Sat, Nov 12, 2011
Remembrance Day Speech Decries Slated Demolition Of Museum
Building
Canadian Air & Space Museum
chairman Ian A. McDougall used a Remembrance Day speech at the
museum to stress the importance of the country's aviation history,
and to call for the preservation of the building that houses the
museum. The museum building is the original de Havilland Canada
hangar in Toronto, and though certified as a ‘Heritage
Building’ by the Canadian Federal Government, it is slated
for demolition, to be replaced next year by a hockey rink.
"The generations that follow you are being cheated if they have
no more than your pictures as you grow old," McDougall said in his
prepared remarks. "They need texture. Texture is the Jewish
Lancaster pilot from Toronto who risked death in the air and an
even worse fate on the ground every night he flew over Nazi
Germany. Texture like the engineers that found a way to make the
world's premier fighter bomber out of wood. Texture like the
factory workers who toiled without regard to factory conditions or
job descriptions or overtime rules day after day to make Tiger
Moths, Mosquitos and the Lancaster bomber you see before you, or
the scientists who figured out how the cathode ray direction finder
might be adapted to work as radar in a night fighter over
London.
"This Museum is the purveyor of your stories," he continued. "We
tell of what you did. People cannot leave this place without
knowing of your contributions. Nobody passes through these portals
and leaves only with a picture of a face. They see the machines,
the battlegrounds, the factories, and hear the stories through the
flow of the history that is represented within the Canadian Air
& Space Museum. We exist to deliver on the promise "Let Us
Never Forget". We exist to ensure future generations have the
opportunity to see, touch, feel and hear the tracings of your
lives. What can be said of a Government that wants to destroy the
only museum in Canada's biggest city that is dedicated to you and
demolish the historic building in which it lives? We are the
custodians of your stories for the generations that will forever
remain in your debt.
"Every museum lost is a thousand stories a week in the dustbin
of history and makes for a poorer country. We are trying to save
this place in honor of what you stood for."
The museum had suffered financial hardship when a fundraising
effort stalled, and it fell behind on its rent. The museum board
had recently installed new management, and was working towards a
payment schedule to pay off the arrears when an eviction notice
came in September.
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