RCA Museum exhibit tells story of ‘Women, War and the Vote’

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This article was published 25/02/2016 (3702 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Curatorial staff at the RCA Museum at CFB Shilo spent the better part of Wednesday afternoon unpacking women’s clothing, shoes, hats and even undergarments in preparation of their upcoming exhibit.

“Designed for Victory: Women, War and the Vote” opens Friday and focuses on how women’s wartime roles influenced their fight for the right to vote. This story is told through period costumes provided by the Costume Museum of Canada in Winnipeg.

“The idea was that women were already championing the right to vote prior to the First World War, but the war was a catalyst for moving that issue forward because of women’s support and involvement in the war effort,” museum senior curator Kathleen Christensen said.

This year’s centennial commemoration of women’s right to vote in Manitoba provided a platform for the women-centric exhibit that the museum has wanted to put on for some time.

The Shilo museum worked with the Costume Museum for roughly a year to find 18 outfits that spoke to the fashion influences of war and the suffragette movement.

During the First World War, Canadian women took on jobs in factories and offices left vacant when men went overseas. Corsets and full-length skirts were traded in for trousers and trench coats as the fashion changed to suit these new roles.

“It was because of that, that (women) were able to justify and add to their argument of their changing role in society,” Christensen said.

The exhibit goes beyond clothing and looks at other wartime-vote parallels, like the victory bond campaign led by women on the home front and its many similarities to the campaign women ran to get the vote.

In researching “Designed for Victory,” Christensen and her team realized there was an opportunity to focus on every group that struggled to get the right to vote.

“It was obvious that war’s influence on enfranchisement was not just for women, but for many groups in Canadian society,” she said, adding that the exhibit covers a period from 1911 to 1960, when First Nations were finally afforded the right to vote.

“The clothing follows the whole fight for the vote.”

The RCA Museum partnered with the Commonwealth Air Training Plan Museum, Assiniboine Community College and Brandon University to bring the exhibit to life.

Brooke Drummond, a third-year student in BU’s history department, was charged with writing all of the text for the display panels in the exhibit.

“It was kind of challenging, but it was a really exciting process,” Drummond said, adding that she spent roughly one month researching and writing the seven panels, which describe important moments during the 50-year period.

The biggest challenge for Drummond was fitting the information in just 150 words and keeping the text at a Grade 9 reading level.

“I’m used to term papers where you’re pretty much trying to get as many words as possible,” she said. “It was neat to work at a national museum … so to get that recognition and experience and the professionalism of working with the curator at Shilo.”

Drummond’s work hasn’t gone unrecognized by museum staff.

“She was the one who did all the research and really fleshed out the storyline,” Christensen said.

The exhibit opens at 1 p.m. on Friday and will be on display until mid-June. The RCA Museum is located at Building N-118 on Patricia Road at CFB Shilo and is currently open 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday to Friday. The museum will be open seven days a week from Victoria Day to Labour Day.

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