Le Musée de la Civilisation

The Musée de la Civilisation is one of the largest and most extensive museum in Québec City.It houses several different exhibitions at once and also is part of a museum complex that includes 4 other museums around View Québec.  The main museum has a permanent exhibition on the history and modern times of Québec - including film clips, realia, documents and models.  Our group visited this last year and found it very informative when learning about the different epochs in Québec's evolution.  We have a tendancy to concentrate on the history, the great battle, the loss of French to English, but it is important to remember that Québec has a modern history that is very noteworthy:  the Quiet Revolution, October Crisis, Referendums, 1967 World Exposition and 1976 Winter Olympics in Montréal and of course who could forget the great Maurice "Rocket" Richard and the Montréal Canadiens, the first NHL Hockey team! 

Of the temporary exhibits currently at the museum, I was particularly interested the retrospective of Michel Tremblay, Québec's most prolific and popular modern playwright/author.  As an undergraduate student at the University of Alberta, I remember studying Les Belles Soeurs and seeing a staged version.  I enjoyed hearing his interviews and taking a walk inside his life.

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In addition to Tremblay's exhibit, there was a retrospective display commemorating the 75th anniversary of CBC-Radio Canada, the first Francophone Radio and Television station in North America.  It wasn't quite a trip down memory lane for me, because being from English Canada, we didn't get a lot of the older, vintage shows and programming until official bilingualism was declared in Canada in 1969.

 The big event at the museum this summer is the exhibition on Samurai - a private collection of weapons, armour and dress from the beginnings of the Samurai class in Japan in the 1100s to the end of this honoured class in the late 1800s.  Needless to say, it was beautiful.  I was surprised to see that the collection is on loan from a couple, avid collectors from Dallas, Texas.,

A suivre, demain...