Pier 21 celebrates 20 years on Canada Day

It was born with much fanfare on Canada Day back in 1999.

After years of growth and providing visitors with cultural heritage exhibits, sharing newcomers’ stories, promoting the historic site’s educational and research components, hosting special events and later enduring a months-long renovation, the Canadian Immigration Museum at Pier 21, in Halifax, is turning 20 years old.

A day filled with 20th anniversary- and Canada Day-related activities, free and accessible to all on July 1, has been planned. It includes a Canadian citizenship ceremony at the museum that’s open to the public.

The ceremony on Monday is to begin at 10 a.m. Pier 21 officials are expecting around 50 newcomers will be sworn in.

Beyond the one-day celebration, there’s Pier 21: The Musical. Performance times and museum admission costs are available online.

Marie Chapman, the museum’s chief executive officer, said the musical-theatre show was created by a British Columbia-based musician and composer.

“When we heard about it, we thought: ‘This is a great thing to do to sort of mark the 20th,’” she told HalifaxToday.ca.

Pier 21 was the entry point to this country for about 1 million immigrants. The place operated as a gateway for newcomers from 1928 to 1971, and was used as the shipping-out spot for some 368,000 Canadian military members during the Second World War.

During its time as a transit shed, located behind the train station in the city’s south end, Pier 21 was the temporary stopping point for scores of people from such countries as England, Italy, Greece, Holland and Poland, immigrants who would often travel by rail from Halifax to their final destination in other provinces.

Pier 21 was also the site where ships carrying war brides docked as the Second World War was ending in 1945, and in the months and years after peace was declared. The women, most of whom were from Great Britain, were the spouses of Canadian servicemen.

The restoration of Pier 21 was pushed and supported by local volunteers, including the late Ruth Goldbloom. She helped raise $9 million initially, and spearheaded another campaign that collected $7 million for ongoing resources at the interpretive centre.

Goldbloom, born in Cape Breton to a Russian immigrant mother, died in 2012 at age 88. A bursary in her memory was established, and donations to the fund help offset the costs for school, youth and community groups visiting the museum, its website says.

Pier 21, at 1055 Marginal Rd., is one of six national museums in Canada. It’s just the second situated outside the National Capital Region.

In the fall of 2014, it closed for a few months to accommodate a $30-million expansion. The renovation project saw the area almost double in size.

Another facelift is in the works, Chapman said in May.

“It’s a renovation of a piece of the new Canadian Immigration Hall that’ll open in a couple of years, in 2021,” she said. “What we’re doing is taking a piece (of the exhibition space) and making it more multi-sensory.”

The museum is a federal Crown corporation. It’s overseen by a board of trustees that is accountable to Parliament.

Part of the museum’s past involved the unveiling of a monument to Holocaust victims, the Wheel of Conscience. It’s a memorial exhibit that soon after its much-publicized installation in 2011 required repairs, in Toronto, and ended up in storage.

There was serious doubt years ago among some Holocaust survivors in Canada and members of the country’s Jewish community, people who wondered whether the piece would return to Pier 21.

It did, in 2015. The wheel sits inside the building near the front entrance, and visitors don’t have to pay an admission fee to view it.

“It’s a wonderful place for it,” Chapman said. “First of all, everybody can see it. But it also tells the story that not everybody got in” to Canada, she said.

Designed by Polish-born architect Daniel Libeskind, the son of Holocaust survivors, the Wheel of Conscience was inspired by the story of the MS St. Louis, a ship carrying close to 1,000 Jewish refugees fleeing Nazi Germany in 1939.

The vessel was denied access to Canada and other nations, so it returned to Europe.

More than 250 passengers on the St. Louis died in the Holocaust.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau last year formally apologized for Ottawa turning its back on those refugees. (Libeskind’s piece includes the passenger list from the ship that the government of the day would have nothing to do with.)

Immigration has for years stoked Canada’s population growth. Media reports have said newcomers will continue to fuel this increase, due to an aging population and declining birth rates.

Regarding looking into one’s family history, Pier 21 provides a genealogical research service onsite, and it’s accessible online.

Aside from telling the often-compelling stories of immigrants seeking a better life in Canada, Pier 21 is also a national historic site. It received its designation in the 1990s prior to its official opening two decades ago.

Asked if today’s visitors are more interested in technologically-advanced displays, as opposed to old-school museum material, Chapman said those who come to Pier 21 don’t necessarily want all the modern bells and whistles.

For instance, a metallic wall that’s part of an exhibition in the museum includes visitors being asked to leave handwritten notes about their cultural traditions, she said. The notes are placed with little magnets.

“You cannot imagine the number of people that are happy to pick up a pencil, and a piece of paper, and write the most lovely, interesting and sometimes really funny things,” said Chapman, “and put them on magnets on walls.”

And a train car at the museum that includes a distinctly low-tech checkerboard and chess set still has drawing power in the fast-paced 21st century.

“You will see people in there of all ages, including teens, playing those board games,” Chapman said.

Michael Lightstone is a freelance reporter living in Dartmouth