Vanier Muséoparc (https://museoparc.ca/en/)
300 Pères-Blancs Ave, $5 admission
Tuesday to Saturday: 10 a.m. to 4 p.m.
I was pleasantly surprised by this place. It’s a small venue, with only a few artefacts, it’s mostly narratives posted on panels of the development of Vanier, formerly Eastview, formerly Janeville. It takes up a few rooms on the second floor of the community centre, in the Richelieu Vanier Park. This is a small, neighbourhood museum, not a national historical collection, so temper your expectations appropriately, and plan to spend a short amount of time. I was in and out in about forty-five minutes.
As a small museum, the Muséoparc is a product of those who care to produce and maintain it. The theme that reasserts itself throughout the museum is Franco-Ontarian Catholicism. There are assertive displays of French identity, and community events that centred around the parish.
Eastview became a town when Janesville, Clarkestown, and Clandeboye amalgamated in 1908, which became Vanier in 1969, named after Canada’s (then) recently deceased first Francophone Governor General, Georges Vanier. For most of its history, it was populated by a mix of working class and civil servants, mostly Franco-Ontarian. There was even a curious display at the last wicket of the museum, showing the changing demography of the community, implying that the traditional French population was no longer the majority (though still a plurality), without pointing it out at the risk of being seen as being cantankerous about all the immigrants.
One of the few times that Vanier (Eastview at the time) was in national news was during the Great Depression, when a woman was put on trial for distributing birth control information to the poor. The Eastview Birth Control Trial of 1936-1937 wasn’t mentioned, but there certainly was a lot about the importance of the church.
My nitpicking aside, I enjoyed my time there and I learnt about a neighbourhood that’s not often included in the main history of Ottawa. I wouldn’t recommend it for tourists who are here for only a couple of days, but if you live in town, particularly if you live in Vanier, then it’s a nice view into this particular facet of the city.
