I sit in my car looking at the front doors of the Manitoba Museum, still a bit in disbelief. It’s Saturday morning, what would usually be a busy time I’ve heard. But today, much like the last several months, the museum is closed due to COVID. Nonetheless, I can hardly contain my excitement. Today is our ‘front and back of house’ tour.
I text Claudette ‘Good morning, I’m here’ to which she quickly answers, “On my way down.” We’ve never met before, Claudette and I, but we’ve had several email exchanges and a couple phone calls. Finally we’ll get to chat face to face, something both of us have been eager to do since the formal announcement.
Claudette Leclerc is the Manitoba Museum’s retiring Executive Director and CEO, a role I’ve just been appointed to. This is our first orientation meeting, a daunting endeavour as she’s held the position for twenty three years.
The Security Manager opens the door smiling under his mask, visible through his eyes. We chat for a moment about how long he’s been with the museum, about how oddly quiet it feels, how we’re all ready to welcome visitors again.
I glance around as my earliest memories of Canada slowly reawaken. A lot has changed, I can see the many wonderful improvements, but I’m pleased to find some small things remain untouched and thus very familiar.
The elevator doors open and Claudette emerges. She approaches me smiling, speaking excitedly, and lifts her elbow to bump mine, a COVID greeting. We exchange a few words, then she says “let’s go to my office, ha, your office.” She laughs. After a second, we cheerfully say in unison, “our office,” as we walk towards the elevators. We’re already friends I feel; I start to relax. An exciting day awaits.
I’m holding a notebook open, writing as quickly as I can as she speaks. A spare pencil is tucked into my hair, secure in a tightly twisted bun; within easy reach should I need it. I jot down security details, elevator access, all the keys ‘we’ carry around and how cumbersome they are during events. “I never know where to place these during a gala” Claudette jokes in the elevator, “I’ve already got my cellphone tucked into my bra.” I laugh too, that’s exactly what I would do.
Her office, my office, is a beautiful space, it’s loved, warm, and well lived in. Claudette shares the history of the desk while standing behind it, an image that looks so natural to me, although I’ve never seen it before. Decades dedicated to a place and a people inextricably links a person to them, this I know from my own journey to belonging. Here I feel, Claudette has and always will belong.
There’s a massive bird of paradise plant by the window, a bit worse for wear from being relocated from another spot in the museum. But it’s got new shoots and has flowered once for Claudette, she assures me, it’ll flower again. “I don’t know, are you a plant person?” she asks. “Oh yes, very much so, my grandfather was a botanist.” I’m well aware of the casual fallacy; still, I hope it makes the point that I really, really like plants. I write a note to research birds of paradise.
Claudette has prepared massive binders of information to help orient me to my new role, indexed and thematically categorized. All her files have been color coded, with archives in the back storage room, should I need to look through them. She shows me a past meeting package and points out her handwritten notes in the margins. Absolute genius, I think, I’m also a big fan of margin notes. I know it’s where the stuff below the surface lives. I’m overcome by gratitude, she’s done everything possible to help me succeed; I couldn’t have imagined all of this.
We agree to leave the sit down portion of our time together to the end. The tour commences.
For the next three hours we don’t stop moving. I follow her into every space with care; conservation labs, temperature and humidity controlled storage rooms, massive freezers, scientific and creative spaces. I don’t touch anything without permission.
There are over 2.9 million artifacts in the museum’s collection, that’s more than two per Manitoban. The figure sounds astronomical, and it isn’t until Claudette singlehandedly turns a three pronged hand crank that moves what appears to be an entire wall revealing the magnitude of the space, that the number crystallizes before my eyes. The archival storage system must be twelve or more feet tall, at least twenty feet long, and several feet wide. There are many, many of these moving walls, each filled with shelves, cabinets, and drawers. I’m awe struck.
Every single item is tagged, meticulously catalogued. Claudette explains that every item has a backstory, where it came from, who it belonged to, which historical era it represents. Millions of stories found in one home.
We walk along the stacks to an opening. There’s a section of children’s toys, old and less old. “My Little Ponies?!” I say both excitedly and confused, asking if I could take a picture because I needed to show this to my kids. “If we don’t collect in the present, what will we have to interpret in the future?”
Claudette goes on to explain how we’re living in the history of tomorrow, how symbols of our lives tell a story about who we were. We’re in the Ethnology collection, it’s filled with almost anything and everything related to daily life. I underline Ethnology, one of many words I would go home and google.
We visit three floors like this, the next being the zoology collection. Claudette forewarns me that we’re about to see something that’s really going to surprise me, in retrospect, I’m not sure surprising is how I’d describe the space. From an unassuming hallway we enter into a noticeably cooler, drier environment.
The archival stacks reach to the ceiling with every possible surface occupied. We’re standing in the midst of present day and historic Manitoba fauna. Creatures; mammals, insects, amphibians, fish; taxidermied, pickled, all somehow preserved. My jaw drops. “Do people know about this?” I ask Claudette, a question I’d repeat many more times that day. “I mean, do people know everything that is here?” “Some do” she answers.
Our tour continues much like this. I am repeatedly mesmerized and ask questions I fear sound like I’m a sixth grader on a field trip. Claudette is incredibly knowledgeable and gracious. She reminds me many times, as I express concerns that even with my notes, studying, reading, memorizing, I may never know what she knows. “No one expects you to know all this. Plus remember, it’s been twenty three years, you’ll learn, that’s the journey here.”
We leave collections en route to the museum. As we walk away from the first of many labs I’d see that day Claudette turns to me smiling and says “freezers are important.” I laugh and then quickly write down her sage words verbatim, “freezers are important.” ‘Who knew?’, I chuckle inside.
Having Claudette as a tour guide is extraordinary, as she’s known all the ways the museum has and continues to evolve. One single building strives to honour millions of years of history while speaking to the present. This is the fine balance, people and land, past and present, all to shape the future. It’s an admirable undertaking.
You’re not always going to get it right…”
Claudette speaks from experience, stressing the importance of staying committed to the conversations, however difficult they may get.
I pause, knowing her words to be true. Being uncomfortable advances justice. This too, is part of our work.
We move into the paleontology exhibits and come up on one of the museum’s crowd pleasers. But before I can say how much I have always loved seeing the dinosaur, as though she is reading my mind, Claudette corrects my lay person’s knowledge. “That is not a dinosaur” she states the fact.
“What, what do you mean?”
“Everyone thinks it’s a T-Rex, but that’s a mammal. That’s a ground sloth.”
I write down this important piece of information in my notebook, taking particular delight in knowing it’s a sloth, one of my all-time favorite animals. This revelation does nothing to diminish my childlike wonder of the towering skeleton.
From there, we meander through ages, moving into back of house so that I can understand where and how exhibits come to life. Try as I might I lose track of where exactly we are.
“Remember we were there”, she opens a staff only door that brings us back into the galleries, “then we turned right, well, we’re coming out in that same spot, this is one of those shortcuts.” I’m trying to map out the labyrinth that is the museum in my mind, front and back. “This is kind of like IKEA,” I laugh, Claudette agrees. Once you’re in, you’re in.
If I keep going with the tour, this blog would turn into a book, so I’ll leave somethings to share in the future. But after hours of walking, stairs wells, ramps, visits to the loading dock and the carpentry shop, we are exhausted. I comment that I wore my walking shoes but not my gym shoes, which was a mistake.
We emerge from the museum excited to sit down and chat about the job in hand, CEO orientation.
We sit physically distanced, binders between us, delving into the details. Claudette starts. “There’s nothing I can tell you about governance, leadership, you know all of that.” I feel undeserving of her confidence. “But I want to tell you about the people.” She tears up, I quickly follow. “I know you know what it means to love the people you serve. There are exceptional people here, and they will have your back. Don’t ever hesitate to say ‘I don’t know, help me learn, help me understand.’ Everyone is incredibly generous.” As would be expected the tissue box is empty, a bit of comic relief to the moment. I say I’m fine using paper towel, she insists it’d be way too rough.
“Museums are trusted; we work very hard to earn that trust. In all of the stories we tell we must be accurate, fair, objective, and always open to opposing views.” She explains that nothing truly belongs to us, as an institution, that we are “keepers” of that which belongs to everyone, “facilitators of telling everyone’s stories.”
After over four hours I regrettably have to rush out. Many more times together are needed, but this was an incredible start. I’m given a file box of binders and swag to take home.
Before leaving, I stop for a moment in the lobby looking past the glass doors at the iconic buffalo hunt that greets visitors. I had stood there decades ago, when I was new to this land and new to the people. I was unknown to them as well; slowly our stories have been woven together.
The importance of this moment is not lost on me. Somehow life has brought me back to where my story in Canada began. Here, I feel at home.
