RCA Museum honoured for First World War exhibits

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This article was published 27/09/2018 (2774 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

The Royal Canadian Artillery Museum at CFB Shilo has received an award of excellence from the Association of Manitoba Museums for its series of four exhibits on the Canadian experience during the First World War.

The exhibits were released over the course of four years, beginning in 2014, and chronicled a number of important events during the war, from the Battle of the Somme, Vimy Ridge and most recently the last 100 days of fighting, along with an offshoot exhibit on women, the war and the vote.

The award was formally presented to the museum at a ceremony in Steinbach on Sept. 21.

“Not many museums would probably do four (exhibits) on World War I, but our museum is about war,” said Andrew Oakden, director of the RCA Museum.

“We don’t glorify it. We try to show it in a very contextual way that certainly will be educational.”

A news release from CFB Shilo said the museum’s series of temporary exhibits was recognized for its eloquence and for thoroughly presenting the impact of the war.

The exhibits worked well for the RCA Museum, given the amount of First World War artillery that is housed on site, Oakden said.

“It makes for good content for four good temporary exhibits,” he said. “It certainly, I think, inspires visitors to learn about Canadian military history and it certainly attracts visitors to our museum.”

With the fall season being a much quieter time for museum staff, Oakden hoped the news of the award would bring more visitors in to see the exhibit.

The exhibit that captures the last 100 days of fighting will remain up until Dec. 14.

“If it attracts visitors to our museum, fantastic,” he said.

The latest exhibit centres around the final push by the German army before the United States entered the war — an event known as the Spring Offensive.

The Allies were able to push back, eventually resulting in what became known as the Hundred Days Offensive and the armistice of Nov. 11, 1918.

As the final exhibit in the RCA Museum’s four-part series, the focus centred in part on the legacy left behind by Canada, including the use of artillery on the battlefield by Canadian commander Arthur Currie — who lived by a mantra of winning battles with ammunition rather than lives — wireless telephones, the first gas hood, and the first battlefield body-to-body blood transfusions.

On display are also several paintings commissioned by the war art program and provided by the Canadian War Museum and Library and Archives Canada.

Among them are pieces by Manitoba artist Mary Riter Hamilton and “A Copse, Evening” by A. Y. Jackson, a Canadian painter and member of the Group of Seven.

Other displays shine a spotlight on the wounded, prisoners of war, social unrest and the lead-up to the Winnipeg General Strike of 1919, the Spanish Flu pandemic, and the war trophies program.

Tying everything together is the Royal Canadian Horse Artillery, which is displayed prominently near the entrance to the exhibit.

“And because the horse artillery is here on base, we wanted to make sure that we had this focal point and acknowledge their contributions to the war at that time,” said senior curator Kathleen Christensen.

Staff at the RCA Museum are already planning for their next exhibit — the 75th anniversary of the D-Day invasion at Juno Beach during the Second World War.

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