Ideas under Glass

Many institutions can lay claim to an uplifting foundation myth, but the new Canadian Museum for Human Rights boasts not one but two.

There is the story that Prime Minister Jean Chrétien was so moved by a visit to Auschwitz in 1999 that he declared a site would finally be found for a Canadian Holocaust museum.

There is also the anecdote told by Gail Asper, head of the family foundation that began the fundraising campaign for the museum and its chief advocate. The Asper Foundation regularly tours school groups to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum and other sites in Washington DC and, on one of these trips, Asper found herself standing in line with her Canadian cohort waiting to see the American Declaration of Independence. Why, she wondered, was there nowhere in Canada where school children could see key documents in their country’s human rights history.

A Canadian Holocaust memorial. An institution dedicated to human rights education...