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HomeMy WebLinkAboutThe Citizen, 2008-02-07, Page 5THE CITIZEN, THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 7, 2008. PAGE 5. Bonnie Gropp TThhee sshhoorrtt ooff iitt Cautiously wise M useums, museums, museums. Object-lessons rigged out to illustrate the unsound theories of archeologists; crazy attempts to co-ordinate and get into a fixed order that which has no fixed order and will not be co-ordinated! It is sickening! Why must all experience be systematized?” – D.H. Lawrence I see where Canada’s most famous museum managed to misplace an entire 80-foot-long dinosaur skeleton. For nearly half a century. Doesn’t surprise me in the least. Our most famous museum? Unquestionably The Royal Ontario – known to millions, affectionately and otherwise, as The ROM. It squats at the corner of Bloor Street and Avenue Road – Ground Zero for the Hog- town horsey set that animates the carriage trade in the Centre of the Known Universe. The ROM has occupied the same space since the beginning of the First World War. In the near-century in between it’s had more face lifts than Phyllis Diller – the latest one being a ludicrous cubistic encrustation grandly known as Renaissance ROM. It’s a sharp-angled agglomeration of aluminum and glass that juts, 10 storeys high, out and over the main entrance. It looks as if a gigantic mutant sugar crystal dropped from the heavens and lodged itself in the building like an ill-placed sliver. But that’s cosmetics. Inside, the grand old ROM really is grand – Canada’s grandest and the fifth largest museum on the continent. It is home to 40 galleries and more than six million items, from Egyptian mummies to Algonquin amulets. And not forgetting the dusty skeleton of an eighty-foot long Barosaurus dinosaur that the Museum ‘discovered’ in the basement last November. Apparently the museum acquired the skeleton back in 1962, put it in storage and then forgot about it altogether. Why am I not surprised? Because for one summer, as a teenager, I worked at the Royal Ontario Museum – back about 1962, as a matter of fact. And from what I saw, losing a dinosaur skeleton the length of two subway cars would be a walk in Queen’s Park for The ROM. Understand that I was not employed as a paleontologist, archeologist, curator, exhibit technician or anything grand like that. I was a lowly roofer’s apprentice brought in to handle the grunt work while my more skilled colleagues replaced some air ducts and re- shingled part of the roof. This is supremely boring work on most buildings, involving as it does, crawling through dusty, cobwebbed attics festooned with forgotten junk, bats, rats and occasionally unidentifiable and odiferous blobs of dubious biological provenance. That’s the way it is in most attics, but at The ROM – hoo, boy. The first thing I saw when I pushed back the attic hatch was a welter of arcane weaponry that could only bring joy untrammeled to the heart of any teenage boy. There were Prussian lances and Indian tomahawks, Spanish swords and Italian stilettos. There were bows and arrows, a blunderbuss, several ancient long guns and the strangest ‘weapon’I’ve ever seen. It was labeled Newfoundland Duck Boat. It was a scrawny rowboat about 12 feet long featuring what looked like a small cannon mounted on the bow. Apparently, 19th century outport Newfoundlanders would stealthily row the boat into a bay filled with hundreds – even thousands – of migrating ducks. Then the oarsman would jump up and wave madly to startle the ducks into flight while his fellow huntsman touched off the buckshot-laden cannon. If things worked out well, the entire community had duck for the rest of the year. There were other treasures in that magical cave. I got to try on the breastpiece of a 16th- century Scottish suit of armour. I also modeled an ancient Persian helmet like the one Brad Pitt wore in Troy. Actually, I tried to put it on, but the breastplate looked like a brooch and the helmet sat on my head like an acorn. Those guys were really tiny compared to us. The wonder of it was, all this glorious stuff was just stashed like junk in The ROM attic – barely labeled or sorted. It was the antithesis of typical museum protocol, where everything is, as D. H. Lawrence lamented, ‘co-ordinated’ and ‘systematized’. It was chaos for a museum, but heaven on earth for a teenage boy like me. And now, 46 years later, the truth can be told. I’m the guy who broke the flash pan on that exquisite 17th-century muzzle-loading flintlock musket. It was an accident. Sorry about that. On the other hand, I had absolutely nothing to do with hiding that dinosaur. Arthur Black Other Views Anybody seen a dinosaur? The most bloodthirsty dictator of recent decades has died and some former Ontario premiers must be remembering the happier times they had together. Premiers lent a veneer of respectability not once, but twice to Suharto, the former president of Indonesia, who was estimated to have caused the deaths of 1 million political opponents or suspects, or just people who appeared to stand in his way, in that fifth most populous country in the world. The first time was when Suharto visited in 1975 looking for trade and investment and his regime already had slaughtered several hundred thousand people and banned free speech and open elections. This was known to any who cared to listen. Suharto was an ally of the United States against those it labeled Communists, but often merely wanted to free their homelands from foreign domination. Progressive Conservative Premier William Davis’s only known foreign policy was doing what the U.S. did. The premier treated Suharto to an official welcome at the airport and black-tie dinner at the relatively new showplace, the Ontario Science Centre. Members of the Royal Family are not always that much fussed over. Suharto explained he was trying to bring his country democracy and spiritual well-being and the province’s elite applauded these worthy goals. His speech sounded much like one Davis would have made, except the premier always mentioned his hometown Brampton. Showing he is a family man like Davis, Suharto also brought his wife, whom the government took sightseeing to Niagara Falls. Davis liked to talk about his wife and five children, particularly in elections, and the two may have chatted about their kids. One big difference, although Suharto may not have mentioned it, is he and his children diverted $35 billion (U.S) of taxpayers’money to their personal bank accounts and his children own half the major businesses in that impoverished country. But the visit presented a picture of a family man devoted to his people and the province helped give a vicious, greedy dictator an appearance of benevolence he did not deserve. Another Conservative premier, Mike Harris, similarly helped Suharto cover up his real identity when he visited Indonesia on a trade mission in 1996. Harris in opposition had lashed New Democrat premier Bob Rae for visiting China to further trade and failing to speak up against its abuse of rights, particularly in killing student protesters. But when Harris went to Indonesia, he also lost his zeal for protesting against abuse of rights and expressed only gratitude that Ontario companies could win business deals there. Davis welcomed other tyrants, including Ahmed Seko Toure of Guinea in west Africa, who murdered and tortured opponents and drove one-quarter of its population into exile in nearby countries. Davis had Toure given an official welcome at the airport and gave him a state dinner at the legislature. Toure responded unkindly by ordering an Amnesty International lawyer, sent to observe one political trial, jailed for life. Pakistan dictator General Mohammad Zia ul-Haq, in the news recently because his regime hanged former prime minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, father of the assassinated presidential candidate, Benazir Bhutto, and notorious for murdering, torturing and publicly flogging thousands of political opponents, visited in 1982, and the province had no word of criticism. But Davis refused to put out the welcome mat for some visitors. When the NDP tried to get five Russian members of a so-called peace and disarmament committee introduced in the legislature in 1980, the premier objected, saying he wanted to make it clear they were not guests of his government. Davis was continuing his line of supporting the U.S. and keen to win votes of the many Ontarians who fled from Soviet-dominated countries. Rae, Harris and Liberal Premier Dalton McGuinty also should feel some shame, because they visited China, the biggest violator, seeking trade, but failed to protest against its abuse of rights. Premiers do not have a good record of sticking up for the less fortunate in other countries. Eric Dowd FFrroomm QQuueeeenn’’ss PPaarrkk Remembering happier times with dictators January 1971, a malcontent month determined to make travel if not impossible, then miserable. For days there had been a relentless onslaught of snow and wind, conditions that had turned the city into an opaque landscape. The situation in the outlying areas, of course, was worse. An unhappy student, anxious to get home, too stubborn to listen to the wisdom and appeals from her elders. A weekend was looming, with friends and fun, places to go and happenings on the horizon. How dull it would be to be stuck with a middle-aged couple bent on destroying any youthful fun. Clearly their frustration at not being young and full of energy anymore could be the only explanation for their tenacious arguments to stay put. Get real, how bad could it be? I was living in Kitchener that year. And, like every young person, knew so much more than the generation before me. This particular week had been a nasty one, but despite the pronouncements of road closures and zero visibility I was bundling myself into my car and going home. Of course, one must keep in mind too, that stupidity at that time wasn’t restricted to one decision. In the name of fashion, the attire in which I was heading into the vast white wilderness was hardly suitable should I get stuck in the frigid temperatures and deep snow. My landlady and her husband had both strongly advised me against heading out, as did my parents when I called to see if the story was any different from their side of the country. But I was young, cocky and knew it all. After all, among my peers and me, it was common knowledge that old folks exaggerate and only tell you these things to exert control. That battle lost, they suggested I at least dress appropriately. But seriously, they couldn’t have expected me to wear snowpants, could they? And a hat! They had to be kidding. Thus it was, that I found myself on a closed Hwy. 86, in the evening, behind the wheel for the first time in my life during a snowbelt blizzard, wearing the winter basics for teens of that era --- a jacket and boots. It was an enlightening experience that may have set me on the road to maturity. The trip was a nightmare I have never forgotten. Fast forward many years and the table had turned. I was now the mother of teens who demonstrated on many occasions that same steely will to drive blindly into the white night. Like adults before I tried to explain that they didn’t understand how it could be out there. I tried to tell them how frightening it is for me to think of them out there. I did my best to convince them that there was really no reason good enough to be out there. And as parents the snowbelt world over know only too well, it was all to no avail. Only when they try it on their own, only when they see for themselves how terrifying that familiar landscape can become when it’s like driving through a marshmallow, will they begin to reconsider. Unfortunately, even then, it doesn’t often change the outcome. We drive. We drive when we know we probably shouldn’t. All because we feel we must. And really nothing is worth it. I’d like to think that even employers would rather you miss a day than longer because of mishap. Even my husband, who has never seen a whiteout to challenge him, is having second thoughts. “Maybe I’m getting old,” he said of this apparent ‘weakness’ in his character. Frankly I prefer to think that maybe we’re just finally getting wiser. “Success usually comes to those who are too busy to be looking for it.” – Henry David Thoreau Final Thought