce Trigger

Beginning research in the McCord collections soon after his arrival at McGill in 1964, Trigger became chair of anthropology and an internationally known scholar of North American ethnohistory. Until 1987, he was the museum's strongest proponent on faculty.

of ethnology in 1985. He was, however, increasingly frustrated by the university's declining place at the museum, by the McCord's lack of will concerning the political use of its ethnographic collections, and by the increasing subordination of scholarship to public programming.81 His resignation as honorary curator in October 1987 resulted from the McCord's decision to proceed with participation in the Glenbow Museum's exhibition, "The Spirit Sings." As support for its land claims in Alberta, the Lubicon Lake Indian

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Nation asked the museum to withdraw artifacts lent for the exhibition. The board refused, arguing that "the McCord is a strictly cultural institution, and it is inconsistent with its mandate to take political stands on specific disagreements between or among various groups, governments or specific segments of society."82 Trigger saw the social role of museums in a very different light. He insisted that museums, as "custodians of a major segment of our common national heritage," had a "sacred responsibility" to participate in ending "the colonial relationship that disgracefully continues to characterize Canada's treatment of its Native Peoples."83 Even after resigning, he continued to insist that the McCord's appeal to a larger public had to remain rooted in the strength of its collections and in the use of this material culture for insight into Canadian history.84 ® CURATORS •

Trigger's resignation, his attack on the McCord Museum's narrow vision of its social role, and the fact that several curators openly supported him were evidence of a deepening gulf between academics and curators on one side and McCord authorities on the other. The McCord's standing as a university museum took another blow with the naming of David Lank as board chair. An investment counsellor and a history graduate from Princeton, Lank was determined to transform the museum from what he described as "a sleepy, little, multifaceted" museum for which "McGill did nothing" and which had been reduced to insignificant exhibitions such as a history of veterinary instruments in Quebec.85 Authoritarian, he gave short shrift to the causes of natives, intellectuals, or curators. While Johnston and Frost came from McGill, Lank was proudly non-university and had little sympathy for the McGill connection. At a board meeting, he and I clashed over my argument for advertising for a museum director who had some specialization in the study of Canada. Nor did he agree with my suggestion that the museum take a more controversial stance as an institution of the English-speaking community. Curiously, as the museum itself voiced support for democratization in

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its audience, authorities at the McCord moved to increase the power of management, attacking the curators, hiring outside consultants, disciplining museum employees, and giving increasing power to the executive board as opposed to the full board. In 1993-94, Derek Price, head of the McConnell Foundation, ran the museum as interim director. Trigger's refusal to involve himself with the museum after 1987 deprived the curators of their strongest academic ally, and they struggled on alone on issues such as their opposition to paid admissions, their insistence on hiring directors with an interest in an academic discipline, and their determination to aid researchers at the museum. Deaccessioning was an important issue for curators. As proprietor of the collections, McGill might have seemed to possess an obvious right to dispose of museum objects. However, as early as 1934, Lighthall had reminded McGill of the moral and legal responsibility it had assumed in accepting McCord's gift. When the museum closed in 1936, curator Dorothy Warren, concerned by her curatorial responsibilities, wrote McGill officials differentiating personal guarantees she had given for objects from the university's legal responsibility. She left notes naming donors she had not been able to inform of the closing.86 As curator, chief curator, and then director, Dobell spent much of her professional life cultivating donors, building collections, and protecting collections. Jurisdictional disputes were muddied further by the fact that some artifacts had been bought by the McCord's own acquisition funds. And what to do with the collections of individuals like Maude Charlton who, angry with the university, requested in her will stated that her heirlooms be bequeathed "to some respectable museum (not controlled by McGill)."87 In 1981, facing threats from both Quebec and Ottawa to withhold grants until the museum's deficit of $112,000 was retired, officials moved discreetly to deaccession and sell certain museum artifacts in England.88 Curators from four departments historical archives, photographic archives, costume department, and prints and drawings - protested against the disposal of McCord objects under the general rubric of university property. The curators insisted that they, rather than McGill officers, had

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the professional skills to judge the place in collections of an historical document, a native artifact, or a Canadian sketch. Deaccessioning was part of a larger debate in the museum community over the real worth of artifacts. Against assigning a money value to objects in the collections, realization of which might serve to plug a deficit, curators fell back on social value: they, one Canadian curator wrote, had "a strong sense that the collections ought to be used for something important for society."89 Like Warren in the 19308 and Dobell in the 19608, McCord curators in the 19808 argued that the collections resulted from trust, complex human relations, and generations of family interest and philanthropy at the Museum: "On December 14, Cornelia Molson telephoned me," the costumes curator reported to the director, to say that the lace dress in the exhibition, Souvenirs d'elegance, presently at the McCord Museum used to belong to Mrs. George Daly, Mrs. Molson's aunt. (Mrs. Molson's mother is Mrs. Cynthia Vaughan (nee Kingston), the sister of Mrs. Daly (also nee Hingston). The dress was supposed to have been worn by Mrs. Donald Hingston. Mrs. Molson continued that Mrs. Daly, who she said was senile, had given it to "someone" who took it for the McCord Museum. Mrs. Molson assumed that the "someone" was Mrs. Murphy, but when Mrs. Murphy was questioned she said she did not acquire it from Mrs. Daly, but through a picker. Mrs. Molson said the family wanted the McCord to have the dress or wanted it back. I told Mrs. Molson I would look into the matter and call her back later this week, or next Monday at the latest.?0

Founded in 1947, the Canadian Museums Association had 2000 individual members and an annual budget of $700,000 in 1984-85. The initial issue of Muse, the association's review, posited the debate of scholarship and public programming in back-to-back articles, "Marketing the Museum" and "The University and the Museum.'^1 As we have seen, the emergence of muscology as a university discipline and establishment in 1987 of a joint muscology program at the Universite de Montreal and the Universite du Quebec a Montreal further challenged the place of curators in Quebec museums.

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By 1987, the McCord's four full-time curators had been dwarfed by four new departments - registration, education and animation, communications, and exhibitions - and their staff of fourteen.?^ while curators continued to support research and university connections, they were swimming against the strong current in favour of bringing customers through the turnstiles. Curator Stanley Triggs felt that it wasn't simply the number of warm bodies who entered the building but rather the repercussions of their visit. For example, a researcher who spent a day in the photographic archives might take away twenty photos for publication. Insisting on the value of face-to-face contact between researcher and curator, Triggs emphasized the broad diffusion of archival research in popular or academic works, in exhibitions, plays, newspapers, or films.93 Whatever their personal distaste for body-count muscology, curators, to survive at the McCord, were forced to submit reports that emphasized the quantitative over the qualitative. The 1986-87 annual report noted that ninety-five first-time researchers had used the historical archives during the year and 800 had consulted the photographic archives. Research in the historical archives included the Beaurivage seigneury and the Lachine Canal, while the photographic archives recorded research in varied subjects such as whaling, the history of hockey, and resort hotels. Historical archivist Pamela Miller reported that four books published over the year had acknowledged research in her collection; Notman archivist Triggs noted dozens of publications using photographs from the archives including his co-authored William Notman: The Stamp of a Studio, "a key resource for students and scholars of the history of photography in Canada."94 These figures paled in contrast with statistics generated by the new departments. While the historical archivist noted the 53 first-time researchers she had helped in 1987-88, the director of public programs, the head of education services, the animation officer, and their secretary in the education department pointed to 149 primary, secondary, and continuing education groups that had visited the museum in the same period. Aided by 26 volunteer docents and a master's student in muscology, 4839

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"education" visitors received forty-rive-minute tours of the museum, participated in "hands on" workshops, and enjoyed "shopping" activities in which they utilized toys drawn from the collections. In July 1987, the public relations department began publication of a newsletter, restructured the "Friends" program, and prepared a full-colour, five-panel promotional pamphlet for distribution at tourist information centres in Canada and the United States. On Montreal Museum Day, 1400 visitors were welcomed by a court jester while "a clown gave departing visitors helium filled 'McCord' balloons."95 The resignation of Shirley Thomson as director in March 1985 removed another line of defence for the curators. A defender of research and improved relations with the university, she was replaced by Marcel Caya, holder of a PHD in Canadian history, university archivist at McGill, and vice-president of the Association des archivistes du Quebec. He was soon in sharp conflict with the curators. Historical archivist Miller insisted that, on the issue of public programming versus research, priority should continue to be given to students and university researchers. Photographic curator Triggs continued to argue for direct and human contact with as wide a public as possible. For his part, Caya, a strong proponent of records management, favoured CD-ROMS and new computer technologies that would give researchers direct access to collections and that would "open the museum and render it more accessible.'^ Despite Triggs's insistence that "my main purpose at the Notman was to get people in," Caya felt that curators had an elitist view of the museum, "choosing certain researchers and ignoring undergraduates." He wanted curators to concentrate less on their collections and the history of art in favour of interdisciplinarity and shared exhibitions. Curators, he argued, found it difficult to collaborate with designers or staff from the Education Department, fearing "loss of power" to the new project and exhibition teams he had established.97 Interested in new internal reporting systems, accountability, and performance, Caya asked McGill to audit the museum's operations.?8 Completed in April 1986, this report strongly supported him. Based on "generally accepted management

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theories" applicable to "almost any organization," the auditors accused the curators of "confusion," of "wasting time." and of "lacking routine financial reporting systems and clear areas of responsibility." The curators, it was stated, multiplied difficulties by not keeping regular office hours or records of the amount of time spent in replying to telephone requests. Research appears as an area in which curatorial production was difficult to evaluate and the report recommended that curators undertake an "objective setting process." Curators' time, the report noted, "was often taken away from other duties and responsibilities when they are interrupted by researcher's requests." Although forms were filled in by researchers to screen out the frivolous and fifteen-minute restrictions were placed on the time spent with genealogists, the problem remained: "Despite all of these steps to avoid wasting time, a great deal of the Museum's staff is spent with researchers - from 10% of Ms. Ross's time (costume and textile collection) to an estimated 95% of Stanley Triggs's time (Notman Photographic Archives)."99 Singled out for particular criticism was Stanley Triggs - the museum's most prolific author, the curator who devoted the most time to research inquiries, and the staff member most resistant to museum authorities. In "deadlines" and "efficiency," the auditors concluded, billing procedures in the Photographic Archives were "less than adequate and the records incomplete". Adamant in defending the autonomy of his department, Triggs had long insisted on his prerogative, over that of the museum director, to control work assignments of the photographer who worked with him in the Notman Photographic Archives. The auditors called for time studies, questioning whether his photographer needed "a week to photograph and develop photographs of a new exhibition."100 For his part, Triggs insisted that photographer Tom Humphry was "fast and efficient" and that, until the early 19808 when the museum stopped the practise, he had run the photographic archives "as a business," with the museum permitting him to use half the income he generated for acquisitions.101 Appointment of France Gascon as chief curator in March 1988 prompted yet another crisis and brought the issue of

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Marcel Cay a (second from right) with Colleagues in the McGill Archives in 1983 The others are (from left to right) Brian Owens, Gordon Burr, Rob Michel, and, seated, Monique Forest-Malbranque.

changing museological principles to the curator's very doorstep. Hired to "heighten collection visibility" and "to standardize collection management procedures," it was her third function - "facilitating the participation of the curators in the present rapid evolution of the museum" - that aroused the curators.102 Her appointment coincided with Caya's preparation of an "Orientation Document" which, in a fundamental way, distanced the McCord from any balancing of research and public programming: "in spite of its teaching and research activities and its affiliation with McGill," the Orientation Document stated, "the McCord Museum is not an educational institution ..." Rejecting a "passive" approach as insufficient to generate a "sufficient level of public and private financial support," the document proposed that visitors should "feel comfortable." And, although aiding researchers was "a laudable goal

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in itself," the museum had to become more democratic adopting "a more aggressive strategy" that would "make more people become interested and enjoy all facets of Canadian history." Through creative public programming and "dynamic curatorship," the museum could "cater to the needs of individuals seeking basic historical information ... or of casual browsers interested in seeing a variety of objects."10} In what they referred to as their "Palace Revolt," the curators united against the director, unanimously rejected the Orientation Document, and sent a letter of protest to all board members. The main topic of business at an "unofficial" board meeting in August 1988, the curators' complaints were dismissed as "confrontational," and board chair David Lank assured director Caya of the board's strong support.10! Two months later, chief curator France Gascon denounced ongoing insubordination from the curators, and again the board was forced to intervene. On behalf of an angry board, David Bourke warned the curators to respect authority and to stop acting collectively: they were not to act as a common front and jointly signed memos would not be accepted.10? In 1986, subsidized by the federal minister of communications, the university hired management consultants Coopers and Lybrand to report on the future of the McCord and Redpath museums. Although they urged continuation at the McCord of both research and public education, the consultants' preference was clear: "the major opportunity for the McCord Museum is to expand its facilities and programming and thereby attract a much larger visitor audience as well as to become a more integral part of McGill University."106 They suggested doubling the operating budget over five years and a major expansion of physical plant and staff. The McCord's attractiveness to the general public would be enhanced by a marketing plan and creation of a museum board more autonomous of McGill and more responsive to the larger community. These priorities were reflected in the museum's annual reports. From eight pages in 1980-81, the annual report of 1986-87 had expanded to fifty-seven. Emphasizing the need to "gain greater independence from the university" and dropping

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the usual praise for research, the 1986-87 report outlined the need to "reach as broad an audience as possible and [to] realize the full potential of a history museum."107 Although curators had historically worked with volunteers, donors, and the public, these functions were now assigned to new departments of education, animation and communications, which would promote "community relations"; for the first time, a budget line for advertising appeared. As part of "the improvement of its administrative procedures," "mission statements" were prepared by departments and an "administrative synopsis" - "an essential tool for tightening the management of the Museum" - was produced. Although these policies were approved by the board, Caya by early 1989 had lost its confidence. For his part, Caya explained in an interview, he felt he had never had strong support from the board which had viewed him as an "interim" director. Lank in particular wanted to separate the McCord from McGill and was, according to Caya, uncomfortable with Caya's strong emphasis on the university. Long before his final dismissal, Caya understood that "the writing was on the wall" when David Bourke showed him a time line which included recruitment of a new director.108 Doubting Caya's ability to lead the museum through its expansion and disappointed by his failure to discipline curators and to improve government funding, the board's executive committee dismissed him. Caya's removal however, represented only a Pyrrhic victory for the curators. Struggles through the 19805 - over admission charges, deaccessioning, research, the social responsibility attached to native artifacts, and the autonomy of their departments - had bled curatorial will. Despite their petitions and palace revolt, the McCord curators proved incapable of defending themselves in the face of a changing muscology, the hostility of a conservative board, and federal and provincial governments whose cultural priorities pulled the museum away from curatorial mandates like research. Nor were the curators able to respond effectively to the heritage movement, to competition from other Montreal museums, or to charges that they served the research interests of a privileged university minority.

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For its part, the university had given little intellectual or political leadership to its history museum, although its photographic, costume, and prints and drawing collections were the subject of increasing international attention from researchers. In the two decades after Dobell's resignation in 1975, McGill's will to maintain its several superb museum collections, including those of the McCord, was marked by vacillation and inconsistency. Bruce Trigger's progressive alienation silenced the museum's most powerful voice on faculty: in his place, administrators and accountants articulated the university's position. In 1932, the Carnegie report had strongly criticized the university for neglecting collections unique for the study of Canada. A half century later, the situation was no better. Timid as to its place in a changing Quebec, obsessed with budgets, and largely unconscious of the increasing value of its collections to researchers, the university's only consistent tactic across the 19705 and 19805 was to seek new partners be they the state, other museum institutions, or private benefactors. Luke Rombout, on becoming director of the McCord in 1989, quickly understood that, "although McGill had the moral obligation to look after collections donated to it, there was absolutely no sign at any point that the University was interested in any of its collections, all of which were languishing."1^ The university's abdication of its responsibility at the museum and its replacement by the J.W. McConnell Family Foundation, the retirement of curator Stanley Triggs in 1993, and the appointment in 1994 of a director hostile to university and curatorial work set the stage for the crisis of 1995-96 and the firing of the historical archivist.

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CHAPTER FIVE

^Missed Connections, 1987-96 The purpose of the Expansion is to cause a more significant portion of the Collections to be accessible to the public and to become available to teachers, students and scholars for research purposes. Custodial Agreement, McGill University and McCord Museum, 1987!

In December 1986, the J.W. McConnell Family Foundation announced a $20 million gift to construct an expanded McCord Museum. That the McConnell influence was to be continuing was confirmed with the placing of an additional $10 million into a separate McCord Foundation, interest from which was to support improvements and the ongoing operation of the museum. One of Montreal's most powerful capitalists and founder of the McConnell Foundation, John Wilson McConnell (18771963) was best known as owner of the Montreal Star. A fundraiser for the YMCA and leader of the "Day's Pay Scheme" in which workers in Montreal's largest industries contributed to the Patriotic Fund in World War i, McConnell began contributing to McGill before 1914. By the 19208 he was honorary vice-chairman of McGill's Centennial Endowment Committee and served as a university governor from 1928 to 1958. His philanthropy included aiding McGill with construction of the McConnell wing of the Montreal Neurological Institute (1953), the McConnell Engineering Building (1959), and the McConnell Residence (1961). He purchased the Ross House for the university (now the law faculty's Chancellor Day Hall) and Purvis Hall as well as Stoneycroft Farm (1945) on the Ste-Anne de Bellevue campus.2 McConnell didn't hesitate to exercise strong conservative

views at McGill. In the 19305, for example, he objected vigorously to the socialist initiatives of McGill professors Frank Scott and Leonard Marsh. A convinced Methodist, he was prominent in the elevation of theological studies at McGill to faculty status. Discreet and refusing any honorary degrees, he offered many of his gifts anonymously. At McGill, he was portrayed as a role model and, in 1952, the student yearbook, Old McGill, was dedicated to him by students.3 To facilitate his philanthropy, McConnell established the Belvedere Foundation in 1935, renaming it the J.W. McConnell Foundation two years later. Reconstituted as the J.W. McConnell Family Foundation after his death (and Canada's second largest foundation with assets in 1995 of $376,222,750), it has supported a broad range of Canadian projects that encourage "individual capacity, confidence and skill," which "strengthen families and communities," and which "offer opportunity and hope to young people." Its 1996 mission statement emphasizes helping Canadians "respond effectively to the underlying forces which are transforming Canadian society and the world."4 The foundation has continued McConnell's support for McGill including $10 million for scholarships and $2 million to the Montreal Neurological Institute.5 Almost half of its 1995 disbursements of $10,966,010 were directed to "reinventing community," and funding organizations and projects such as the Victorian Order of Nurses, the Canadian Association for Community Care, the Canadian Association of Volunteer Bureaus and Centres, Generation 2000, and Centraide Montreal. One of the goals of these projects is to help individuals and communities assume services previously undertaken by government. Well-known for his interests in Canadian nationalism, youth, volunteer associations, and McGill, McConnell was an obvious donor for the McCord Museum, and as early as 1936 Lighthall wrote him of the importance of the museum's collections.6 Isabel Dobell's presence at the museum brought direct links with the foundation. Her mother was a good friend of J.W. McConnell, joining him for horseback riding in the summer colony of Dorval; Peter Laing, a former chair of the foundation and husband of McConnell's only daughter Kit, was a

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lifelong friend of Dobell and was her lawyer. A year after McConnell's death, word came to McGill's principal that, through Dobell, the foundation "would like to be approached for help in providing a suitable house for the McCord Museum"; this hint resulted in a $50,000 contribution to the museum in 1966.7 In 1970, McGill principal R.E. Bell, chief fundraiser Lome Gales, and Dobell organized a reception at the museum for the J.W. McConnell Family Foundation. Three McGill viceprincipals and their wives attended along with foundation officials. The only outside person, invited on Dobell's suggestion, was Beatrice Molson, daughter of philanthropist Walter Stewart. Instead of speeches and formalities, Dobell led a tour of the museum.8 Other female networks reinforced relations between museum and benefactor community. The costume curator, for example, solicited Beatrice Molson's coming-out dress and the robe worn by Mrs J.W. McConnell at the coronation of Queen Elizabeth 11.9 • R E S E A R C H I N T H EE X P A N D E D M U S E U M •

In 1971, with McGill cutbacks jeopardizing the museum's reopening, the McConnell Family Foundation came to Dobell's rescue with $100,000 to assure the opening and the operating budget through 1972. In the McConnell tradition of discreetness, the gift was anonymous, and was not to be acknowledged publicly or mentioned in the museum's annual report; nor was the McConnell Foundation to be listed as one of the "Friends of the McCord."10 The McConnells maintained this interest in the McCord with Jill McConnell and her husband Derek Price, Laing's replacement as chair of the foundation, carefully courted by Dobell: "she took Jill and me around many times after 1970," Price remarked in an interview. In the mid 19808, the foundation, to recognize its interest in Canadian history and concerned for teaching about Canada, chose the museum for a major gift to coincide with the 35Oth anniversary of the founding of Montreal in 1642." The McConnell gift, the largest donation ever made to a Canadian museum, gave McGill the opportunity to withdraw

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/. W. McConnell, Preceded by His Wife Lily May Griffith, received by Princess Elizabeth and Prince Philip (1951) Presenting them is McGill principal F. Cyril James.

from its financial responsibilities at the museum.12 The ninetynine-year custodial agreement, which established the museum as an autonomous, non-profit corporation, gave sole responsibility for the expansion and operation of the museum to the new corporation. Although McGill remained landlord of the museum and owner of the existing objects in the McCord collections, it ceded custody to the museum corporation. Within a year, the McCord Museum was established as a registered charitable organization separate from McGill.^ The expanded museum would be headed by a director general, named by the museum's board of trustees. The board consisted of twenty-one individuals of which McGill nominated three; the McConnell

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Family Foundation controlled the board through its right to nominate four members. These seven nominated the remaining fourteen members. In addition, the president of the McCord Museum Foundation (set up by the McConnell Family Foundation to sustain the museum), the principal of McGill, and the museum's director general had seats on the boards We have witnessed the museum skating in the cultural wars between Ottawa and Quebec, its expanding commitment to public programming, and the growing attraction of its collections to students and researchers in social history, native studies, and material culture. Across the 19708 and 19808, and despite its consistent effort to reduce its financial commitment, McGill as proprietor and the McCord's largest single source of funding retained ultimate power over the museum. In the new corporation, however, power shifted from McGill to a foundation-dominated board, many of whose members had little empathy for the university or intellectual work. During the years of reconstruction and the tenure as director of Luke Rombout (1989-93) curators were encouraged and university collaboration solicited. However, within the museum, managers, marketers, consultants, and museologists — whatever their skills in administration, marketing, finance, and building an audience - often had little sense of historicity, of the historical relationship with the university, or of the "collected" group, the collector, and the museum itself. Although some were interested in artifacts, their meaning, and their social value, others had little interest in material culture, the intellectual contribution of curators, or the primacy of depicting the past as accurately as possible in exhibitions. I have traced this transition away from a university museum and the deterioration of research, a process that, despite its remission during the mandates of directors Thomson and Rombout, left the curators isolated and hunkered down with their collections. Part of the difficulty was that their work of research, inventorying, publishing, and interaction with students represented forms of production within the museum that were difficult to quantify effectively and evaluate financially. Stanley Triggs, for example, spoke strongly of his frustration in defending the

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value of the photographic archives and the work of his staffs As the university's shadow declined, authorities were prone to perceive curators as anachronisms - eccentric and difficult employees best circumvented by technologies allowing direct access to collections or by their dilution in expanding and sometimes competitive departments of registration, development, communication, and education. Despite this decline in curatorial and research strength, the museum's changing corporate status after 1987 and the investment of millions in renovation gave advocates of the importance of a university culture at the McCord a golden occasion to reassert the museum's intellectual qualities and to attempt another reconciliation of research and public education. Those with long institutional memories could reach back to the postwar years. A few researchers worked in the closed collections in the 19408, but revival of research at the museum can be dated from the mid 19505. In the 19608, incorporation of the Notman Photographic Archives brought international attention as did the publications of Russell Harper, Stanley Triggs, and Bruce Trigger. Increasingly well-known for its collections, the museum gave primacy to its research functions. In 1968 the Canadian Museums Association defined the McCord's activities as "research; publications; permanent and temporary exhibitions; loan exhibits and renovations."16 Acquisitions, collection development, exhibitions, and the publication of guides over the next two decades brought research inquiries from around the world. In 1985, the Notman Photographic Archives responded to 900 visits, letters, and telephone calls.^ One academic wrote McGill's principal that the museum was "a national cultural institution": research in the McCord's manuscript collections was crucial to my study of the Lower Canadian Rebellion of 1837. My book, The Partiotes and the People ... was recently awarded the Porter Prize by the Canadian Sociology and Anthropology Association as the scholarly work which made the greatest contribution to an understanding of Canadian society. I draw this to your attention simply to illustrate the point

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that a repository such as the McCord Archives plays a part in our national life that is quite out of proportion with what statistics on usage of the facilities might superficially suggest.18

Some philanthropists were attracted by this scholarly potential. In 1976, for example, Phyllis Lambert offered a five-year grant of $15,000 a year, half for building a collection of contemporary Canadian documentary photographs in the Notman Photographic Archives and the balance as an acquisition fund for artifacts of Canadian social history.^ Three years later she founded the Canadian Centre for Architecture in Montreal. Countering the weight given to public programming a year previously in the report of Coopers and Lybrand, the custodial agreement of 1987 emphasized the centrality of research at the museum. In five different places, it spoke of making the collections "available to teachers, students and scholars for research purposes."20 Its preamble emphasized the museum's intellectual qualities and international reputation for scholarship, its "originality and uniqueness," and the "aesthetic quality" of its exhibitions. World-class, the museum should strive to the "highest museological standards" and strengthen its collections "in order to increase the opportunities for study and research." The agreement bound the museum to "respond to the needs of scholars, students and the public, with special emphasis on the needs of McGill and the other three Montreal universities."21 This research vocation remained central in planning the expansion, with the building committee noting that the McCord's concentration on social history was a key factor in retaining the museum in the Student Union Building. To help define the museum's objectives, the building committee convened museum and Canadian studies experts. Meeting in the McGill Faculty Club in April 1987, these specialists - including Bruce Trigger, Barbara Tyler, historian Jacques Mathieu, and architect Guy Desbarats - reiterated the intellectual qualities of the McCord and its potential for both research and public education. The museum's mission statement, published later in 1987, reflected the centrality of this coexistence, defining the McCord as "a public research and teaching museum dedicated

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In symbolic confirmation of the relationship of university and museum, the rectors and principals of Montreal's four universities inaugurated the McCord Museum, 8 May 1992 From left to right: David Johnston (McGill), Gilles Cloutier (Universite de Montreal), Claude Corbo (Universite du Quebec a Montreal), and Patrick Kenniff (Concordia)

to the preservation, study, diffusion and appreciation of Canadian history."22 The place of research was confirmed in the architectural plan and various fact sheets: the four cornerstone functions of the new building were "research, teaching, exhibition, and public programming."23 In his Functional Program, architect Michael Lundholm came back to the idea of Shirley Thomson, comparing the museum to a university teaching hospital, a "transfer point for knowledge gained through research oriented to its collections": A key characteristic which distinguishes this museum is its public research and teaching emphasis. Currently restricted by the overcrowded conditions, it is intended to make the collections and their documentation much more accessible. The museum has the potential to become a true centre of research for students and faculty of Montreal and other Canadian universities in the disciplines encompassed by the collections.^

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Museum Renovation (1990)

Continuing, he described it as "a fine small museum," decidedly "conservative" and "valuing of tradition": it would naturally "run somewhat counter to the increasing trend of museums to emphasize the'entertainment' (for entertainment's sake) aspect of museum experience." Indeed with its commitment to "academic and aesthetic excellence," the museum might become "a true research centre."2? The plan doubled the museum's space from 2207 square metres to 5048 and included a full research centre: open reference library, rare books, and historical archives. Opened in May 1992, the museum was one of a handful in Canada with stateof-the-art storage facilities and, until its closing in 1998, a designated archives' exhibition area. The intellectual promise of the expanded McCord began auspiciously under Luke Rombout who was named director in 1989 with renovations already underway. Although convinced

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The Library and Archival Research Area Located in the former ballroom of the McGill Student Union, curatorial offices, library, and archives were accorded strategic place in the new building.

that "curators everywhere were insensitive to the financial problems of museums," he gave strong place to curators describing them as "the lifeblood of the collections," and redesigning storage and costume exhibition areas to their needs. Dismissing guest curators already at work in preparation of a permanent exhibition in Canadian history, he, in his own terms, "put fire to the feet" of the in-house curators, giving them responsibility for the opening exhibitions and seven resulting books.26 ® F I R I N G THE A R C H I V I S T • This commitment did not persist after the opening of the museum in May 1992. Rombout, who saw himself as a builder rather than a manager, resigned in 1993, and the mid 19908 saw deconstruction of the scholarly functions promised in the custodial

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agreement, mission statement, and renovation plans. Conditions for curators in the reconstituted museum worsened. Eclipsed by its executive committee, the board of trustees functioned essentially as a rubber stamp and public relations link to the benefactor community: the rare tough question posed by a board member concerning research, profile of a new director, or admission fees was quickly deflected by board chair David Lank.2/ The museum's full board was peripheral to the Temple Luke Rombout (1992) Grove Foundation, a "sister foundaRombout directed construction tion" established to provide ongoing of the Vancouver Art Gallery support for the museum. This founbefore coming to the McCord in dation, which had assets of at least 1989. His "biggest disappoint$12 million, provided by the J.W. ment" as director, he told me in McConnell Family Foundation, had June 1999, was "the University's its own staff and, with the executive failure to support the Museum." committee, determined special staff bonuses, the tenure of directors, and the essentials of museum policy.28 The key members of the museum's executive committee were Derek Price, director of the J.W. McConnell Family Foundation and interim director general of the museum in 1993—94, David Lank, chair of the board, and David Bourke, whom we have met as university secretary. The three were close associates and members of prominent, propertied families. Insiders in the highest circles of English Montreal, they had multiple social and business connections. Lank, for example, handled investments of the Temple Grove Foundation through Dorchester Investment Management.^ The three were central to the custodial agreement, the multi-million dollar foundation grant, and its expenditure in the renovation. With Rombout, they built a museum harmonious with its stated mission and singular in its utility and physical beauty.

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David Lank and Derek Price "We've known each other all our lives," Lank told me.

But the attitudes of Bourke, Lank, and Price changed with the building's opening and their realization of the importance of its expanded research and curatorial spaces. It is as if they found themselves trapped by concepts inherent in the very physical structure they had created. We have already seen the executive committee's estrangement from the objectives of curators like Stanley Triggs and Pamela Miller, its suspicions of the autonomy of their departments, and its hostility to collective curatorial action. Conservative men, they strongly objected to any resistance to authority within the museum. In the end, frustrated and having spent several tens of millions of dollars, they fell back on the rhetoric of balance sheet and management efficiency. Both Price and Bourke attributed the collapse of the research and archival mission to the lack of operating funds apparently promised by Quebec. Former directors Caya and Rombout both remembered that Derek Price had wanted complete autonomy from government interference in building the museum; once completed to his specifications, he anticipated that government would pay to operate it.3° At the same time, the J.W. McConnell Family Foundation may itself have changed

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direction in fundamental ways. In 1994, in his last year as president of the foundation, Price, himself a member of the McConnell family, oversaw the transfer of $12 million to the Temple Grove Foundation. In 1995, professional administrator Tim Brodhead replaced him as president. His first annual report noted that "we may have overbuilt our institutional infrastructure, the universities, museums, arts organizations, and hospitals which we cherish but find increasingly difficult to maintain."3i These events in the new McCord did not go unnoticed across the street at McGill. Members of the Canadian Studies Programme Committee had been lobbying for increased emphasis on Canada at the university since the committee's establishment in the early 19708. Following Marcel Caya's dismissal in 1989, protests were raised against the qualifications outlined in the job description for a new museum director. Although the Canadian Museums Association put a university degree "in the discipline of the museum" as the primary qualification of a museum director, this was absent from the McCord advertisement which profiled instead a candidate with "an aptitude for pubic communications," "highly developed sales and marketing skill", and "management experience." McGill faculty from history, political science, anthropology, and library science protested the failure to advertise for a director having "a strong academic background in Canadian Studies." The Institut d'histoire de 1'Amerique fran9aise, the professional association of historians in Quebec, went further insisting that the McCord director should have competence in history and hold a PHD "dans 1'une ou 1'autre des disciplines humaines ou sociales pertinentes. Sans exagerer, c'est une question de credibilite."32 Failing to exert any influence in the profile or choice of the new director, McGill's Canadian Studies Committee asked for academic representation on the McCord board. Noting that its collections "constitute one of the university's most significant historical and ethnological resources for teaching and research," it urged rebuilding the relationship between university and museum by adding to the board McGill faculty "actively engaged in research on Canadian subjects."33 This was the back-

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ground to my nomination to the board of trustees and over the next five years I argued for maintenance of the academic mission formalized in the custodial agreement of 1987. In 1994, a search was undertaken for an executive director to replace Luke Rombout. At a board meeting, I protested unsuccessfully at the failure to advertise for a new director with academic qualifications and a discipline specialty. The search resulted in the naming of Claude Benoit. A museologist, project manager, and president (1990) of "Metamorphoses Claude Benoit Inc.," a "cultural engineering firm," she had during her career worked as vice-president, leisure and culture, at Lavalin.34 It became quickly apparent that the new executive director had no empathy whatsoever with intellectual work or university research. In January 1995, after failing in several meetings to explain my sense of the museum, I wrote her emphasizing the place of research, the university, and curators in the museum and urged that "the intellectual centrality [of the collections] to the meaning of the McCord must be recognized as an essential part of the museum's mission. This in fact gives the museum its reason, its direction, and ultimately, its greatness ."35 These arguments came to naught and it soon became evident that the research and curatorial side of the museum was in free fall. One clear sign was the exclusion of curators from participating in decisions affecting their collections. In 1995, Benoit proposed that curators no longer attend meetings of the board's acquisition committee to present dossiers they had prepared. Instead, she as director would filter and present curatorial recommendations.36 Discussion of the coherence of collections and the research or social relevance of an acquisition were superseded by bureaucratic formalities, tax receipt discussions, and management's concerns for storage costs. The moratorium on acquisitions from April 1994 to January 1997 was particularly destructive of relations with the donor community. As audience size became increasingly critical in museum evaluation, exhibitions became critical litmus tests. Preparing exhibitions was a traditional curatorial responsibility, part of the curator's mediation between a collection and its interpretation and presentation to the public. Historically, the theme or

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Claude Benoit, director of the McCord Museum (1994-97)

identity of an exhibition came from the collection on which it was based. In this period, however, curators were increasingly subordinated to consultants and outside exhibitions borrowed from other institutions. This narrowing of curatorial functions was accompanied by administrative reorganization and creative bookkeeping that shifted financial responsibility onto research and collection units which, like security or custodial services, were not normal revenue-producing areas. New operating procedures also served to mine the autonomy of curators. The 1991 McCord staff handbook addressed productivity and "waste," challenging the time curators devoted to students and nonpaying researchers. Employees were now required to fill in

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hourly time sheets in the museum computer; by 1996, timesheet codes filled a five-page document, with particular codes for time spent on focus groups and the gala.37 Restrictions on curatorial functions contrasted sharply with the expansion of other departments. With the building still under construction in 1990, the director of communications produced a thirty-two-page "program proposal." It demonstrated how, with her staff of three, she was developing media relations, fundraising, the annual-giving campaign, and the expanded sponsorship program for exhibitions to ensure that "the Museum and its IMAGE are marketed appropriately.'^8 Her office was in charge of government relations while the membership drive, which had stalled at a few hundred in the mid 19808, now targeted 7000 to 10,000 members.39 Sitting at board meetings and reading financial statements, I was shocked by the contradiction between the declining professional attention given to collections and the phenomenal rise in the cost of protecting the very objects in these collections. The costs of security rose almost ten times in five years from $116,670 in 1991 to building and security costs in the new building of $1,140,467 in 1995-96.4° Particularly debilitating for the curatorial side of the museum was the failure to replace Stanley Triggs when he retired in 1993 as curator of the Notman Photographic Archives. This omission and the moratorium on photographic acquisitions brought criticism from the Quebec Ministry of Culture.41 In April 1996, the museum opted to hire a marketing director rather than a curator. A specialist in the management of boutique, restaurant, and ticket sales at Montreal's Place des Arts, the new marketing director's "first" responsibility would be the development of "new marketing strategies" leading to the "profitable use of collections."^2 The vulnerability of the remaining curators and the collapsing relationship between university and museum became evident in the struggle over a new course, "Material Culture of Canada," part of which would have been taught in the museum. Historically, McGill classes had been solicited at the McCord with arrangements for access and research assistance worked

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out between faculty member and curator. At a meeting chaired by Desmond Morton, director of the McGill Institute for the Study of Canada, and attended by McCord archivist Pamela Miller, Annmarie Adams, a professor in McGill's School of Architecture, outlined her projected course and her wish to utilize objects from the historical archives, the costume and textiles department, and the Notman Photographic Archives. The course proposal brought forceful objection from director Benoit and disavowal of the archivist's right to participate in discussions concerning teaching and research in the archives: "Had we been included in the discussions it would have perhaps been easier to harmonize your wishes with our abilities," she told Adams: "no commitments on behalf of the Museum including financial, human and academic resources can be made by any members of our staff without my full approval."43 The situation deteriorated further later in 1995 with the establishment of a senior museum committee chaired by David Bourke. Its mandate was to prepare a "business plan" that would increase museum attendance and balance the budget. The committee did organize a meeting in the office of McGill principal Bernard Shapiro and heard comments from representatives from anthropology, architecture, history, music, and the Redpath Museum, the archives, and the library. The vigorous insistence by these McGill representatives on the significance to the university of the McCord's research and teaching resources was ignored in the business plan presented by the committee in November. It called instead for a new "marketing culture" that would "attract the most widely based mass audience" and that would be subject to "measuring results." In the new organizational structure - research, always a distinct category - would lose its independent status and merge into collections. Also ominous was the plan's announcement that access to collections and research activities would be undertaken in "a selffinanced fashion," a euphemism presumably for student user fees. The plan confirmed fundamental changes in exhibition policy, dropping the longstanding commitment to produce exhibitions reflecting "the latest research in the areas related to its collections." Far from being a simple personality conflict be-

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tween director and curators, the business plan, promoted by the executive board and the director, represented the subordination of research and the distancing of the museum from its remaining university connections. Priority was to be given to revenues across all departments and to attracting a mass audience through blockbuster exhibitions. The message for curators was blunt. Along with traditional revenue-producing areas such as the boutique, restaurant, and rentals of the museum, collection and conservation departments were to commercialize, increasing their revenues 30 per cent a year over the next three years. New guidelines emphasized that the museum, through polling, would pay increasing attention to the demographic profile of its visitors presenting a programming that was "educational," "fun," "enjoyable," "fascinating," and "entertaining." In her report to the board, chair Manon Vennat confirmed that the museum was taking "a more client and market-oriented approach."44 On 15 January 1996, the board of trustees endorsed the business plan. At the same time it approved the dismissal of archivist Pamela Miller and several other employees and the dismantling of the historical archives. In the short term, the archives were to be closed for a period of at least two months during which the system would be "restructured" so as to provide "more efficient" service. In the long term, the historical archives collection was to be "reevaluated" and some might be returned to the university.45 Reaction to the firing and closure was immediate from the Canadian Historical Association, the Association des archivistes du Quebec, the Association of Canadian Archivists, the Association of Canadian Studies, hundreds of McGill students and researchers, and faculty and students from the Universite du Quebec a Montreal and the Universite de Montreal. A protest petition was organized and signatories included forty-six from the Universite de Sherbrooke, twenty-nine at the Canadian Centre for Architecture, twenty-four members of the Concordia University history department, twenty from York University, thirteen from the history department at the Universite du Quebec a Montreal, and individuals at the universities of Edinburgh, Harvard, Berkeley, and Northern British Columbia. One petition was

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Pamela Miller, historical archivist

signed by a member of the One O'clock Club "founded 1928 minutes of our meetings are in your archives!" Letter-writers noted that hundreds of scholars a year researched in "Canada's best private archives" and that closure threatened a multitude of scholarly projects. It was pointed out that the dismantling of the archives was being undertaken without consultation with the larger community of researchers and graduate students. What, others asked, was to be the fate of several graduate theses dependent on continuing research in the McCord archives. In a "letter of alarm" sent to McGill's board of governors, faculty members collectively emphasized the university's responsibility under the 1987 custodial agreement "to make the collections available to students and staff of McGill and other universities, for teaching and research." Recapitulating the archives' importance to McGill and the university's complicity in their closing, the faculty noted that, in 1995, McGill researchers from the faculties of engineering, science, arts, music, medicine, law, and education had worked in the

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historical archives and that three books based on archival research at the McCord were in production at McGill-Queen's University Press.46 The president of the Association of Canadian Studies accused the museum of abandoning its host community. Describing the archivist's firing as "short-sighted" and "a blot on McGill's reputation," he emphasized the historical archives' importance to "those interested in the English community of this city."47 Several donors wrote expressing concern for personal and family collections deposited at the McCord. Charles A. Martijn, a collector who had donated his research library to the McCord, was shocked "to learn that scarcely four years after having been accepted by your institution my donation will now be 'transferred' to McGill University"; he concluded his letter: "in the case of your institution I do not quite grasp what the problem happens to be."48 Angry that the museum board I had left just months earlier had sanctioned dismissal of the archivist and the dismantling of the archives, I led the protest. How, I wrote Principal Shapiro, could the museum - which defined itself as "a public research and teaching museum" - accomplish its mission without professionals in charge of crucial collections such as the historical archives.49 Firing the archivist, I argued, was a "body blow" to collaborative research and teaching between university and museum and was "a recipe for mediocrity and decline at the museum." The archives, I argued, had a particular place in the collective memory of Montreal. Just as important, it was through the museum's collections that it could be understood: "without that magic and understanding, the museum is easily reduced to a pile of fancy stone, tiled washrooms, and futile turnstiles."?0 This outcry brought quick damage control. Replying to the president of the Association des archivistes du Quebec, director Benoit stated that, with the dismissal of its archivist, the historical archives would be regrouped in the Department of Collections Management, recognition, it seemed to me, that the archives had lost curatorial status. While board member Desmond Morton told the Montreal Gazette that no new researchers would be given access to the archives, Benoit denied permanent

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closure, stating that the archives were simply being re-evaluated and would only be closed for a period of two months or more. During this transitional period service would be maintained by a technician transferred from another museum function; certain collections might be returned to McGill University.51 Board chair Vennat trotted out technology to obscure the obvious contradiction between improved archival service and dismissal of the archives' professional. Promising "broader access" in "a more self-sustaining matter," she assured the board that the archives were "open and accessible for the first time via computers."?2 Facing loud complaint within his university, principal Shapiro ducked, stating that the proposed plan for the archives was "entirely consistent" with the custodial agreement to which McGill was a contractual party. Whatever McGill's commitment in the 1987 agreement to make the collections available to students and scholars for research purposes, he assured the McGill community that its interests would be protected by the proviso that McGill's board of governors would have to approve any deaccessioning at the museum and that library and archival materials from the McCord collections would most likely be returned to McGill. Refusing to engage in the prickly problem of the museum's role in reconciling community and university or culture and research, he reduced the problem to simply another of the many money matters he faced as principal. McGill, he concluded, would not take a strong stand since it was "not in any position to annually provide for the McCord's operating deficit."53 • THE M c C O R D TODAY • Time has passed since the "save the archives" petitions were presented to McGill's chancellor in the summer of 1996, and the last protest salvo has long since been fired. Many have told me to "forget" the crisis: "things are back to normal." In October 1997, director Benoit left for a new challenge, directing a $49-million exhibition site under construction in the port of Montreal, archivist Pamela Miller has found work elsewhere, and in April 1998, a new museum director was named. Victoria

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Dickenson has a master's degree in Museum Studies, a PHD in Canadian history, and has directed public programs at the National Aviation Museum, 1991-97.54 The historical archives have remained open and have been reconstituted under the Director, Collection Management and Access Services. • TOUGH QUESTIONS *

I remain convinced of the importance in history museums of combining scholarly work and public programming and of the Canadian public's appetite for exhibitions and a museum environment that respects a serious desire to understand the past. Questions remain for the museum's several constituencies. Question i: To McGill University This history has emphasized McGill's ambivalence towards its history museum. Through the narcissism of one family and the eccentricity of its last descendant, the university inherited a treasure: a world-class collection of Canadian artifacts reflecting the culture of English Montreal's elite, the very community to which the university itself owes its origins. Through the twentieth century, the university accepted in trust objects invaluable in understanding Canadian life. In 1987, McGill entered a contract that ensured the accessibility of the museum's collections for researchers interested in Canada's material culture. This custodial agreement surely implies that the university has a responsibility to encourage research in the collections entrusted to its safekeeping, to ensure professional archival services in those collections for students, and to protect the right of access of university classes to those collections. McGill's acquiescence in the firing of the museum's historical archivist - the professional charged with facilitating archival research in academic disciplines such as history, ethnography, anthropology, architecture, and art history - speaks to significant muddling of university priorities. Resolution of this confusion does not inevitably lie in trotting out the balance sheet or in hiring consultants to determine matters of social or pedagogical import.

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At another level, McGill's difficulties with a museum of Canadian history reflects its larger malaise vis-a-vis its place in Quebec, its discomfort with culture writ large, and its reluctance to dilute its international profile by being seen as parochial in overemphasizing research on Canada. The History Department bears a certain responsibility for the university's neglect of the McCord collections. The study of Canada has been given less place in this department than in most other Canadian universities and, like their colleagues in other disciplines, McGill historians have been oriented to professionalization. Many are uneasy with "amateur" history, with local subjects, with interdisciplinarity, with the museum's largely female staff, and with an emphasis on popular education. And, like many of their peers across Canada, McGill historians have often shown little inclination to use material culture in their teaching and research; it was perhaps not coincidental that a course on the material culture of Canada originated in the School of Architecture. Although most at McGill simply ignored the museum, several administrators - principal David Johnston, vice-principal Stanley Frost, and university secretary David Bourke - recognized the importance of archival research. But why did these individuals over the last three decades permit university research and teaching facilities to be subordinated to the administrative logic of subordinate financial officers, people with little understanding of intellectual work, particularly in the humanities? Part of the answer is money; part is institutional history. We have observed how McGill's discomfort with a museum of Canadian history on its campus was aggravated in the 19705 by the McCord's expanding mandate in popular education. Throughout this century, be it rural education in the Faculty of Education, household science at Macdonald College, school groups in the Redpath Museum, or costume shows at the McCord, the university, with important exceptions, particularly in medicine and law, has only reluctantly recognized that university teaching and research are not incompatible with larger community responsibilities. McGill's importance is not just restricted to the international: Montreal's oldest university,

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The Making and Unmaking of a University Museum

it is a fundamental cultural force in the English community and must provide much stronger local intellectual leadership. Question 2: To Members of the Board What has been the effect of organizing the museum as a corporation and distancing it over the last years from its McGill origins? Has the obsession with income, paid admissions, retail sales, and corporate sponsors brought the desired results? In the flurry of consultants, marketers, and headhunters, has the board lost sight of the museum's roots in the university and English-speaking community. Why is the board so uncomfortable with historical research on collections at the McCord. Shouldn't the board encourage more irreverent exhibitions and, using revisionist scholarship and the McCord's rich collections, challenge some of the dominant stereotypes in Quebec intellectual life. With its archives, its photographic collection, and its native, female, and English community artifacts, the museum could speak much more courageously for minority cultures. Why, in advertising for museum directors, did the board before 1995 resist so consistently some training in history, anthropology, or Canadian studies, as a prerequisite for leadership of a "Museum of Canadian History"? And shouldn't the board, instead of fussing interminably over attendance and the conversion of visitors into customers, use its links to the benefactor community to open museum doors, to encourage intellectual work and the use of the library and archives, and to provide scholarships that will bring students into the museum. It was through benefactor help that Alice Johannsen and Isabel Dobell obtained their museum starts. Student users could be expected to produce knowledge from studying the collections, to publish their results, to organize exhibitions, and to proceed to careers contributing to Canada. Question 3: To Montreal's English Community Ever watchful of outside infringement of their cultural prerogatives, the English media, schools, community leaders, and politicians did remarkably little to protest the dismantling of the intellectual vocation at the McCord, a museum synonymous

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with their community. As recently as the McCord campaign of 1991, for example, 77 per cent of the cheques were received from English-speaking contributors.55 In the McCord, English Quebec has a superb institution whose cultural and historical traditions reach back through Isabel Dobell to W.D. Lighthall, who developed it in the 19208, to David Ross McCord, who was convinced of its mission in understanding Canadian history, to his Victorian parents and Georgian grandparents and greatgrandparents, whose baggage stretched back to Ulster and seventeenth-century Scotland. The museum's history, its collections, and its intellectual qualities give the McCord coherence, separating it from entertainment museums such as the Museum of Laughter. A university, museum, library, and archives are institutions fundamental to the culture of a community: they need to be protected, nourished, and celebrated. Question 4: To Benefactors What is the role of philanthropists like the J.W. McConnell Family Foundation in Canadian intellectual and institutional life? What principles should govern their participation in research and teaching, especially in the humanities? During his lifetime, J.W. McConnell intervened to influence in a conservative fashion the physical and ideological direction of McGill University. His money was crucial in the revival of the museum in the 19605 and, since his death, the foundation has sustained that interest, financing a magnificent museum facility and assuring its survival across the 19905. The foundation was party in 1987 to the establishment of a corporation that guaranteed a central place in the museum for university teaching and research. It carried this to fruition, giving important place in the expanded museum to the library and archival facilities. In the 19908, it let that commitment slide, culminating in the firing of the archivist and in the diminution of research space created just a decade earlier. This failure to pursue the goals of 1987 are rendered more paradoxical by the fact that the research culture of the museum - strongly influenced by "amateurism" and romanticism among Montreal's English-speaking elite, by an interest in collecting, by a conservative women's culture, and by

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The Making and Unmaking of a University Museum

Canadian nationalism - correspond to goals long espoused by the J.W. McConnell Family Foundation. Its mission "to enhance the ability of Canadians to understand, adapt, and respond creatively," its concern for public education, for the fate of minority groups, and for the dismal state of teaching about Canada correspond entirely to the McCord's strength in family and social history and the study of natives.56 Canada needs much greater research on its past and diffusion of this knowledge to a broad and interested public. The foundation should reaffirm its support for the museum's research and educational mission, for a renewal of university connections, and for the strong intellectual work it anticipated in building the museum in 1987. In the concluding paragraphs of this book, let me situate for a final time the McCord crisis as part of a larger threat to institutions that runs the gamut from Toronto's Royal Ontario Museum, New York's Brooklyn Museum, and London's Victoria and Albert Museum. Despite persistent efforts to reduce the struggle to market, audience, and "money" - all neutral, fleshless, and determinant - fundamental human and social issues have been played out at the McCord, a museum whose collections remain vested in a public university. I have argued that, whatever its weaknesses of finance and its struggling for teaching and research profile at McGill, the McCord, into the 19808, was an important pole for the larger English-speaking community. It benefited from strong support from women and philanthropists around McGill and its collections attracted increasing international attention. At one level, the collapse of the McCord as a university museum was a local phenomena linked to the particular place of McGill University in the struggle between Ottawa and Quebec and the loss of rudder by Montreal's English-speaking community. At the same time, the washing away of curatorial influence at the McCord has parallels in other museums with roots in collections and research. What happened from the mid 19805 to 1996? Why was the collaborative spirit of the custodial agreement of 1987 subverted and the McCord tradition as a museum that welcomed

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students and research undermined, a process culminating in the announcement that the historical archives - the intellectual base of the collections - would be dispersed. To my mind, the systematic demeaning of research and curatorial work, the blatant hostility to a university course on material culture, and the firing of the professional with the closest links to students and researchers is part of a larger anti-intellectualism present in many museums and indee.d present to a degree in universities. Can it be simple coincidence that as museum studies have achieved professional and university status, academic research and the professional status of curators has declined? As the pressure grows on universities to teach skills to prepare students for "marketable jobs," is the intellectual depth that pursuing a particular discipline can bring being sacrificed? Along with business skills in management, marketing, and finance, museum administrators need a profound understanding and sensitivity to the culture of the institutions they manage. Some background in the study of Canada, its history, its people, and its cultures is an important prerequisite to directing a Canadian museum or cultural institution. At the McCord, authorities increasingly genuflected to museological principles that emphasized popular access - even if this change meant sacrificing local creative and intellectual resources to entertainment, imported exhibitions, corporate culture, and consumerism. Generally described as democratization and strongly supported by the state's cultural apparatus, the process was, paradoxically, accompanied at the McCord by deepening administrative authoritarianism and the direct grip of Canada's most important philanthropic foundation on an institution whose mission was to give meaning to the Canadian past. Born in Wales and working in Cambridge, British intellectual Raymond Williams had a profound feeling for past and place insisting that "we begin to think where we live"; similarly, Charles Taylor uses the word "orientation," arguing that "in order to have a sense of who we are, we have to have a notion of how we have become, and of where we are going."57 In an exhibition on the McCord family that we co-curated for the opening of the renovated museum in 1992, Pamela Miller and I

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The Making and Unmaking of a University Museum

gravitated to the same principles emphasizing the daily, the local, and the particular. With the collaboration of museum director Luke Rombout, the ground floor was laid out so that the visitor, en route to other parts of the museum, had to walk through the exhibition. Organizing the exhibition, we talked a great deal about historicity, about the museum's place in society, and about the family across time. It was essential to us that the exhibition, based on documents and objects held in collections upstairs, give a larger sense of the museum: the exhibition was an entrance to understanding the collections and the museum. Time and place were important - from eighteenthcentury Ireland from which the family emigrated, to the Nazareth Fief in nineteenth-century Montreal where the McCords accumulated their capital, to the museum today in a building first utilized as McGill's Student Union. Visitors examined maps, school books, mantelpieces, and flags; curators of costume, decorative art, and the photographic archives helped us choose objects and interpret their meaning. We published a book from the exhibition and met frequently with volunteers, students, and the public. All these elements - strong collections, a carefully researched exhibition that respected the visitor's curiosity about history, interdisciplinary collaboration by several curators, a publication, and attraction to a broad public seemed to characterize the potential of a history museum linked to a university. I still feel that given their entwined history, their particular place in Quebec and Canada, the singular support of a generous benefactor interested in Canadian history, and the richness of the museum's collections, the McCord and McGill - facing each other across Sherbrooke Street - share a unique opportunity that authorities in both institutions might address. It is in the conjuncture of its several functions that the McCord achieved a certain coherence. Research, popular education, and civic identity are not mutually exclusive and can be richly complementary within a museum. Nor are intelligence and public enthusiasm incompatible: ask Montrealers who know the McCord!

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Notes EPIGRAPHS

1 Museums, the Public and Anthropology: A Study in the Anthropology of Anthropology (Vancouver and New Delhi: University of British Columbia Press & Concept Publishing 1985), 14. 2 MMA, "Executive Summary, McCord Museum of Canadian History, 1996-1998 Business Plan," McCord Museum, November

1995-

INTRODUCTION

1 Richard Handler, Nationalism and the Politics of Culture in Quebec (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press 1988), 195. 2 For an example of the museum and audience focus, see Michel Allard and Bernard Lefebvre, Le musee, un lieu educatif (Montreal: Musee d'art contemporain de Montreal 1995), 17; see also Kevin Walsh, The Representation of the Past: Museums and Heritage in the post-modern world (London: Routledge 1988). 3 Virginia Woolf, The Voyage Out (Oxford: Oxford University Press 1992), 344 Press release, Claude Benoit, "A tout le personnel du Musee," McCord Museum, 15 April 1996. 5 A. Bloom, The Closing of the American Mind (New York: Simon and Schuster 1987), 380. 6 Woolf, The Voyage Out, 34. 7 See Peter Gathercole, "The Fetish of Artefacts," in Susan M. Pearce, Museum Studies in Material Culture (Leicester, London and Washington: Leicester University Press and Smithsonian Institution Press 1989), 74. 8 Le Devoir, 12 June 1996.

9 10 11 12 13

14 15

16 17

Globe and Mail, 5 June 1996. Ibid., 16 May 1996. New York Times, 2 August 1992. The Times (London), 25 June 1998. See Gary B. Nash, Charlotte Crabtree, and Ross E. Dunn, History on Trial: Culture Wars and the Teaching of the Past (New York: Knopf 1998), 122-7. McGill University Secretariat, "Custodial Agreement," McGill University and McCord Museum, 18 November 1987. MM A, Study of the Collection's Potential, 1985,117-19; despite the crisis, the McCord Archives was accredited by the Quebec government in 1996 and 1997. Author's archives, letter to Claude Benoit, 25 January 1995. John Roberts, Art Has No History (London: Verso 1994); John Ralston Saul, Voltaire's Bastards: The Dictatorship of Reason in the West (Toronto: Penguin 1993).

CHAPTER

ONE

1 MMA, box ioi-o\H3 133, Daily Telegraph, 20 October 1910. 2 MMA, McCord Family Papers, vol. 2049, "Correspondence re: donation of museum: D.R. McCord to and from W.D. Lighthall, 1908-1920," McCord to Lighthall, 17 July 1909. 3 Donald Fyson and Brian Young, "Origins, Wealth, and Work," in P. Miller, B. Young, D. Fyson, D. Wright, and M. McCaffrey, McCord Family, 33. 4 Fyson and Young, "Origins, Wealth, and Work," 39. 5 See Donald Fyson, "Eating in the City: Diet and Provisioning in Early-Nineteenth Century Montreal," unpublished MA thesis, McGill University, 1989. 6 For the garrison mentality, see F. Murray Greenwood, Legacies of Fear: Law and Politics in Quebec in the Era of the French Revolution (Toronto: Osgoode Society 1993). 7 For the pivotal place of Protestantism, see Linda Colley, Britons Forging the Nation, 1707-1837 (London: Pimlico 1992), especially 11-54. 8 For benevolence, see Lori D. Ginzberg, Women and the Work of Benevolence: Morality, Politics, and Class in the Nineteenth-Century

178

Note to pages 6-25

9 10

11 12 13

14 15 16

17 18 19

20

21

United States (New Haven: Yale University Press 1990). MMA, McCord Family Papers, vol. 0413, diary of J.S. McCord, 11 August 1856. For maternal power in the bourgeois family, see Mary Ryan, Cradle of the Middle Class: The family in Oneida County, New York, 1790-1865 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 1981), 158. MMA, McCord Family Papers, vol 0411, diary of J.S. McCord, n May 1853. MMA, McCord Family Papers, vol 531.11, "Nazareth Fief, Correspondence i86os," J.S. McCord to C.A. Leblanc, 11 Aug 1861. Chambers's death certificate, relying on information supplied by the very precise W.D. Lighthall, gives her occupation as "physician" (burial certificate, Mount Royal Cemetery, 15 July 1928). Miller and Young, "Private, Family and Community Life," in McCord Family, 79. MMA, McCord Family Papers, McCord Catalogue of Paintings, vol. i, nd. See the anthology of the Reverend J. Douglas Barthwick, Poems and Songs of the South African War (Montreal: Gazette Publishing 1901); Donald Wright explains this ideology of sacrifice in McCord's generation in "Myth, Memory, Meaning," Literary Review of Canada 7, no.4 (December 1998): 25-7. MMA, "WD. Lighthall, Museum Matters, 1935-50," newspaper clipping, Gazette, 8 June 1936. MMA, McCord Family Papers, vol. 1014, Anne Ross McCord, E.B. Greenshields to D.R. McCord, 21 October 1890 and other dates. For the cultural implications of these changes, see T.J. Jackson Lears, No Place of Grace: Antimodernism and the Transformation of American Culture, 1880-1920 (New York: Pantheon Books 1981). For Lighthall, see Donald A. Wright, "W.D. Lighthall: Sometime Confederation Poet, Sometime Urban Reformer," unpublished MA thesis, McGill University, 1991; much of their correspondence is in the McCord Archives. See also the Lighthall collection in the Rare Books Room, McLennan Library, McGill University. For male friendship, see Mark C. Carnes and Clyde Griffen, Meanings for Manhood: Constructions of Masculinity in Victorian America (Chicago: University of Chicago Press 1990). Steven Conn, Museums and American Intellectual Life, 1886-1926

Notes to pages 25-34

179

(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1998), 14. 22 Jacques Le Goff, Histoire et memoire (Paris: Gallimard 1988), 32. 23 This collecting is fully treated in Donald Wright's "McCord Crusade," in McCord Family, 89-102. 24 Cited in Donald A. Wright, "W.D. Lighthall," 20. 25 Stanley Triggs, Brian Young, Conrad Graham, and Gilles Lauzon, Victoria Bridge: The Vital Link (Montreal: McCord Museum 1992), 53. 26 Wright, "W.D. Lighthall," MMA, box ioi-o\H3 133, Daily Telegraph, 20 October 1910. See also Lighthall's depiction of Hiawatha and the founding of the Iroquois Confederacy in The Master of Life: A Romance of the Five Nations and of Prehistoric Montreal (1908). 27 MMA, McCord Family Papers, vol 2055, "Early Correspondence, 1907-21," draft of letter to McGill graduates, February 1920; for anthropological influences on McCord, see Bruce Trigger, Natives and Newcomers: Canada's "Heroic Age" Reconsidered (Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen's University Press 1985), 40-3. 28 Moira T. McCaffrey, "Rononshonni - the Builder: McCord's Collection of Ethnographic Objects," in McCord Family, 103. 29 MMA, McCord Family Papers, vol. 2050, Donation of Museum, "From the President of the Royal Bank of Canadian History to the President of the Royal Bank of Canada," 21 November 1919. 30 MMA, McCord Family Papers, vol. 2048, "Correspondence re: Donation of museum to institutions other than McGill University," handwritten note of David Ross McCord, nd. 31 MMA, McCord Family Papers, file 2053, "Early Museum Correspondence," David Ross McCord to Miss Amy Wheeler, 18 September 1919. 32 MMA, McCord Family Papers, "Catalogue of Original Paintings in Oil and Water Colour Illustrative of the History of Canada," vol. i. 33 MMA, vol. iooi-M7 "McCord Newspaper Clippings, 1920-29," Montreal Herald, 27 May 1921; McGill Daily, 28 November 1921. 34 McCord Family Papers, 17/6-1945, Vol. n, Collecting Correspondence (Montreal: McCord Museum 1986). 35 MMA, McCord Family Papers, vol. 2048, "Correspondence re: Donation of museum to institutions other than McGill University," McCord to Ernest Decary, Chairman of Commissioners of City of Montreal, 31 July 1918. 3 6 MMA, box 1O01-M7, "McCord Museum Newspaper Clippings to

180

Note to pages 34-9

1920," clipping from Westmount News, 2 May 1908 37 See Conrad Graham, Mont Royal-Ville Marie. Early Plans and Views of Montreal (Montreal: McCord Museum of Canadian History 1992). 38 McCord Museum of Canadian History: Functional Program (Montreal: McCord Museum 1987), 9-46. 39 MMA, McCord Family Papers, "Catalogue of Original Paintings in Oil and Water Colour Illustrative of the History of Canada," vol. i. 40 MMA, McCord Family Papers, file 3013, "David Ross McCord's wills," Final Will and Testament, 21 April 1878. 41 MMA,fileiooi-M7, "McCord Newspaper Clippings to 1920," Gazette, 12 January 1914. 42 McCord to Mrs F.E. Austin-Leigh, 4 September 1919, cited in Donald A. Wright, "Remembering War in Imperial Canada: David Ross McCord and the McCord National Museum," Fontanus ix (1996): 99. 43 MMA, McCord Family Papers, vol. 2049, "Correspondence re: Donation of Museum: D.R. McCord and W.D. Lighthall, 1908-20," McCord to Lighthall, 12 June 1909. 44 MMA, McCord Family Papers, vol. 2048, "Correspondence re: Donation of the museum to institutions other than McGill 1896-1908," draft suggestion to Westmount, 1908. 45 MMA,fileiooi-M7, "McCord Newspaper Clippings to 1920," Gazette, 12 January 1914. 46 MMA, McCord Family Papers, vol. 2048, "Correspondence re: Donation of the museum to institutions other than McGill 1896-1908," draft suggestion to Westmount, 1908. 47 Conn, Museums and American Intellectual Life, 15. 48 Julia Cousins, The Pitt Rivers Museum (Oxford: Pitt Rivers Museum 1993), 9; Beatrice Blackwood, The Origin and Development of the Pitt Rivers Museum (Oxford: Pitt Rivers Museum 1991), 17. 49 Kenneth Hudson, A Social History of Museums (London: Macmillan 1975), 10. 5 o Keith Walden, Becoming Modern in Toronto: The Industrial Exhibition and the Shaping of a Late Victorian Culture (Toronto: University of Toronto Press 1997), 20. 51 Tony Bennett, The Birth of the Museum: History, Theory, Politics

Notes to pages 39-42

181

(London and New York: Routledge 1995), 20,70,102,198. 52 Jean-Claude Dionne, "Documents pour 1'etude des expositions et musees pour la prevention des accidents et des maladies du travail au Quebec au debut du siecle," Labour/Le Travail 39 (spring 1997): 208, 206; in 1911, the museum was apparently moved to the Ecole technique de Montreal. 53 Hudson, A Social History of Museums, 52. 54 Henry Acland and John Ruskin, The Oxford Museum (London: George Allen 1893), 49,50, 81; T.J. Jackson Lears, No Place of Grace Antimodernism and the Transformation of American Culture, 1880-1920 (New York: Pantheon Books 1981), 4-5; for evidence of McCord's familiarity with Ruskin, see his "Historical Notebooks," vol. 2,286, cited in Donald Wright, "Remembering War in Imperial Canada," 100. 55 Laurence Vail Coleman, cited in Arthur C Parker, A Manual for History Museums (New York: Columbia University Press 1935), 9. 56 Cited in Joel J Orosz, Curators and Culture: The Museum Movement in America, 1740-18/0 (Tuscaloosa and London: University of Alabama Press 1990), 232. 57 Musee d'ethnographie provencale, Museon Arlaten, Conseil General, Bouches-du-Rh6ne, nd, brochure; Hudson, A Social History of Museums, 60. 5 8 Danielle Lacasse and Antonio Lechasseur, The National Archives of Canada, 1872-1997, Historical Booklet 58 (Ottawa: Canadian Historical Association 1997), 7. 5 9 Elizabeth Ida Hanson, A Jewel in a Park: Westmount Public Library, 1897-1918 (Montreal: Vehicule Press 1998), 29. 60 Fontanus ix (1996): 107; Peter F. McNally, "McGill University Libraries," Encyclopedia of Library and Information Science, 17: 315. 61 J.F.S. Snell, Macdonald College of McGill University (Montreal: McGill University Press 1963), 58; for Kingsford, see M. Brook Taylor, "William Kingsford," Dictionary of Canadian Biography, xu: 493-662 The Museum and its Contents: A Short Guide (Cardiff: National Museum of Wales 1931), n. 63 Sir George-Etienne Cartier, Bart., His Life and Times: A Political History of Canada from 1814 until 1873 (Toronto: Macmillan 1914). 64 Brief History and Official Reports of the Last Post (Montreal 1914).

182

Note to pages 42-5

65 H.V. Nelles, "Historical Pageantry and the 'Fusion of the Races' at the Tercentenary of Quebec," Histoire sodale/Sodal History 29, no. 5 (November 1996): 414, 404. See also Nelles, The Art of Nation Building: Pageantry and Spectacle at Quebec's Tercentenary (Toronto: University of Toronto Press 1999). 66 MM A, McCord Family Papers, vol. 2049, "Correspondence re: Donation of museum: D.R. McCord to and from W.D. Lighthall, 1908-1920," McCord to Lighthall, 17 July 1909. 67 "Early Room Guides, List of Contents 1924," cited in Wright, "Remembering War in Imperial Canada," Fontanus ix (1996): 101. 68 MM A, McCord Family Papers, vol. 2049, "Correspondence re: Donation of museum: D.R. McCord to and from W.D. Lighthall, 1908-1920," McCord to Lighthall, nd; rough notes of Lighthall, nd. 69 MMA, McCord Family Papers, vol. 2048, "Correspondence re: Donation of museum to institutions other than McGill University," draft suggestions to Westmount (1908); McCord to Ernest Decary, Chairman of Commissioners of City of Montreal 31 July 1918. 70 MMA, McCord Family Papers, vol. 2049, "Correspondence re: Donation of museum: D.R. McCord to and from W.D. Lighthall, 1908-1920," McCord to Lighthall, 12 June 1909. 71 MMA, McCord Family Papers, vol. 2048, "Correspondence re: Donation of the museum to institutions other than McGill, 1896-1908," draft suggestions to Westmount (1908). 72 MMA, McCord Family Papers, vol. 2048, "Correspondence re: Donation of museum to institutions other than McGill University," McCord McCord to Andrew Carnegie, 11 Oct 1906. 7 3 Lears, No Place of Grace, 4.

CHAPTER TWO

1 Margaret Atwood, "Ava Gardner Reincarnated as a Magnolia," in Morning in the Burned House (Toronto: McClelland and Stewart 1995), 322 MMA, McCord Museum Papers, file iooi-M7, "McCord Newspaper Clippings, 19605," Montreal Star, 9 March 1963. 3 Cyril Fox, A Survey of McGill University Museums (Montreal: McGill University, 1932), 27.

Notes to pages 45-8

183

4 Ibid., 25. 5 MUA, RG4, F238, ci93, "McGill University Museums: A Report of Progress 1855-1950," 1950, p. 2. 6 Luc Chartrand, Raymond Duchesne, and Yves Gingras, Histoire des sciences au Quebec (Montreal: Boreal 1987), 383, 400, 401. 7 M.A. Whitehead, "A Brief Survey of Science and Scientists at McGill," Fontanus ix (1996): 100. 8 Conn, Museums and Intellectual Life, 1876-1926,16-17. 9 The law faculty, for example, has a rich tradition of study in Quebec legal history. See Roderick A. Macdonald, "The National Law Programme at McGill: Origins, Establishment, Prospects," Dalhousie Law Journal 13, no. i (May 1990): 211-363. 10 MMA, McCord Museum Papers, file iooi-M7, "McCord Newspaper Clippings, to 1920," Gazette, 12 January 1914; reply of University Committee in Gazette, nd (1914). 11 MMA, McCord Family Papers, file 2055, "Early Museum Correspondence," McCord to Mrs W.C. Hodgson, Regent of the Daughters of the Empire, 15 September 1919. 12 Burton J. Bledstein, The Culture of Professionalism: The Middle Class and the Development of Higher Education in America (New York: Norton 1978), 121. 13 MMA, McCord Family Papers, vol. 2048, "Correspondence re: donation of museum to institution other than McGill university." 14 MMA, McCord Museum Papers, file iooi-M7, "McCord Newspaper Clippings to 1920," Montreal Standard, 5 June 1909. 15 Cited in Barbara Lawson, Collected Curios: Missionary Tales from the South Seas (Montreal: McGill University Libraries 1994), 26. 16 Luc Chartrand, Raymond Duchesne, Yves Gingras, Histoire des sciences au Quebec, 162-3; Carl Berger, Science, God, and Nature in Victorian Canada (Toronto: University of Toronto Press 1983), 76. 17 MMA, McCord Museum Papers, file 2065, "McCord Room," Memorandum by McCord, nd. 18 This romantic history, which exalted the benefits of the Conquest, had its professional counterpart in the writing of Arthur Lower. See his Canadians in the Making: a Social History of Canada (Toronto: Longmans, Green and Co. 1958), 10, and Carl Berger's comments in The Writing of Canadian History, 126. 19 MMA, McCord Family Papers, vol. 2049, "Correspondence re:

184

Note to pages 4 8-54

20

21

22

23 24

25 26 27

28

29

Donation of museum: D.R. McCord to and from W.D. Lighthall, 1908-1920," McCord to Lighthall, 17 January 1919. MMA, RG4, Fio696, €0096, "Correspondence, McCord Estate and Donation - McCord museum, 1908-35," McCord to Major Hooper, 17 July 1920. MMA, McCord Family Papers, file 2056, "Museum Correspondence," D.R. McCord to Sir Auckland Geddes, Ministry of National Service, 15 September 1919. Peter F. McNally, "Scholar Librarians: Gould, Lomer, and Pennlington," Fontanus xi (1998): 96-7; MMA, McCord Family Papers, vol. 2049, "Correspondence re: donation of museum: D.R. McCord to and from W.D. Lighthall, 1908-1920," Report of Committee appointed by Board of Governors to examine and value the Canadian Historical Collection of David Ross McCord, 10 October 1909. Gould evaluated the collection at $75,000. MUA, RG4, Fio696, 00096, "Correspondence, McCord Estate and Donation - McCord Museum, 1908-35." Peter McNally, "Fanfare and Celebrations: Anniversaries in Canadian Graduate Education for Library and Information Studies," in P. McNally, Readings in Canadian Library History (Ottawa: Canadian Library Association 1996), 45. Montreal Herald, 11 October 1909; Alexander Reford, "Robert Reford," Dictionary of Canadian Biography, xiv, 862-3. Theodore D. Regehr, "Sir William Cornelius Van Home," Dictionary of Canadian Biography, xiv, 1035-7. Philippe Aries, Western Attitudes toward Death from the Middle Ages to the Present (Baltimore and London: John Hopkins University Press 1974), 91. MMA, McCord Family Papers, vol. 2049, "Correspondence re: Donation of museum: D.R. McCord to and from W.D. Lighthall, 1908-1920," McCord to Lighthall, 27 March 1913. Montreal Herald, 26 March 1909; MMA, McCord Family Papers, vol. 2049, "Correspondence re: Donation of museum: D.R. McCord to and from W.D. Lighthall, 1908-1920," to C.J. Fleet of Fleet, Falconer and Company, 12 October 1909; vol. 2051, "Correspondence re: Donation of Museum to McGill University, 1908-1919," W. Peterson to D.R. McCord, 17 June 1909. The Montreal Herald reported on 2 July 1909 that the Joseph House

Notes to pages 55-6

185

would be the site of a new gymnasium. 3 o MMA, McCord Family Papers, vol. 2049, "Correspondence re: Donation of museum: D.R. McCord to and from W.D. Lighthall, 1908-1920," McCord to Lighthall, nd. 31 Elizabeth Ida Hanson, A Jewel in the Park: West-mount Public Library, 1897-1918 (Montreal: Vehicule Press 1998), 55. 32 MMA, McCord Family Papers, vol. 2048, "Correspondence re: Donation of the museum to institutions other than McGill, 1896-1908," draft suggestion to Westmount, 1908; Montreal Herald, 7 June 1909. 33 MMA, McCord Family Papers, vol. 2049, "Correspondence re: Donation of museum: D.R. McCord to and from W.D. Lighthall, 1908-1920," Lighthall to McCord, 4 December 1909. McGill's assessment of $5000 had precedents. Peter Redpath contributed $5000 annually to the upkeep of the university library which he had built in 1893. (Peter F. McNally, Encyclopedia of Library and Information Service, 17: 315). 34 MMA, McCord Museum Papers, files ioi-o\ii3 133, Daily Telegraph, 20 October 1910. 35 MMA, McCord Museum Papers, file 7627, "McCord Museum, Misc.," Report of Pemberton Smith, General Insurance, 30 July 1930. 36 MMA, McCord Family Papers, vol. 2049, "Correspondence re: Donation of museum: D.R. McCord to and from W.D. Lighthall, 1908-1920," Lighthall to McCord, 14 April 1913; MMA, file iooi-M7, "McCord Newspaper Clippings to 1920," Gazette, 12 January 1914. 37 MMA, McCord Museum Papers, file iooi-M7, "McCord Newspaper Clippings to 1920," Gazette, nd (1914); McCord Family Papers, vol. 2049, "Correspondence re: Donation of museum: D.R. McCord to and from W.D. Lighthall, 1908-1920," D.R. McCord to Lighthall, 20 August 1918. 3 8 MMA, McCord Family Papers, file 2052, "Correspondence re: Displays," D.R. McCord to Sir Vincent Meredith, 12 February 1920; McCord to President of Royal Bank of Canada, 21 November 1919; McCord to Alfred Joyce, 14 November 1919; file 2053, "Early Museum Correspondence," F. Williams-Taylor to McCord, 30 November 1915; file 2056, "Museum correspondence", D.R. McCord to Major George Hoooper, Dow Brewery, 29 April 1920.

186

Note to pages 57-9

3 9 MMA, McCord Family Papers, McCord to Sir Charles Gordon, Dominion Textile, 16 March 1920. 40 MMA, McCord Family Papers, file 2052, "Correspondence re: Displays," Frank Adams, acting principal, to McCord, 29 January 1920. 41 MMA, McCord Family Papers, file 2052, "Correspondence re: Displays," Percy Nobbs to McCord, 22 January 1920. 42 MMA, McCord Museum Papers, file 3000, "David Ross McCord: Interdiction," Lighthall to Mrs D. R. McCord, 10 June 1822; Medical Report, 17 June 1922; Interdiction, Superior Court of Montreal, 20 June 1922. 43 MMA, McCord Museum Papers, vol. 2052a, Opening 1921, W.D. Lighthall address at opening of McCord National Museum, 13 October 1921. 44 Lighthall, "Hochelaga and the 'Hill of Hochelaga' (1924)," in James F. Pendergast and Bruce G. Trigger, Carrier's Hochelaga and the Dawson Site (Montreal: McGill-Queen's University Press 1962), 373. 45 Montreal Herald, 19 October 1909. 46 Montreal Herald, 26 March 1909. 47 MUA, RG2, F1377, "Report on McCord Committee," 4 June 1919. 48 MMA,fileiooi-M7, "McCord Newspaper Clippings, 1920-29" Montreal Star, 18 December 1924. 49 Cyril Fox, A Survey ofMcGill University Museums (Montreal: McGill University 1932), 18. 50 Nobbs's archives are deposited in McGiU's Blackader-Lauterman Library of Architecture and Art. 51 MMA, McCord Museum Papers, file 4003, Lighthall to Currie, 7 February 1927; for Currie, see Robert J. Sharpe, The Last Day, the Last Hour: The Currie Libel Trial (Toronto: Osgoode Society 1988). 52 MUA, RG4, Fio696, 00096, "Correspondence, McCord Estate and Donation - McCord museum, 1908-35," G.R. Lomer to Arthur Currie, 22 April 1926. 53 Michael Maxwell, "The History of History at McGill," unpublished address to the James McGill Society, April 1981, p. 18. 54 MMA, McCord Museum, Administrative Papers, file 7623, "Committee Reports and Minutes," Report of Mary Muir, 8 November 1923. 55 Michael Maxwell, "The History of History at McGill," pp. 4,9. 5 6 Peter Novick, That Noble Dream: The "Objectivity" Question and

Notes to pages 59-64

187

57

58 59 60 61

62 63

64 65 66 67

68 69 70

71 72 73

188

the American Historical Profession (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 1988), 259; for the American experience, see Gary Nash, Charlotte Crabtree, and Ross E. Dunn, History on Trial: Culture Wars and the Teaching of the Past (New York: Knopf 1998), 32-5. Suzanne Zeller, Land of Promise, Promised Land: The Culture of Victorian Science in Canada, Historical Booklet no.56 (Ottawa: Canadian Historical Association 1996). Wright, "W.D. Lighthall: Sometime Confederation Poet," 91. Ibid., 86. Ibid., 42. Lighthall, "Hochelaga and the 'Hill of Hochelaga' (1924)," in James F. Pendergast and Bruce G. Trigger, Carrier's Hochelaga and the Dawson Site (Montreal: McGill-Queen's University Press 1962), 372. Montreal Herald, 20 April 1909. MMA, McCord Museum Papers, vol. 20523, Opening 1921, W.D. Lighthall address at opening of McCord National Museum, 13 October 1921. Ibid. Montreal Gazette, 16 May 1925; Montreal Star, 10 February 1972. MUA, Annual Report of University Museums, 1942-43. Michael Maxwell, "The History of History at McGill," p. 19. In addition, H.E. MacDermot and F.R. Scott, a Canadian, were appointed to readerships in history. W.T. Waugh, James Wolfe, Man and Scholar (Montreal: Carrier and Co. 1928), 310. Michael Maxwell, "The History of History at McGill," p. 28. MMA, McCord Museum Papers, vol. 4008, De Ldry Macdonald to Lighthall, 13 November 1936; for an example of Adair's work on French Canada, see his attack on traditional interpretations of Dollard Des Ormeaux, "Dollard Des Ormeaux and the Fight at Long Sault: A Re-interpretation of Dollard's Exploit," Canadian Historical Review 13 (1932): 121-38. Interview with Myron Echenberg, 10 February 1999. Dobell Papers, "Notes Boston museum," 9 November 1976. MMA, McCord Museum Papers, file iooi-M7\io6 - i a 13, "Historic items from general office files," McCord Museum: First Years (probable author, Dorothy Warren), nd.

Note to pages 64-8

74 MMA, McCord Museum Papers, file 7359, "Administration Papers, Lighthall," Lighthall to Muir, 31 October 1923. 75 MMA, McCord Museum Papers, file 7627, "Miscellaneous," various dates in Monthly Record, 1928-30. 76 MMA, McCord Museum Papers, file 7623, "Administrative Papers," Committee Minutes and Reports, Minutes, 5 March 1923, Monthly Record, January 1935 - December 1935; file 3100, "W.D. Lighthall Museum Matters," G. Lomber to Lighthall, 20 May 1922; MUA,RG2, F1377, c69,"Memorandum on University Policy Regarding Museum," 1928; McGill Daily, 15 February 1928. 77 For cost cutting at the McGill Medical Museum in the 19205 and 19305, see H.E. MacDermot, Maude Abbott: A Memoir (Toronto: Macmillan 1941). 78 Cyril Fox, A Survey of McGill University Museums (Montreal: McGill University, 1932), 18. 79 Ibid., 25. 80 Ibid., 39. 81 MMA, McCord Museum Papers, file iooi-M7, "Historic items from general office files," McCord Museum: First Years (Dorothy Warren), nd. 82 MMA, McCord Museum Papers, file 3100, "W.D. Lighthall Museum Matters, 1909-1935," Lighthall to Glassco, 25 November 1932; Lighthall to George C. McDonald, 30 November 1934. 83 Frost, McGill University, 2:142. 84 Ibid., 2:196. 85 MUA, RG2, F27ii, 094, Museum committee meeting, 14 November 1941; RG4, F238, ci93, George McDonald to F.O. Stredder, 9 March 1936. In 1934-35, the McCord Museum's operating costs were reported as $8120 ($1806 full-time employee; $1185 part-time employee; $1382 resident caretaker, $900 pension; balance for department supplies and maintenance). 86 MUA, RG4, F238, 0193, Private memorandum for bursar's file from Lighthall, 7 April 1936. 87 MUA, RG4, F238, 0193, Draft press release: The Closing of the McCord Museum, nd. 88 McGill News 17, no.2 (spring 1936): 42; MUA, Subject Records, 1875-1990: McCord Museum, RG4, F238, 0193, F.O. Stredder to A.E. Morgan, 14 April 1936.

Notes to pages 68-73

*89

89 MUA, RG4, F73/8, 0261, David Ross McCord Legacy: Capital Account, 1955-56. 90 Montreal Standard, 13 June 1936. 9 i MUA, RG4, F238, 0193, Judah to F. Owen Stredder, 7 February 1936; Principal Lewis Douglas to T.H. Clark, 18 May 1938. 92 MMA, McCord Museum Papers, file iooi-p\i42, "Early Museum Administration," Alice Johannsen Turnham to John Spargo, 6 May 1949. 93 Alice Johannsen, "As the Twig Is Bent," in M. Gillett and K. Sibbald, A Fair Shake: Autobiographical Essays by McGill Women (Montreal: Eden Press 1984), 103-23. 94 MUA, MG41/6, Fi5, Montreal Star, 11 March 1968. 95 Alice Johannsen, "As the Twig is Bent," in M. Gillett and K. Sibbald, A Fair Shake, 118. 96 Dobell Papers, Frost to Duncan Hodgson, 10 November 1970. 97 Paul Carle, Madeleine Dufresne, and Lynne Teather, "Le Musee Redpath de 1940 a 1970: les annees Johannsen," Muse nos i et i (1988): 12. 98 MUA, RG2 Fii642 C3io, University Museums Committee, Report by M.J. Dunbar, i January 1966. 99 Paul Carle, Madeleine Dufresne, and Lynne Teather, "Le Mus^e Redpath de 1940 a 1970: les annees Johannsen," Muse nos i et i (1988): 12. 100 MUA, RG4 F238 ci93, McGill University Museums, Annual Report, i953-54> P-10; I. Dobell, "Buried Treasure," in Gillett and Sibbald, A Fair Shake, 139-40. 101 MMA, McCord Museum Papers, file iooi-p8\i54, Judah-Museums; McGill University Museums, Annual Report, 1954-55, P- 5

CHAPTER THREE

1 Edward W. Said Representations of the Intellectual (New York: Vintage 1994), 82. 2 MUA, Photo PA039154,1954. 3 See Margaret Gillett's We Walked Warily: A History of Women at McGill (Montreal: Eden Press Women's Publications 1981). 4 Peter McNally, "Beatrice V. Simon (1899-1994)," Fontanus vn (1994): 182; Linda Downs, "A Recent History of Women Educators

190

Note to pages 74-81

5 6 7 8

9

10 11 12

13

14 15 16

in Art Museums," in Jane R. Glaser and Artemis A. Zenetou, Gender Perspectives: Essays on Women in Museums (Washington and London: Smithsonian Institution Press 1994), 93. Said, Representations of the Intellectual, 82. MMA, McCord Museum Papers, file 7233, "Administrative Papers," McCord to Arthur Currie, 9 August 1920. Cited in Steven Conn, Museums and American Intellectual Life, 1886-1926 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press 1998), 14. For the development of the "service to children" ideal in American libraries, see Abigail A. Van Slyck, Free for All: Carnegie Libraries and American Culture, 1890-1920 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press 1995), 25; for children's museums, see Ann W. Lewin, "Empowering the Mind of the Child in Children's Museums," in Glaser and Zenetou, Gender Perspectives, 77-81. Linda Ambrose, "Ontario Women's Institutes and the Work of Local History," in Beverly Boutilier and Alison Prentice, Creating Historical Memory: English-Canadian Women and the Work of History (Vancouver: UBC Press 1997), 77. H.E. MacDermot, Maude Abbott: A Memoir (Toronto: Macmillan 1941), 17. MMA, McCord Museum Papers, vol. 1005, Anne Ross McCord, framed letter, Eleanor Davidson to Anne Ross, c. 1822. MMA, McCord Museum Papers, file 2057, "Gifts to museum acknowledgements 1921-24," McCord to Miss Featherstone, 5 April 1923; McCord to Miss Angus, 17 May 1922; file 2058, "First museum arrangement," Couper, Colonel George, nd. Carol Lee Bacchi, Liberation Deferred? The Ideas of the EnglishCanadian Suffragists, 1877-1918 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press 1987), 18,155; Globe and Mail, 11 October 1997. MMA, McCord Museum Papers, file iooi-p8\i54, Judah Museums, Anne V. Byers to Judah, 14 November 1961. MMA, McCord Museum Papers, file 7627, Miscellaneous, various dates in Monthly Record, 1928-30. MMA, McCord Museum Papers, file 7623, "Administrative Papers: Committee Minutes and Reports," M. Muir to Museum Committee, 5 November 1924; Shirley E. Woods, The Molson Saga 1763-1983 (Toronto: Doubleday 1983), 326; for female philanthropy among the Molsons, see Bettina Bradbury, "Anne Molson,"

Notes to pages 82-6

191

Dictionary of Canadian Biography, xn, 748-9. 17 MMA, McCord Museum Papers, file 1001 7M\io6-i a 13, "Newspaper Clippings 19705," Montreal Star, 9 March 1963. 18 MMA, McCord Museum Papers, file 2057, "Gifts to Museum acknowledgement 1921-24," various letters. 19 MUA, RG4, F7885, 0432, "Donations, Endowments and Bequests, 1857-1983," David Ross McCord donation, 28 July 1919; MMA, McCord Museum Papers, vol. 7006, "Administrative Papers, 1920-40," Dean ED. Adams, McCord to Adams, 26 September 1919. 20 MMA, McCord Museum Papers, file 7233, "Administrative Papers," McCord to Currie, 9 August 1920. 21 MMA, McCord Museum Papers, Miscellaneous Pamphlet in Administrative Papers, "The Artist in Canada from the late Eighteenth Century." 22 MMA, McCord Museum Papers, file iooi-M7, "Newspaper Clippings, 19305," Gazette, 14 January 1933. 23 MMA, McCord Museum Papers, iooi-M7\io6-i a 13, "Newspaper Clippings 19305," Isabel Craig, "The McCord National Museum," Teacher's Magazine, June 1931,11-13. 24 MMA, McCord Museum Papers, file iooi-M7, "Newspaper Clippings, 19305," Montreal Star, 18 October 1933. 25 MMA, McCord Museum Papers, file iooi-M7, "Newspaper Clippings 1920-29," Montreal Star, 8 May 1926, letter from "Twelve year old girl." 26 MMA, McCord Museum Papers, file 1001 M7\io6-i a 13, "Newspaper Clippings 19705," Montreal Star, 9 March 1963. 27 MUA, RG4, F7885, 0432, "Donations, Endowments and Bequests, 1857-1983," David Ross McCord donation, 28 July 1919; MMA, McCord Museum Papers, vol. 7006, "Administrative Papers, 1920-40," Dean ED. Adams, McCord to Dean ED. Adams, 26 September 1919. 28 MUA, RG4, Fio696, 00096, handwritten note by Muir, 15 September 1924. 29 MMA, McCord Museum Papers, file 31001, WD. Lighthall, "Museum Matters: Mary Dudley Muir," Lighthall to W.S. Lighthall, 3 February 1930; Muir to Lighthall, 12 February 1930. 3 o MMA, McCord Museum Papers, file 7540, "Administrative Papers,"

192

Note to pages 8 6-9 o

Lighthall, Lighthall to Warren, 14 March 1931. 31 MMA, McCord Museum Papers, file 3102, WD. Lighthall, "Museum Matters, 1935-50," Warren to E.L. Judah, Secretary of the University Museums Committee, 12 November 1935; E.L. Judah, Secretary of the University Museums Committee, "Administrative Requirements, McCord National Museum," 11 November 1935. 32 MMA, McCord Museum Papers, file 3102, WD. Lighthall, "Museum Matters, 1935-50," Warren to Lighthall, 17 April 1936. 33 MMA, McCord Museum Papers, file 7674, "Administrative Papers," McGill University Museums committee, Warren to T.H. Clark and members of museums committee, 28 May 1936; file 7656, Craig to Dr JJ. O'Neill, Dean of Science, 11 June 1935; MUA, RG2, F1379, 069, "General Correspondence, McCord Museum," C.S. Le Mesurier to Principal James, 12 March 1942. In 1937, Craig was awarded an MA 3 4 McGill News, winter 1874. 35 Dobell, "Buried Treasure," in Gillett and Sibbald, A Fair Shake, 139. 3 6 Wall plaque in the Church of St Andrew and St Paul, Montreal. 37 Dobell Papers, "Handwritten Thoughts," Toronto, 13 March 1985. 3 8 The Study Chronicle (Montreal: Southam Press 1934), co-authored editorial, 7. 39 Dobell Papers, "Handwritten Thoughts," Toronto, 13 March 1985. 40 Isabel Dobell, The Story of Canada (Toronto: Pagurian Press 1964), 4; for the importance of female friendships and girls' schools, see Margaret Gillett's autobiographical essay, "Next Time ... Bargain Harder," in Gillett and Sibbald, A Fair Shake, 409. 41 Dobell Papers, "Handwritten Thoughts," Toronto, 13 March 1985. 42 The Study Chronicle (Montreal: Southam Press 1934), 37. 43 "Cruise Culture" was accepted for publication in the Montrealer, Dobell Papers, Robyn Watkins to Dobell, i November 1939; her stories and poems are in the Dobell papers. 44 Cecile Gagnon Papers, Dobell to Gagnon, 24 November 1959, 15 April 1966. 45 The Story of Canada, 60. 46 Dobell Papers, "Report on the Administration of the Moose Jaw Art Museum," 11 April 1975. 47 The Art of Canadian Indians and Eskimos (Ottawa: Queen's Printer 1969); Montreal Gazette, 4 May 1979. 48 Dobell Papers, Dobell to Mrs D. Warin, 3 March 1972; Song of the

Notes to pages 90-6

193

Forest (Montreal: Oberon 1977). 49 C£cile Gagnon Papers, Dobell to Gagnon, 15 April 1966. 50 Dobell Papers, Dobell to W. Taylor, 3 March 1980. 51 Dobell Papers, "Report on the Administration of the Moose Jaw Art Museum," 11 April 1975. 52 Dobell Papers, "Report on the Administration of the Moose Jaw Art Museum," 11 April 1975. 53 MUA, RG4, F6917, 0496, "Real Estate, 1832-1990," Jesse Joseph Property, Letter and transfer of rights of S.G. Guest et al. to Sir W. Macdonald, 8 June 1909. Blocking the Ritz Carlton syndicate's plan to open a hotel, Macdonald purchased it for $142,500. 5 4 Her monthly salary in 1957 was $150. 55 MMA, McCord Museum Papers, file iooi-p8\i54, Judah Museums, "Report to the committee on university needs," 21 October 1943; see also Alice E Johannsen, "McGill Museums Face a Crisis", McGill News (spring 1944). 56 MMA, McCord Museum Papers, file iooi-p8\i54, Judah Museums, Johannsen to E.L. Judah, 17 November 1943; Dobell Papers, Dobell to Johannsen, c. 1961. 57 J. Russell Harper and S. G. Triggs, eds., Portrait of a Period: A Collection ofNotman Photographs (Montreal: McGill University Press 1967). 58 Montreal Gazette, October, 1958. 59 MMA, McCord Museum Papers, file 1001 M7\io6- i a 13, "Newspaper Clippings, 19705," Montreal Gazette, 18 September 1965. 60 J. Russell Harper, Everyman's Canada: Paintings and Drawings from the McCord Museum of McGill University (Ottawa: Queen's Printer 1962). 61 MMA, McCord Museum Papers, file iooi-M7, "Newspaper Clippings, 19605," McGill Daily, i November 1961, i March 1963; Dobell Papers, newspaper clipping, Montreal Star, i November 1961. 62 Peter McNally, "A Preliminary Guide to the Canadiana Resources of the Libraries, Archives, and Museums of McGill University," unpublished report, McGill University, 1973; Lillian Rider, Canadian Resources at McGill: A Guide to the Collections (Montreal: McGill University Libraries 1980). 63 Archives of Peter McNally, Draft letter to Elton Pounder, chair of Libraries Committee, 17 January 1972; Alex Lucas, coordinator of

194

Note to pages 96-102

64

65

66 67

68 69

70 71 72 73 74

75 76

77 78 79 80

Canadian Studies Program, to Dean of Arts Robert Vogel, 28 January 1972. Ibid., "Draft Proposal for an Institute of Canadian Studies at McGill," 30 January 1974, contained in a Memo by Vice-Principal Dale Thomson, 22 March 1974. MMA, McCord Museum Papers, file iooi-M7, "Newspaper Clippings, 19605," Montreal Gazette, 29 April 1974, Montreal Star, 9 March 1963. MMA, McCord Museum Papers, file iooi-M7, "Newspaper Clippings, 19605," Montreal Star, 9 March 1963. MUA, RG2, Fii645, 0310, Subject Records, 1875-1990, Re: Senate committee on Development, "Various Minutes Dealing with the Museum," 11 June 1964; RG4, F1379, 0450, McCord Museum Alterations, University Museums Committee Report, 10 December 1962. MUA, RG2, Fii642, C3io, University Museums Committee, Report by M.J. Dunbar, i January 1966. MUA, RG4, F1379, 0450, Subject Records, 1875-1990; McCord Museum Alterations, "Feasibility Report," 21 January 1963; interview with Guy Desbarats, 20 June 1996. Interview with Guy Desbarats, 20 June 1996. Dobell Papers, "Notes, Moving the McCord," 26 February 1968. Cynthia Eberts interview, 31 May 1996. Dobell Papers, Peter Laing to Dobell, 18 December 1970. In an interview on 9 June 1999, Triggs emphasized that people "off the street" were welcomed and remembered particularly playwright David Fennario. McCord, 2, no. 2 (summer 1993), Richard Huyda to Luc Rombout, 30 April 1993. MMA, McCord Museum Papers, file iooi-M7\io6 - i a 13, no. 13, "McCord historic items from general office files," McCord museum - Canadian History and Pre-History, 22 September 1964. Dobell Papers, "Notes in Desperation," 6 August 1971. Dobell Papers, Dobell to Thomson, 8 August 1975. Dobell Papers, Frost to Dobell, 29 October 1970; Allan C McColl, Director of Finance, to Frost, 9 May 1973. MUA, RG2, F9217, 0503, "Robert Edward Bell, Museums: McCord," L Yaffe to Principal R. Bell, 3 January 1975; Dobell Papers, Dobell to Yaffe, 7 November 1974.

Notes to pages 102-11

195

CHAPTER

FOUR

1 MUA, RG4, F1585, 0516, "Administrative Records, 1912-1988," McCord Museum: Board of Directors Meetings, Gordon Maclachlan to David Bourke, 9 February 1983. 2 J.H. Plumb, The Making of an Historian: The Collected Essays of J.H.Plumb (Athens: University of Georgia Press 1988), 179. 3 H.E. MacDermot, Maude Abbott: A Memoir (Toronto: Macmillan 1941), 169-70. 4 Cited in David Legate, Stephen Leacock (Toronto: Doubleday 1970), 395 McGill Daily, 10 March 1969; cited in undergraduate paper by Matthew Rankin. 6 Frost, McGill University, n: 260. 7 Dobell Papers, S.B. Frost to Dobell, 29 February 1972. 8 MUA, RG4, Fio875, 0532, "Financial Records, 1901-1989, McCord Museum - Budget," Budget Planning Group, 14 March 1980. 9 MUA, RG4, 51522, €516, Bruce Anderson to David Bourke, 19 January 1981. 10 MUA, RG2, Fi6i76, 0564, David Bourke to John Armour, vice-principal (finance), 2 December 1980. 11 MUA, RG2, F16454, 0575, "McCord Museum - Two Scenarios," report to Budget Planning Group, [October 1981]. 12 MUA, RG4, F12766, 0596, "McCord Museum, Annual Report, 1980-81," p. 7; RG2, Fi6i76, 0564, David Lloyd Johnston, Museums, McCord Museum, John Armour to C.F. Harrington, 23 October 1980; RG4, F1583, 05101, "Administrative Records, 1912-1988," McCord Museum, John Armour to C.F. Harrington, 27 March 1984. 13 Roland Shaer, L'invention des musees (Paris: Gallimard 1993), 106. 14 Michel Cote, ed., Museological Trends in Quebec (Quebec: Societe des musees quebecois 1992), 117; Stephen E. Weil, A Cabinet of Curiosities, (Washington: Smithsonian Institution Press 1995), 30. 15 Stanley Haidaz, House of Commons, Debates, 30 May 1973,4264; see also Otto Jelinek, 4269. 16 Canadian Museum Policy: Temples of the Human Spirit (Canada: Supply and Services 1990), 9. 17 Annette Viel, "Don Quixotes in Quest of the Past and the Future,"

196

Note to pages 112-19

18 19

20 21 22 23 24

25

in Cote, Museological Trends in Quebec, 132. Quebec, Revised Statutes of Quebec, 1977, c. M43, "Lois sur les musees." Cited in Pierre Mayrand, "A New Concept of Muscology in Quebec," Muse n, no. i (April 1984): 33; see also Le reseau museal quebecois. Enonce d'orientations (1994), 21. Paule Renaud, "To Know and Be Known," in Cote, ed., Museological Trends in Quebec, 119. John Kettle, ed., The Museum and the Canadian Public (Ottawa: Cultural Publications 1974) i, 105,115,132. Barbara Tyler and Jean Trudel, "The State of the Museum Community," Muse x, nos. 2 and 3 (summer/autumn 1992): 2. Cote, ed., Museological Trends in Quebec, 102. Report and Recommendations of the Task Force Charged with Examining Federal Policy Concerning Museums, 25. See also Tyler and Trudel, "The State of the Museum Community," Muse x, nos. 2 and 3 (summer/autumn 1992): 2. MUA, RG4, Fio875, 00532, Dann Michols to E Stansbury, 5 July

197926 Dobell Papers, Ian Clark, Secretary of State's Office, to Dobell, 7 May 1973. 27 Ibid. 28 Dobell Papers, CJ. Mackenzie, National Museums, to Dobell, 3 October 1972; MUA, RG4, Fio863, 00531, "Report on Public Programming Activities, April 1983 - March 1984"; RG4, F12766, 0596 "Annual Report of McCord Museum, 1986-87." 29 Christine Tarpin, L'emergence du musee de la civilisation: Contexte et creation (Quebec: Musee de la civilisation 1998), 96 (my translation). 30 See the Report and Recommendations of the Task Force charged with examining federal policy concerning museums, 17; MUA, RG2, Fi8957, 0738, "Development and Communications Committee Program Proposal, Part n," 26 February 1990, p. 28; see also RG4, Fio875, 00532, Director of Museum Assistance Programme to E. Stansbury, 5 July 1979. 31 MUA, RG2, F18957, 0738, University Secretariat, Museums, David Bourke memorandum to Derek Price, David Lank, David Johnston, Conrad Harrington, 14 November 1988.

Notes to pages 119-22

197

32 Interview with Stanley Frost, 10 August 1998. 33 MUA, RG4, F12J55, 0596, Dominique Bilodeau to Marcel Caya, 31 January 1986. 34 Le reseau tnuseal quebecois: Enonce d'orientations (1994), 34. 35 Marie-Emond, "Pointe a Calliere, Museum of Anthropology and History of Montreal," Muse xin, no. i (spring 1995): 58-9. 36 Jean Trudel, "Politically Correct," Muse xm, no. i (spring 1995): 6. 37 Kersti Krug, "The New Muscology ... and All that Jazz," Muse xv, no. 2 (August 1997): 33, 35. 3 8 Rene Rivard, "Museum: Growth or Metamorphosis," Muse xiv, no. 4 - xv, no. i, (June 1997): 61; Jean Trudel, "Politically Correct," Muse xm, no. i (spring 1995): 6. 39 Muse xm, no. i (spring 1995): 53. 40 Christine Tarpin, 'L'emergence du musee de la civilisation., 141. 41 Herve Gagnon, "Education and the History Museum: Change or Tradition," Muse vn, no. 2 (summer 1989): 55-6. 42 Thierry Ruddell, "The Museum's Need for a Critical Conscience: A Role for Universities," Muse vn, no. 3 (fall 1989): 52-3. 43 Laurier Lacroix, "Collections," Muse xiv, no. 4 - xv, no. i (June 1997): 81. 44 Greg Barr, "Being a Curator Is the Most Impossible Profession on Earth! Conversation," Muse in, no. 4 (winter 1986): 16. 45 Globe and Mail, 24 April 1999. 46 Jean Hamelin, Le Musee du Quebec: Histoire d'une institution nationale (Quebec: Musee du Quebec 1991), 9-10. 47 Le Devoir, 18 January 1975. 48 Harper, Painting in Canada, vii. 49 Peter McNally private collection, cited in "draft letter" to Elton Pounder, chair of University Libraries Committee, 17 January 1972. 5 o McGill News, September 1972. 51 Ibid. 52 Dobell Papers, S Frost to Duncan Hodgson, 10 November 1970. 53 Montreal Star, i September 1979. 54 MUA, RG4, F12766, 0596, "McCord Museum, Annual Report, 1980-81." 55 Dobell Papers, Frost to Sean Murphy, 30 April 1973. 5 6 MUA, RG4, F6553, Dale Thomson to Members of "PAG," 27 November 1974.

198

Note to pages 122-8

57 MUA, RG4, F12/66, 0596, "McCord Museum, Annual Report, 1980-81," Policy and Procedure, Acquisitions Committee, March 1981. 58 Pierre-Francis Ouellette, "Admission Fees in Museums: A Discussion Paper," Muse v, no. 2 (summer 1987): 44. 59 MUA, RG4, F12766, 0596, "McCord Museum, Annual Report 1980-81," p. 8; RG4, Fio878, €532, "Examination of the financial situation," 2 April 1986. 60 MUA, RG4, Fi58o, 0515, Shirley Thomson to staff, 14 December 1982; RG4, F12766, 0596, "McCord Museum of Canadian History, Annual Report, 1987-88," p. 34. 61 MUA, RG4, F12766, €596, "McCord Museum, Annual Report, 1980- 81," p. 7. 62 MUA, RG4, Fio878, 0532, "Examination of the financial situation," 2 April 1986. 63 MUA, RG4, F1583, 0515, "Administrative Records, 1912-1988"; McCord Museum - Administration - General," D. Johnston to C.E Harrington, 26 January 1984. 64 MUA, RG4, Fio868, 0531, "Financial Records, 1901-1989," Harrington to David Johnston, 19 March 1984. 65 MUA, RG4, Fio862, C531, Committees, 1869-91; McCord Museum Acquisitions Subcommittee, 21 June 1982; Minutes of Policy Committee, McCord Museum, 4 December 1984. 66 MUA, RG4, F12758, 0596, Subject Records, 1971-97, McCord Museum, Minutes, Interim Management Committee, 25 October 1988. 67 MUA, RG4, F1585, 0516, Shirley Thomson to Policy Committee, i February 1983. 68 MUA, RG4, F1585, 0516, Shirley Thomson to Policy Committee, i February 1983; RG4, Fi58o, 0516, David Bourke to Shirley Thomson, 14 November 1982; RG4, F12766, 0596, "McCord Museum, Annual Report, 1986-87." 69 MUA, RG4, F12766, 0596, "McCord Museum, Annual Report 1986- 87." 70 MUA, RG4, F1585, 0516, Minutes of Policy Committee, 7 February

1983. 71 MUA, RG4, F1585, 0516, "Administrative Records, 1912-1988," McCord Museum: Board of Directors' Meetings, Gordon

Notes to pages 129-34

199

72 73 74 75 76

77 78 79

80 81

82 83 84 85 86

87 88

200

Maclachlan to David Bourke, 9 February 1983. Stanley Frost interview, 10 August 1998. Dobell Papers, Frost to Duncan Hodgson, 10 November 1970. Stanley Frost, "A Literary Footnote on James McGill," Fontanus ix (1996): 14. David Johnston, "The Legacy of Peter Redpath," Fontanus ix (1996): 23-5. Stranley Frost, James McGill of Montreal (Montreal: McGill Queen's University Press 1995), no, 153; Frost, McGill University, n: 471. Dobell Papers, 17 January 1980. Interview with Stanley Frost, 10 August 1998. Bruce Trigger and James E Pendergast, Cartier's Hochelaga and the Dawson Site (Montreal and London: McGill-Queen's University Press 1972). For examples of the importance of the McCord's ethnological collection, see part 2. Interview with Bruce Trigger, 21 June 1996; Dobell Papers, Dobell to Frost, 19 March 1974. Trigger may have begun to ask, as anthropologist Michael Ames put it, whether academics had useful roles in museums besides that "of textbook writers or clown-teachers" (Museums, the Public and Anthropology. A Study in the Anthropology of Anthropology [Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press 1986], 35). MUA, RG4, F12766, 0596, "McCord Museum Annual Report, 1987-88," p. i. MUA, RG2, Fi8i32, €729, Trigger to M. Caya, 28 October 1987. MUA, RG4, Fio863, 0531, Minutes, Board of Directors, 27 September 1983. Interview with David Lank, 8 February 1999. MMA, McCord Museum Papers, no. 3100, "Lighthall: Museum, Matters 1909-1935," Lighthall to George C. Macdonald, 30 November 1934; no. 7674, "Lighthall: Administrative Papers, McGill University Museums Committee," Warren to T.H. Clark et al, 28 May 1936. MMA, McCord Museum Papers, no. 3102, "W.D. Lighthall, Museum Matters", clipping from Montreal Gazette, 10 February 1937. MUA, RG4, F16454, 0575, D.L. Johnston, Museums, David Bourke to G.A. Maclachlan, 15 September 1981.

Note to pages 134-9

89 Greg Barr, "Being a Curator Is the Most Impossible Profession on Earth! Conversation," Muse in, no. 4 (winter 1986): 16. 90 MUA, RG4, Fi58o, 0516, J. Beaudoin-Ross, curator of costumes and textiles to S. Thomson, 15 December 1982. 91 Muse i, no. i (April 1983). 92 MUA, RG4, F12/66, 0596, "McCord Museum, Annual Report, 1986-87," p. 27. 93 Interview with Stanley Triggs, 9 June 1999. 94 MUA, RG4, F12766, 0596, "McCord Museum, Annual Report, 1986-87;" Triggs, William Notman: The Stamp of a Studio (Toronto: Art Gallery of Ontario and Coach House Press 1986). 95 MUA, RG4, F12766, 0596, "McCord Museum, Annual Report, 1986-87," pp. 14-15. 9 6 Interview with Marcel Caya, 22 January 1999. 97 Ibid. 98 MUA, RG4, F12766, 0596, "The McCord Museum Comprehensive Audit, April 1986," McGill University Audit Department, p. i. 99 MUA, RG4, F12766, 0596, "The McCord Museum Comprehensive Audit, April 1986," McGill University Audit Department, p. 14. 100 MUA, RG4, Fio876, "The McCord Museum Comprehensive Audit, April 1986," McGill University Audit Department, p. 17. 101 Interview with Stanley Triggs, 9 June 1999. 102 MUA, RG4, F12766, 0596, "McCord Museum, Annual Report, 1987-88," p. 3. 103 MUA, RG4, F12756, 0596, "An Orientation Document," 24 April 1988. 104 Interview with Stanley Triggs, 9 June 1999; MUA, RG4, F12756, McCord Museum, Board Minutes, "Unofficial Meeting," 4 August 1988. 105 MUA, RG4, F12758, 0596, Minutes, Interim Management Group, 18 October 1988. 106 MUA, RG4, F13194, 0634, David Bourke, "The New McCord Museum," address to the Montreal General Hospital Women's Auxiliary, 3 February 1988. 107 MUA, RG4, F12466, 0596, "McCord Museum, Annual Report, 1986-87," p. i. 108 Interview with Marcel Caya, 22 January 1999. 109 Interview with Luke Rombout, 11 June 1999.

Notes to pages 140-7

201

CHAPTER

FIVE

1 McGill University, University Secretary's Office, "Custodial Agreement," Between Royal Institution for the Advancement of Learning and McGill University and McCord Museum, 18 November 1987. 2 Frost, McGill University, n: 423. 3 Ibid. 4 Canadian Directory to Foundations and Grants, 1996/97 (Toronto: Centre for Philanthropy 1996), viii; McConnell Family Foundation, "Mission Statement" (1996). 5 McGill News (spring 1998), 18. 6 MMA, McCord Museum Papers, box 4008, Lighthall to McConnell, 27 April 1938. 7 MUA, RG2, Fii645, 0310, Alice Johannsen to Dr Rocke Robertson, 5 February 1964. 8 MUA, RG2, Fi8957, €737, University Secretariat: Museums - McCord, Memorandum to Robert Bell from D. Lome Gales, i December 1970. 9 MMA, McCord Museum Papers, file iooi-M7, "Newspaper Clippings, 19705," Montreal Gazette, 29 April 1974. 10 Dobell Papers, Robert Bell to Peter Laing, 4 January 1971; Peter McEntyre to Dobell, 18 December 1970; Dobell to Dr L. Yaffe, 7 November 1971. 11 Interview with Derek Price, 25 June 1996. 12 Interview with Luke Rombout, 11 June 1999. 13 MUA, RG4, F1584, 0516, McCord Museum Administrative Records, 1912-88, Board of Directors' Meetings, Memorandum, David Bourke to R.G. Kuranoff, 30 July 1987; Memorandum, David Bourke to Philip Leduc, 8 March 1988. 14 MUA, RG4, F12755, 0596, David Lank to directors of McCord Museum, "New Organizational Structure," 15 October 1987; RG4, F12757, 0596, "Capital and Endowment Fundraising Campaign Proposal," 25 September 1989. 15 Interview with Stanley Triggs, 9 June 1999. 16 Canadian Museums and Related Institutions (Ottawa: Canadian Museums Association 1968), 95. 17 MUA, RG4, Fio876, 0532, "Progress Report," Marcel Caya to

202

Note to pages 148-53

Director, Internal Audit, 4 September 1987. 18 Author's Archives, Allan Greer to Principal Bernard Shapiro, 31 January 1996. 19 MUA, RG4, FioS/S, 0532, Financial Records, 1901-89, McCord Museum fundraising, Phyllis Lambert to Dale Thomson, 12 May 1976. 20 McGill University, University Secretary's Office, "Custodial Agreement," Between Royal Institution for the Advancement of Learning and McGill University and McCord Museum, 18 November 1987, p. 2. 21 Ibid. 22 McCord Museum of Canadian History: Functional Program (Montreal: McCord Museum 1987); interview with Guy Desbarats, 20 June 1996. The members of the building committee were David Bourke, David Lank, Philip O'Brien, Tass Grivakes, and Derek Price. This statement had much in common with the Canadian Centre for Architecture whose mission, as defined by Phyllis Lambert, was "to further the understanding of architecture and to help establish architecture as a public concern, both for those with little or no knowledge of the building arts, and for those who are most instrumental in shaping knowledge through research." Cited in Larry Richards, ed., Centre Canadien d'Architecture/Canadian Centre for Architecture. Building and Grounds (Montreal: Centre Canadien d'Architecture 1989), n. 23 MUA, RG4, F12756, 0596, "Facts Sheet," 2 May 1988. 24 McCord Museum of Canadian History, Functional Program, 2-6. 25 Ibid., 2-7. 26 Interview with Luke Rombout, 11 June 1999. Jacques Mathieu, Jacques Lacoursiere, and I were preparing the permanent exhibition and were dismissed when Rombout became director. Books published for the museum opening are listed in the bibliography. 27 For their records, see their memorandums and letters included in MUA, "Administrative Records, 1912-1988"; MM - Board of Directors Meetings (RG4, F1584, 0516) and Financial Records, 1901-89; MM - Budget (RG4, Fio866, 0531). 28 J.W. McConnell Foundation, Annual Report, 1995, p. 5. 29 Interview with Lank, 8 February 1999. 3 o Interview with M. Caya, 22 January 1999; interview with Rombout, n June 1999.

Notes to pages 154-9

203

31 Interview with Derek Price, 25 June 1996; interview with David Bourke, 19 August 1998; for the subordination of curators to managerial and marketing priorities, see MUA, RG4, F12J56, 0596, Subject Records, 1971-91: MM: Board of Director Meetings, Minutes of "Unofficial" Meeting of Board of Directors, 4 August 1988, Question by John Hobday; interview with Marcel Caya, 22 January 1998; J.W. McConnell Family Foundation, Annual Report (1994). 5, and (1995), 5. 32 Globe and Mail, 7 April, 1989; Young to David Bourke, 14 April 1989; John Thompson to David Lank, 2 May 1989; Andree Desilets, presidente, to David Bourke, 18 May 1989. 33 MUA, RG4, F13197, 0634, "McCord Museum Board of Directors Meetings," Toby Morantz to David Lank, 21 February 1990. 3 4 Author's archives, biography by Annick Poussart distributed to board of trustees, June 1994. 35 Author's archives, Young to Benoit, 29 January 1995. 3 6 MMA, McCord Museum Papers, "Meeting of Collections Management Committee," 13 March 1995. 37 MUA, RG4, F13197, 0634, "McCord Museum Board of Directors Meetings," Executive Director's Report, 3 April 1991, "Memo Time Sheets - from Philip Leduc," 4 April 1996. 3 8 MUA, RG2, F18957, 0738, "Development and Communications Committee Program Proposal, Part II," 26 February 1990, p. i. 39 Ibid., p. 18. 40 Author's Archives, Financial Statement, McCord Museum of Canadian History, 31 March 1996, p. 2. 41 MMA, McCord Museum Papers, "Meeting of Collections Management Committee," 13 March 1995; Monique Barriault, Ministere de la Culture, a Manon Vennat, 31 octobre 1995. 42 Author's Archives, "A tout personnel de Musee," memo from Claude Benoit, 15 April 1996. 43 Author's Archives, "Special Meeting on Material Course Proposal," 9 November 1994; Claude Benoit to Adams, 13 February 1995. 44 Author's Archives, McCord Museum of Canadian History, "Executive Summary, McCord Museum of Canadian History, 1996-98 Business Plan," November 1995; MMA, "Framework for Public Programs", April 1996; MMA, "Chairman's Report for the Annual Meeting," 17 June 1996.

204

Note to pages 160-5

45 Author's Archives, "Communique," Claude Benoit, 31 Janvier 1996. 46 Author's Archives, "A Letter of Alarm for the McGill Board of Governors from concerned faculty members," i February 1996. 47 Author's Archives, JA. Dickinson to Claude Benoit, 25 January 1996. 48 Ibid., Charles A. Martijn to Claude Benoit, 20 January 1996. 49 Ibid., Young to Bernard J. Shapiro, 5 February 1996. 5 o Ibid. 51 La Chronique (avril 1996), Claude Benoit a James Lambert, 5 fevrier 1996; Montreal Gazette, 17 February 1996. 52 MMA, "Chairman's Report for the Annual Meeting," 17 June 1996, p. 2. 53 Author's Archives, Bernard Shapiro to Board of Governors, Senate, Deans, and Directors, 29 January 1996. 54 Le Devoir, 23 octobre 1997; Author's Archives, Daniel Fournier, chair of board of trustees to author, 17 April 1998. 55 MUA, RG4, F12747, 0596, "Development and Communications, Friends Membership Campaign, 1991-92." 5 6 General Information: The JW. McConnell Foundation (Montreal 1993). 57 Raymond Williams, Resources of Hope. Culture, Democracy, Socialism (London: Verso 1998), 32; Charles Taylor, Sources of the Self. The Making of the Modern Identity (Cambridge: Harvard University Press 1998), 47.

Notes to pages 165-74

205

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Sources INTERVIEWS

All interviews took place in Montreal except as noted. Judith Berlyn (26 June 1996), daughter of Isabel Dobell David Bourke (19 August 1998), former secretary general of McGill University and acting director of the McCord Museum, 1980-82 Marcel Caya (22 January 1999), director of the McCord Museum, 1985-88 Eve Riley DeLangley (11 June 1996, telephone interview), assistant to Isabel Dobell and later museum archivist Guy Desbarats (20 June 1996), architect of the renovation of the Student Union Building into the McCord Museum and architectural consultant for the expansion, 1987 Cynthia Eberts (31 May 1996, Toronto), former museum employee and curator of costume collection Stanley Frost (3 August 1998) former vice-principal of McGill University and director of the History of McGill Project David Lank (8 February 1999), chair of McCord board Derek Price (25 June 1996), chair of the McConnell Family Foundation and acting director of the McCord Museum, 1993-94 Luke Rombout (n June 1999, Freligsburg), director of the McCord Museum, 1989-93 Stanley Triggs (9 June 1999), curator of the Notman Photographic Archives to 1993 Bruce Trigger (21 June 1996), McGill University anthropologist and former member of the McCord Museum board

PRIMARY SOURCES

The archives of the McCord Museum of Canadian History (MMA) and of McGill University (MUA) contain full records on all aspects of the museum.

Specific files are noted in the notes. I also had access to the papers of Isabel Dobell, a collection now in the possession of her daughter, Judith Berlyn. Also helpful were the private papers of Peter McNally of McGill's Graduate School of Library and Information Studies and the letters of Cecile Gagnon, author and illustrator for Isabel Dobell.

SECONDARY SOURCES

For the McCords, see P. Miller, B. Young, D. Fyson, D. Wright, and M.T. McCaffrey, The McCord Family: A Passionate Vision (Montreal: McCord Museum of Canadian History 1992). David Ross McCord's imperial vision is described in Donald A. Wright, "Remembering War in Imperial Canada: David Ross McCord and the McCord National Museum," Fontanus ix (1996): 97-104. The English-speaking milieu of the late eighteenth-century McCords is analyzed in F. Murray Greenwood, Legacies of Fear: Law and Politics in Quebec in the Era of the French Revolution (Toronto: Osgoode Society 1993). As well, see the two excellent inventories, McCord Family Papers, 1766-1945, published by the McCord Museum in 1986. Collecting at the museum is described in several places; most accessible are the volumes published by the museum for the 1992 reopening: Conrad Graham, Mont Royal-Ville Marie. Early Plans and Views of Montreal; Moira T. McCaffrey, "Rononshonni - The Builder: McCord's Collection of Ethnographic Objects," in The McCord Family: A Passionate Vision, 103-15; Pamela Miller, The McCord Museum Archives, Jacqueline Beaudoin-Ross, Form and Fashion: Nineteenth Century Montreal Dress, and Conrad Graham, Sarah Ivory, and Robert Derome, Eclectic Tastes: Fine and Decorative Arts from the McCord. McCord's confidant, W.D. Lighthall, is the subject of Donald Wright's 1991 McGill MA thesis, "W.D. Lighthall: Sometime Confederation Poet, Sometime Urban Reformer." Also for Lighthall, see Richard Virr, "Son of the Great Dominion: W.D. Lighthall and the Lighthall Papers," Fontanus ii (1989): 103-9. The role of McCord and Lighthall's community in establishing memory is treated effectively in Jonathan F. Vance, Death So Noble: Memory, Meaning and the First World War (Vancouver: UBC Press !997)- For their sense of nation and imagery, see H.V. Nelles, The Art of Nation-Building: Pageantry and Spectacle at Quebec's Tercentenary (Toronto: University of Toronto Press 1999). William Notman's life is

208

Sources

described in Stanley Triggs, William Notman: The Stamp of a Studio (Toronto: Art Gallery of Ontario and Coach House Press 1986). For an example of the research importance of the McCord collections, see the ethnological descriptions in Bruce Trigger and James F. Pendergast, Carrier's Hochelaga and the Dawson Site (Montreal & London: McGillQueen's University Press 1972). McGill's two-volume official history has been written by Stanley Frost: McGill University for the Advancement of Learning (Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen's University Press 1980-4). For changes in the teaching of science, see Luc Chartrand, Raymond Duchesne, and Yves Gingras, Histoire des sciences au Quebec (Montreal: Boreal 1987). McGill museums in the early 19305 are described in Cyril Fox, A Survey of McGill University Museums (Montreal: McGill University 1932). Arthur Currie's career is described in Robert J. Sharpe, The Last Day, the Last Hour: The Currie Libel Trial (Toronto: Osgoode Society 1988). McGill libraries and their administrators are described in several articles by Peter F. McNally, including "Scholar Librarians: Gould, Lomer and Pennington," Fontanus xi (1998): 95-104, and "McGill University Libraries," Encyclopedia of Library and Information Science, 17. For a description of Canadiana at McGill, see Lillian M. Rider, Canadian Resources at McGill (Montreal: McGill University Libraries 1980). The History Department is described in Michael Maxwell's "The History of History at McGill," unpublished address to the James McGill Society, April 1981. Margaret Gillett's We Walked Warily: A History of Women at McGill (Montreal: Eden Press Publications 1981) is central for gender at McGill. For one women's career at McGill and a history of McGill's Medical Museum, see H.E. MacDermot, Maude Abbott: A Memoir (Toronto: Macmillan 1941). For Isabel Dobell and the museum's history in the 19505, see her reminiscences, in "Buried Treasure," in M. Gillett and Kay Sibbald, eds., A Fair Shake: Autobiographical Essays by McGill Women (Montreal: Eden Press 1984), 137-46. In the same volume, see Alice Johannsen's "As the Twig Is Bent." See also Alice Johannsen Turnham, "The Passing of a Landmark," McGill News, autumn 1954, and Paul Carle, Madeleine Dufresne, and Lynne Teather, "Le Musee Redpath de 1940 a 1970: les annees Johannsen," Musees nos i et i (1988): 11-4. The connection between women in philanthropy and museums is powerfully made in Kathleen D. McCarthy, Women's Culture: American

Sources

209

Philanthropy and Art, 1830-1930 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press 1991). The subject of women and libraries is effectively treated in Abigail A. Van Slyck, Free for All: Carnegie Libraries and American Culture, 1890-1920 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press 1995). For women in museums, see Jane R. Glaser and Artemis A. Zenetou, Gender Perspectives: Essays on Women in Museums (Washington and London: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1994). For female benevolence, see Lori D. Ginzberg, Women and the Work of Benevolence: Morality, Politics, and Class in the Nineteenth-Century United States (New Haven and London: Yale University Press 1990). Women and the writing of history is treated in Beverly Boutilier and Alison Prentice, Creating Historical Memory: English-Canadian Women and the Work of History (Vancouver: UBC Press 1997). The evolution of the university is described in A.B. McKillop, Matters of Mind: The University in Ontario, 1791-1951 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press 1995). David Ross McCord's intellectual roots are best seen in Carl Berger's Science, God, and Nature in Victorian Canada (Toronto: University of Toronto Press 1983), and in his The Sense of Power: Studies of Ideas of Canadian Imperialism, 1867-1914 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press 1970). For Principal John William Dawson, see the Dictionary of Canadian Biography, XH: 230-7, and, for the Redpath Museum, see Barbara Lawson, Collected Curios: Missionary Tales from the South Seas (Montreal: McGill University Libraries 1994), 23-53. Antimodernism and cultural motivations for collecting are explored in T.J. Jackson Lears, No Place of Grace. Antimodernism and the Transformation of American Culture, 1880-1920 (New York: Pantheon Books 1981). Of importance in situating McCord with science and the amateur tradition is Suzanne Zeller, Land of Promise: Promised Land. The Culture of Victorian Science in Canada (Ottawa: Canadian Historical Association 1996). The development of the historical profession and its alienation from a larger educational function is outlined in Peter Novick's That Noble Dream: The "Objectivity Question" and the American Historical Profession (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 1988). See also Carl Berger's The Writing of Canadian History: Aspects of EnglishCanadian Historical Writing, 1900-1970 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press 1976). For the place of museums and schools in the teaching of history, see Gary B. Nash, Charlotte Crabtree, and Ross E. Dunn, History on Trial: Culture Wars and the Teaching of the Past (New York: Knopf

210

Sources

1998). The best description of the relationship of museum and university is Steven Conn's Museums and American Intellectual Life, 1886-1926 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press 1998). For "heritage" and "heritage-baiting," see Raphael Samuel, Theatres of Memory; Volume i: Past and Present in Contemporary Culture (London: Verso 1994), particularly parts in and iv. Also thoughtful for the relationship of heritage and the construction of memory is Ian McKay, The Quest of the Folk: Antimodernism and Cultural Selection in Twentieth-Century Nova Scotia (Montreal & Kingston: McGill-Queen's University Press 1994). For the state and museums, see Report and Recommendations of the Task Force Charged with Examining Federal Policy Concerning Museums (Ottawa: Minister of Supplies and Services 1986); Le reseau museal quebecois. Enonce d'orientations (Quebec: Ministere de la Culture et des Communications 1994); and John Kettle, ed., The Museum and the Canadian Public (Ottawa: Culturcan Publications 1974). For the origin of museums, I liked Roland Shaer's highly readable, ^invention des musees (Paris: Gallimard 1993). Of particular help in understanding the museum as a conservative institution was Tony Bennett's The Birth of the Museum: History, Theory, Politics (London and New York: Routledge 1995). Museums in Ontario are described in Lovat Dickson, The Museum Makers: The Story of the Royal Ontario Museum (Toronto: Royal Ontario Museum 1986). For interesting analyses of history museums see the collection edited by Gaynor Kavanagh, Making History in Museums (London and New York: Leicester University Press 1996). Susan M. Pearce has published widely on museums and material culture; see her edited collection, Museum Studies in Material Culture (Leicester and Washington: Leicester University Press and Smithsonian Institution Press 1989). For curators and American museums in the nineteenth century, see Joel J. Orosz, Curators and Culture: The Museum Movement in America, 1740-1870 (Tuscaloosa and London: University of Alabama Press 1990). For a thoughtful treatment of curators, public access, and the place of museums in different social periods, see Michael M. Ames, Museums, the Public and Anthropology: A Study in the Anthropology of Anthropology (Vancouver and New Delhi: University of British Columbia Press & Concept Publishing 1985). For the history of another collector, see Mark Bowden, Pitt Rivers (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 1991), and Beatrice Blackwood, The Origin and Development of the Pitt Rivers Museum (Oxford: Pitt Rivers Museum

Sources

211

1991)- F°r a museum founder, see Franklin Parker, George Peabody: A Biography (Nashville: Vanderbilt University Press 1971). The effects of museum professionalization are examined in Michael J. Ettema, "History Museums and the Culture of Materialism," in Jo Blatti, ed., Past Meets Present: Essays about Historic Interpretation and Public Audiences (Washington: Smithsonian Institution Press 1987), 62-85. Museums in a comparative setting are treated in Kenneth Hudson, Museums for the 19805: A Survey of World Trends (Paris: UNESCO 1977). Of particular use in the crisis of cultural institutions is Robert R. Janes's Museums and the Paradox of Change: A Case Study in Urgent Adaptation (Calgary: Glenbow Museum 1995). For a comparative view of muscology, see Michel Cote and Lisette Ferera, Perspectives nouvelles en museologie/New Trends in Museum Practice (Quebec: Musee de la civilisation 1997)- Diverse treatments of muscology in Quebec can be found in Michel Cote, ed., Museological Trends in Quebec (Quebec and Ottawa: Societe des musees quebecois; Musee de la civilisation, Parks Service, Environment Canada 1992). Education in the museum is the subject of Michel Allard and Bernard Lefebvre, eds., Le Musee, un lieu educatif (Montreal: Musee d'art contemporain de Montreal 1995). Jacques Mathieu has written "Entre histoire et museologie," in Temoignages: Reflections on the Humanities (Ottawa: Canadian Federation for the Humanities 1993), 75-80. See also Christine Tarpin, L'emergence du musee de la civilisation (Quebec: Musee de la civilisation 1998). The Canadian Museum Association's review, Muse, is an excellent source for issues affecting museums in Canada. For favourable treatment of the place of curators and research in history museums, see Thierry Ruddell, "The Museum's Need for a Critical Conscience: A Role for Universities," Muse vn, no. 3 (autumn 1989): 52-3, and Herve Gagnon, "Education and the History Museum: Change or Tradition," Muse vn, no. 2 (summer 1989): 50-7. Larger implications of the relationship between museums and the academy are treated in a special issue of the Journal of American Culture 12, no. 2 (summer 1989). Analysis of the relations between university and museum and of the failure of academic historians to utilize material culture can be found in two articles by Adrienne D. Hood, "The Practice of [American] History: A Canadian Curator's Perspective," The Journal of American History 81, no. 3 (December 1994): 1011-19, and "Museums, Universities and Material Culture Studies in Canada," Muse xv, no. 4 (February 1998): 37-40.

212

Sources

^Picture Sources and Credits McCord Museum of Canadian History: Cavalry Officer in the Montreal Dragoons (M8i2): View of Montreal, 1840 (MP-oooo.33.i); Temple Grove, c. 1872 (MP-oooo.33.i); Jane Davidson Ross (Miniature attributed to James Duncan, M9556); David Ross McCord and Letitia Chambers (MP-oooo.2135.7); Interior of Temple Grove (MP-oooo.2135.4); The Wolfe Room (MP-oooo.i8i.2); Percy Nobbs (MPoio/9i); Hodgson House (MPOOI/SS); Eleanor Birnie Davidson (1^9561); Porcelain Tea Set (M9736); Native Headdress and Costume Exhibition (MPi8i/2A); Isabel Dobell, Mrs Walter Stewart, and Beatrice Molson (Notman Photographic Archives); Student Union Building Converted into McCord Museum (DKRM21/78); Inauguration of the McCord Museum, 8 May 1992 (McCord i, no.i [November 1992]); The Library and Archival Research Area; David Lank and Derek Price (Service des Communications); Claude Benoit (Service des Communications) National Archives of Canada: Judge John Samuel McCord (PA74147) McGill University Archives: W.D. Lighthall (McGill News 3, no. 41 [October 1921]); Redpath Museum, 1925 (PR02681A); Front Campus (puoooo92); William Dawson (PRO2719O); Members of McGill's Physics Department (PR000418); Joseph House (PR023139); H. Noel Fieldhouse (McGill News, July 1966); Robert Vogel (McGill News, spring 1981); Dignitaries at a McGill Convention (pR028505); Alice Johannsen (PR034977); The Collection in Storage at Hodgson House (PR039154, PR03915); Mary Dudley Muir (PLOO7413); Demonstration in Operation McGill francais, 1969 (McGill News, May 1969); Shirley Thomson (PR036454); Stanley Frost (PRO3682O); David Johnston (McGill News, spring 1989); David Bourke; Marcel Caya, with colleagues in the McGill Archives (puoi8473); J.W. McConnell and Lily May Griffith, received by Princess Elizabeth and Prince Philip (PRO20889)

Private Collections: J. Russell Harper (photo by Stanley Triggs); Stanley Triggs (photo by Tom Humphry); Bruce Trigger (photo by Claudio Calligaris); Museum Renovation, 1990 (photo by Tom Humphry); Luke Rombout; Pamela Miller

214

Picture Sources and Credits

^Index Abbott, Maude, 81,113 Adair, Edward Robert, 63, 66 Adams, Annmarie, 164 Adams, Frank Dawson, 53 Addams, Jane, 83 Allan, Sir Montagu, 45 American Museum of Natural History, 43 Ames, Michael M., i, 200 Anglicanism, 16, 20, 21, 23, 24, 25, 27, 29, 35, 36 Archer, John, 102 Archibald, John Sprott, 58 archives, 7-8,12, 23, 78, 89,108,139, 141,164-8 Archives nationales du Quebec, 8 Arctic Institute, 79 Aries, Philippe, 56 Arlaten Museum, 43 Art Association of Montreal, xiv, 23,88 Association des archivistes du Quebec, 142,165,166 Association of Canadian Studies, 167 Atwood, Margaret, 48 Bagg, Abner, 8 Bagg, Stanley, 8 Bank of Montreal, 59

Barclay, James, 93 Barclay, Malcolm Drummond, 93 Barr, Greg, 124 Bartlett, William Henry, 87 Bates, Don, 102 Beatty, Edward, 70 Beaurivage seigneury, 141 Bell, Max, 103 Bell, R.E., 150 Bellman, David, 128,132 Belvedere Foundation, 149 Benoit, Claude, xvi, 12,132,161,162, 164,167,168 Birks, William Massey, 59 Birnie, Eleanor, 17 Bishop's University, 23 Blackader-Lauterman Library, 102 Blais, Jean-Ethier, 102 Bleakley, Josiah, 17 Bledstein, Burton, 51 Bloom, Allan, 5 Boer War, 31, 44 Bone, Mary-Anne, 17 Bourke, David, 122,128,132,134-5, 145,158,164,170 Bovey task force, 129 Boyd, John, 44 British Museum, 41 Brochu, Dr Delphio, 42 Brodhead, Tim, 160

216

Brooks Institute of Photography, 108 Budget Planning Group, 115,118 Buitenhuis, Peter, 102 Bunnett, W.H., 39 Burr, Gordon, 144

Colby, Charles W., 63, 64 Cole, Henry, 42 collections, 13,36-9,41, 42,46 Colonial Life Assurance Company,

Cameron, Ewan, 50 Campbell, Harriet, 132 Campbell, Marjorie Wilkins, 100 Canadian Centre for Architecture, 154,165, 203 Canadian Heritage Information Network, 118 Canadian Historical Association, 65,165 Canadian history, 51, 62, 65, 67, 83, 89,102,133 Canadian Museums Association, xv, 76,123,140,153,160 Canadian studies, 51, 62,102,104, 116,171 Canadian Studies Programme Committee, 11,102-3,125-6,160 Carnegie, Andrew, 55, 56 Carnegie Report, 49, 62, 69,147 Caya, Marcel, xv, 132,142,144-6,

Coopers and Lybrand, 145,154 Corbo, Claude, 155 Costume and Textile Collection, xv, 7, 78

32 Congregation of Notre Dame, 19 Cooper, J.I., 63, 66, 96

Cotton, Henry, 17 Craig, Isabel, 68, 89, 92 culture of museums, 5,13, 22 curators, 2-3, 4, 6,13,14, 81, 97,104, 106,140-2,157; and deaccessioning, 139-40; functions of, 91-2, 97,162-3, i65; and museum authorities, 138-9,142-7, 151,153,161-2; resistance of, xvi, 145; see also muscology, McCord Museum Currie, Arthur, 55, 63, 68, 70, 71, 81, 87,88 custodial agreement (1987), xvi, 7, 148,154,158,166,168,169,173

159 Chambers, Letitia Caroline, 17,30, 31,60 Charney, Morris, 101 Chateau Ramezay Museum, xiv,

Daly, Mrs George, 140 Davidson, Arthur, 17 Davidson, Eleanor Birnie, 84, 85 Davidson, Jane, 17 Dawson, William, xiv, 36,37,52-3,

34>65 children, and museums, 96-7 Christ Church Cathedral, 21, 25,32 classicism, 24, 26,46,56 Cloutier, Gilles, 155 Cockburn, James Pattison, 87

54> 55. 75, 80 Dechene, Louise, 102 democratization in museums, 122,

Index

174 Derick, Carrie, 81 Desbarats, Guy, 105,154

Le Devoir, 125 Dickenson, Victoria, xvi Dictionary of Canadian Biography, 33 Dobell, Isabel, xv, xvi, 10, 48, 79, 92-9,110-11,112,113,116,117, 134) !36,140,171,172; and curators, 104,106; and relations with McGill, 103-5,106,109-10; and philanthropists, 92-3, 98, 106,139,149-50; and popular education, 93, 95-6,108; with press, 100; and Quebec nationalism, 126-7; and volunteers, 106; writing history, 90, 93, 95, 96-7 Dobell, Curzon, 9 Dominion Textile, 59 Doughty, Arthur G., 43 Doutre, Joseph, 30 Dow Brewery, 59 Drummond, Derek, 101 Drummond, Lady Julia, 88 Drummond, T.J., 45 Dudek, Louis, 102 Dunbar, Nancy, 105 Duncan, James, 24, 39

Eaton's, 101 Eberts, Cynthia, 106 Eccles, William J., 107 Echenberg, Myron, 67 ecomuseums, 119 Ellis, Margery, 17 Ellison, Elizabeth, 17 Empire Universal Films, 78 English-speaking elite, 6, 9,11,14, 21-2, 23, 32, 49, 82, 85-7, 98,103,

113,136,169,171-2,173 exhibitions, 41-2, 87-8, 91, 97, 99-100,107,161-2,164 Faculty of Graduate Studies and Research, xiv, 61 Featherstone Boots and Shoes, 85 federal government, 118-21,129,130 Fieldhouse, H. Noel, 67 Files, Harold, 94 Forest-Malbranque, Monique, 144 Fox, Cyril, 62 Fraser, Alexander, 17 Fraser, Hugh, 43 Fraser, Malcolm, 17 Fraser, Simon, 35 French Canada Studies Program, 100,102 Friends of McCord, 110 Frost, Stanley, 77, no, 116,117,127, 134-5,138,170 Fryer, Charles E., 63 Fulford, Francis, 25 Gagnon, Cecile, 96 Gagnon, Clarence, 8 Gagnon, Herve, 124 Gales, Lome, 150 Gascoigne, Margeret, 93, 94 Gascon, France, 143-5 Gault Estate, 77 George-Etienne Cartier Centenary Association, 44 Gest, Guion, 72 Gibb, Benaiah, 13 Gilbert, Henrietta Maria, 17 Girl Guides, 86 Glassco, A.P.S., 71

Index

217

Glenbow Museum, 137 Gordon, Charles, 59 Gould, Charles Henry, 55,58,59 Graham, Conrad, 107,117 Grand Trunk Railway, 32, 86 Greenshields, E.B., 32 Griffith, Lily May, 151 Gross, Philip, 105

Foundation, xvi, 10,14,106,147, 148-50,158,159,173 Jackson, A.Y., 87 James, F. Cyril, 151 Javosky, Rudy, 101 Johannsen, Alice, 74,75-7,92, 99, 105,113,115,171 Johnson, McAllister, 124 Johnston, David Lloyd, 131,134-6,

Hague, Nora, 108 Hanna, Margaret, 17, 20 Harper, Russell}., 99,100-1,104, 108,125,153 Harrington, Conrad, 128,131 High School of Montreal, 21 Hind, William G.R., 100 historians, 53-4, 63; and Canadian history 2,14, 27,39, 44,118,170; and material culture, 84; and museums, 96,114,124; see also History Department History Department (McGill), 63, 64, 65, 66, 93, 96,102,112,133, 170 Hodgson, Duncan, 128 Hodgson House, xv, 77,78,79, 97, 113,128 Homewood Sanitarium, 60

138,155,170 Joseph House, xiv, 55, 56, 57, 58, 72,

Hood, Adrienne, 124 Hooper, George, 59 Humphry, Tom, 108,143 Institut d'histoire de I'Amerique francaise, 160 International Council of Museums, 118 J.W. McConnell Family

218

Index

76,77 Judah, Lionel, 74 Kane, Paul, 100 Kempt, Sir James, 85 Kenniff, Patrick, 155 Kingsford, William, 44 Krieghoff, Cornelius, 87,100 Krug, Kersti, 123 Lachine Canal, 16,19,141 Lacoursiere, Jacques, 203 Lacroix, Laurier, 124 Ladies' Morning Musical Club, 85 Laing, Peter, 149,150 Lambert, Phyllis, 154, 203 Lament, Katherine, 96 Lande, Lawrence, 102,103 Lank, David, 138,146,158,159 LaPierre, Laurier, 102 Last Post Fund, 45 Latouche, Daniel, 102 Leacock, Stephen, 50,70,114 Lears, T. Jackson, 47 Leblanc, Cassidy, and Leblanc, 30 Le Goff, Jacques, 34 Levesque, Rene, 125

Lewis, George M., 17 Lighthall, William Douw, xiv, 9, 31, 33-4, 35, 36, 51, 54, 57, 58, 59, 60-2, 64-5, 67, 68, 71, 72, 81, 88,

95,139,149,172 Linton Apartments, 106 Literary and Historical Society, xiv Logan, Wiliam Edmond, 37 Lomer, Gerhard, 63, 68 Lowther, Gordon R., 79 Lowther, Katherine, 90 Lubicon Lake Indian Nation, 137 Lundholm, Michael, 155 Lyman family, 94 Maas, Otto, 50 MacBride, E.W., 53 McConnell, Jill, 150 McConnell, John Wilson, 148-50; see also J.W. McConnell Family Foundation McConnell Engineering Building, 148 McConnell family, 93 McConnell Family Foundation, see J.W. McConnell Family Foundation McConnell Residence, 148 McCord, Anne, 17, 27, 30 McCord, Arthur, 17 McCord, David Ross, xiv, 7, 8, 9,17, 26-8,35-6, 40,55, 56, 60-1,71, 81, 82,172; authority in museum, 41,51; career of, 29-31; and collecting, 13,36-9,46, 59, 86; and McGill, 51-60; with philanthropists, 59; view of history, 18, 35, 39> 54, 83,103; and war, 45-6;

Westmount, 64, 57-8; and women, 84, 87-8, 90 McCord, Eleanor Elizabeth, 17, 25, 26 McCord, Eliza, 17 McCord, Jane 17 McCord, Jane Catherine, 17, 27,30 McCord, John, xiv, 16 McCord, John Jr, 18,19 McCord, John Davidson, 26 McCord, John Samuel, xiv, 8, 9,16, 17,18-26, 28, 29 McCord, Margery, 17 McCord, Margaret, 17 McCord, Mary, 17 McCord, Robert Arthur, 17, 26 McCord, Thomas, xiv, 17,19, 20 McCord family, 16-18,19,24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 32-3, 34, 35, 39, 45-6 McCord Museum, 11-12, 50, 74, 79, 99-111,134,155; and admissions, 129; administration of, 68-9, 117,130-1,152; board of, 14,112, 114,135,151-2,158-61,165,171; closes, 73; and democratization, 174; established, 37,39-47; and federal government, 118-21,152; in Great Depression, 69-72; moves to Hodgson House, 77-8; mission statement, i, 154-5; w^h Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, 115,127-8; and natives, 137-8; and public education, 89,128; and Quebec, 121-2,126,127,152; renovations to, 105-6,156; and teaching about Canada, 61-2, 65, 67, 69, 70, 81, 89, 90,163-4; on teach-

Index

219

ing hospital model, 132,155; and university, 60-73,112,116-17, 136,155; see also archives, collections, curators, exhibitions, McGill University, muscology, philanthropy, research McCord Museum Foundation, 151 MacDermot, H.E., 63 Macdonald, William, 44,54,56, 57 Macdonald Chemistry and Mining Building, 49 Macdonald College, 44,122,170 Macdonald Physics Building, 48 Macdonald-Workman Engineering Building, 48 McGill, James, 134,135 McGill University, 4, 21, 23,30,32, 36, 47, 48-50, 53, 81,103,115, 124-5,132,167,169,170,175; and Canadian history, 63-4, 66, 67, 102-3,160; finances with McCord, no, 117,127,129-31; and museum research, 73,100, 164,168,169; and its museums, 10, 49, 50-82,104,116,131,134, 139,142-4,147,151,152; and philanthropy, 44,150; in Quebec society, 61, 67,114,125, 126,127,170; and teaching, 9, 131,163-4,168,169; and women, 75,76, 81-2, 85-6, 90,113,136 McGill University Museum Auxiliary, 86 McGill Insitute for the Study of Canada, 12 McGillivray, William, 35 Mackenzie, Alexander, 35 McKinnon, Victoria Laurier, 80

220

Index

Maclachlan, Gordon, 112 McLennan, Francis, 67 MacLennan, Hugh, 102 McLennan Library, 57,102 McMichael, Robert and Signe, 6 McNally, Peter, 102 McRobie, D., 130 McTavish, Simon, 35 Mallory, James, 102 Marsh, Leonard, 50,149 Martijn, Charles A., 167 Maryland Historical Society, 6 material culture, 11, 83-4,163,174 Mathieu, Jacques, 154, 203 Maxwell Cummings Foundation,

78 Meredith, Vincent, 59 Michel, Rob, 144 Miller, Carman, 102 Miller, Pamela, 4,141,159,165,166, 168,174 Mistral, Frederic, 43 Molson, Beatrice, 106,150 Molson, Cornelia, 140 Molson, Mabel, 86, 96 Molson, Mrs T.H.P., no, 128 Molson, T.H.P., 98 Molson, William, 44 Molson family, 93,94 Montcalm, 45 Montreal Diocesan Theological College, 56 Montreal Distillery Company, 19 Montreal Dragoons, 22 Montreal General Hospital, 21 Montreal Hunt Club, 65 Montreal Ladies' Education Association, 85

Montreal Light, Heat, and Power, 64 Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, 101,115,123,127-8 Montreal Neurological Institute, 148,149 Montreal Protestant Orphan Asylum, 86 Montreal Thistle Curling Club, 8 Montreal Women's Club, 65 Morgan, F.C., 71 Morgan, Henry, and Company, 86 Morgan family, 94 Morrice, James Wilson, 87 Morton, Desmond, 167 Mount Royal Cemetery, 21, 23, 25, 28, 45, 57, 64, 65

Mount Royal Park, 44 Muir, Mary Dudley, 68, 87, 88, 89, 90 multiculturalism, 118 Murray, Virginia, 81 Muse, 123,140 Musee de la civilisation, xvi, 127

Musee des Religions, 120 Musee du Quebec, xv, 6,120 muscology, xvi, 3,14, 77,118-20, 122-4,129,140,174 Museum Act (1968), 118 Museum Assistance Program, 120, 128

Museum of Archaeology and History, 122 Museum of Laughter, 172 Museum of Man, 120 Museums Association (Quebec), xv

National Gallery of Canada, 100 National Maritime Museum, 7 National Museum of Man, 96, 104,107 National Museum of Wales, 44 natives, 36, 65, 66, 96-7,133,137-8, 173 Natural History Society, xiv, 21, 29, 32, 37> 43, 53, 65 Naylor, Tom, 102 Nazareth Fief, 19, 30,175

Nelles, H.V., 45 Nelson Monument, 27 New Brunswick Museum, 100 Nobbs, Percy, xiv, 60, 62, 63, 67,105 Notman Photographic Archives, xv, 4, 7,12, 78, 99,108,113,133, 143,153> 154, i63> 164 Novick, Peter, 64 October Crisis (1970), 125 Ontario Provincial Museum, 43 Operation McGill fran9ais, xv, 125,126 Osier Library, 102 Owens, Brian, 144 Palliser, John, 35 Parti Quebecois, 119,127 Patriotic Fund, 148 Peabody, George, 36 Peale's Museum, 41 Pelletier, Gerard, 118 Penfield, Wilder, 50 Pennington, Richard, 82 Peterson, William, 55, 57 philanthropy, 6,10,11, 41, 51, 56, 59,

National Archives of Canada, 131

92, 98,103,105,106,113,134,

Index

221

148-50,172-3 Pinard, Maurice, 102 Pitt Rivers, 36, 41 Plains of Abraham, 39, 45, 46 Portrait of a Period: a Collection of Notman Photographs, 99 Presbyterianism, 16, 20, 21, 35 Price, Derek, xvi, 132,150,158, 159,160 professionalization, 50, 64 Protestant Hospital for the Insane, 60 Protestantism, 9,36, 89 Protestant Orphan Asylum, 25,32 Province of Quebec Museums Association, 76 Public Archives of Canada, 65,104; see also National Archives of Canada

36-7 romanticism, 24, 34 Rombout, Luke, xvi, 132,147,152, 156,157,158,161, 203 Ross, Anne, 8, 9,17, 20, 23, 25, 26, 27,85 Ross, David, 17, 20, 22 Ross, Jane Davidson, 27, 28 Ross, John, 37

Radcliffe Institute on Historical and Archival Management, 99 Rebellions of 1837-38, 26 Redpath, Peter, 44, 51,135,186 Redpath Museum, xiv, xv, 44, 48,

Ross-Robertson, Jacqueline, 107 Roy, Jean-Louis, 102 Royal Bank, 36, 59 Royal Commission on Bilingualism and Biculturalism, 114 Royal Ontario Museum, 6, 7,57, 78, 87,100,124,173 Royal Securities, 59 Royal Society, 34 Royal Victoria College, 65, 83 Ruddell, Thierry, 124 Ruskin, John, 42 Rutherford, Ernest, 54 Ryerson, Egerton, 43

69, 76, 77,100,113,122,145,164, 170 Redpath papers, 7 Reese, Nellie, 102 Reford, R.W., 67 Reford, Robert, 56, 87 research, 5,11, 60-1,104,108,114, 124,128-9, !3i~4> !43> 150-7

Said, Edward W., 80 St Andrew and St Paul Presbyterian Church, 136 Sainte-Anne fief, 19 St Paul's Presbyterian Church, 93 Saul, John Ralston, 13 Scott, Frank, 50,109-10,149

Quebec Act (1774), 20 Quebec Government, 115,119, 121-2,127,129,130,163 Quiet Revolution, 114

222

Rice, Richard, 102 Rider, Lillian, 102 Ritz Carlton Hotel, 106 Roberts, John, 13 Roddick, Thomas, 58 Roman Catholicism, 20, 21,35,

Index

Scott, Marian, no Scott, Walter, 27, 42, 47 Senior, Hereward, 96 Shapiro, Bernard, 164,167,168 Siebold, F.B. von, 42 Simon, Beatrice V., 81 Sisters of the H6tel-Dieu, 19 Smithsonian Institution, 6 Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council, 6,121,132 Societe des Musees Quebecois, 123 Society for Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, 86 Society of Canadian Literature, 34 Solomon, Sarah, 17, 20 South Kensington Museum, 41 Square Mile, 52, 93 Stansbury, E.J., 116,128 Stein, Michael, 102 Stephens, George, 59 Stewart, Beatrice, 98 Stewart, David, 128 Stewart family, 93,105 Stoneycroft Farm, 148 Strathcona Medical Building,

49> 113 Stredder, F. Owen, 72 Student Union Building, 62, 99,101 Study, The, 93, 94 Sun Life, 32, 33 Taylor, William, 96 Tecumseh, 89

Thomson, Shirley, xv, 132,133,142, 152,155 Thomson, Tom, 87 Torrance, David, 87 Trafalgar School, 83 Trigger, Bruce, xvi, 102,104,116,131, 134,136-8,139,147,153 Triggs, Stanley, xvi, 12, 99,104, 107-8,109,117,141,142,143,147, 152,153,154,159,163 Trudeau, Pierre Elliott, 125 Trudel, Jean, 123 Turnham, Alice Johannsen, see Johannsen, Alice Tyler, Barbara, 154 Union of Canadian Municipalities,

34 Universite de Montreal, xvi, 14 Universite du Quebec a Montreal, xvi, 14,140,165 University of Toronto, 36 Van Home, William Cornelius, 56,87 Vaughan, Cynthia, 140 Vennat, Manon, 165,168 Victoria and Albert Museum, xiv, 6, 42,106 Victoria Bridge, 34 Victoria Rifle Company, 8 Vogel, Robert, 67 volunteers, xv, 10, 85-6,106,113

Temple Grove, xiv, 23, 24, 25, 26,32,

33. 39> 40, 52, 57, 87 Temple Grove Foundation, 158,160 Thompson, John, 102 Thomson, Dale, no

Walton, Frederick Parker, 61 War Museum, 97 Warren, Dorothy, 68, 88, 90-2, i39> HO

Index

223

Waugh, William Templeton, 66, 94 Webster, Elizabeth Isobel, 17 Westmount, 34, 41, 51,55, 57-8, 64-5 Westmount Public Library, 64 Wheeler, Amy, 36 Williams, Basil, 63, 66 Williams, Raymond, 174 Williamson, Clifford, 106 Williams-Taylor, Frederick, 59 Wilson, Daniel, 36,38 Wolfe, James, 34, 39, 45, 54, 63, 66, 89, 90,100

224

Index

women, 25, 30, 80-1, 93-9; and history, 10, 27, 82-3; and philanthropy, 85-6,106,113; in the university, 81-2, 85-6, 90-2; see also McGill University, Isabel Dobell, curators Women's Auxiliaries, 86 Women's Institutes, 83 Woolf, Virginia, 4, 5 Wordsworth, William, 42 Zeller, Suzanne, 64