Toronto Museum Project Unveiled
A sizeable crowd converged on Fort York National Historic Site yesterday afternoon for the official launch of the Toronto Museum Project, a virtual home for 100 artifacts and stories (so far) told by a range of Torontonians from every corner of the city. Politicians, city museums staff and TMP storytellers were on hand to introduce the project and help create some buzz about this impressive new site, which was built with support from Canadian Heritage’s Canadian Culture Online Strategy.
Mayor Miller told those assembled, “We’re just scratching the surface of the knowledge that we share collectively . . . the Museum Project gives us a chance to share the true richness of our city with each other. And what better way to start than online? I think this project is terrific. I look forward to even more stories being told and I look forward, a few years from now, to seeing the Toronto Museum established in Old City Hall so that all of us can share those stories in person.”
Joining the officials were four of the people whose stories are captured on the site. Shakil A. (above from left) talked about a prayer rug he brought with him from Pakistan and spoke of feeling welcome to practice his religion in Toronto’s mosques; Evelyn S. told a story about working as a junior bank teller in one of Toronto’s Chinatown’s and how a 1923 bank loan document for a Chinese Canadian resonated with her own family history; former Toronto Mayor David Crombie spoke about William Jarvis’s Queen’s Rangers Uniform Jacket from 1791 making a connection between Toronto’s past and its present: “Toronto’s history is always at work whether we’re paying attention or not,” he said; and Anna B. spoke to a 1960 photograph of the corner of Jane Street and Finch Avenue West, expounding on this community where she grew up, was educated and found her strength and voice. “This street corner has talent, aspirations and skills, this street corner shaped who I am today.”
Black History Unfolds at Mackenzie House
Black History Month begins today and one of Toronto’s most inspiring true stories – that of Mary Ann Shadd Cary, the first woman in North America to publish a newspaper — is being told at Mackenzie House Museum (82 Bond Street), former home of Toronto’s first mayor, William Lyon Mackenzie.
The “rebel mayor” responsible for starting the Upper Canada Rebellion in 1837, was also a newspaper publisher and he used his broadsheets to condemn slavery and to encourage the equal treatment of Upper Canada’s Black population. In 1837, he wrote: “as a public journalist we have never failed to espouse, and delight in advocating the heaven-born principle of abolition of slavery, of every race of which it may be the curse.”
Mac House, as we affectionately call the museum, boasts a recreated 1800s printshop, the perfect place to explore Shadd Cary’s role as publisher of the Provincial Freeman, founded in 1853.
