The Home of the Muse: Oblates and the Northern Life Museum
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The Home of the Muse: Oblates and the Northern Life Museum
Benjamin Lyle Berger
Research Associate, Provincial Museum of Alberta
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The origins of the word "curator" reside in a partial adoption from the Anglo-French (Tudor) word curatour. This derivation gave rise to a number of senses for use of the word, among the older of which is the sense "one who has the cure of souls."18 The Northern Life Museum inspired the love of the community by demonstrating a concern for its culture. Perhaps this is why Br. Sareault and Fr. Ebner's museum provoked such interest and support from the communities of the North. Having regard to the central place of the Northern Life Museum and its Oblate collection in the local communities, I think it is reasonable to view Fr. Ebner and Br. Sareault as two individuals who offered "the cure of souls" through their missionary work.
The Oxford English Dictionary indicates that the definition of the museum as "a building or apartment dedicated to the pursuit of learning or the arts" has long since become obsolete. This would, indeed, be rueful if it were true. Yet it is exactly this vision of the museum as a house for living culture and individual learning that I see extant in the Oblate origin and history of the Northern Life Museum in Fort Smith, N.W.T. Guided by the hard work of Brother Henri Sareault and Father Francis Ebner, a mineral collection on display in St. Patrick's school in Yellowknife grew into a vibrant community institution in the form of the Northern Life Museum and National Exhibit Centre at Fort Smith. Throughout, the collection was in service to the community's poignant experience of its own culture, teachings, and history assembled and displayed during a time of rapid change in the Canadian North. It is exceptional but no wonder that this institution succeeded in preserving the ancient and extremely rich conception of the museum while so many others descended into a frenzy of empty acquisition. The Oblate missionary experience is imbued with a strong sense of community history, personality, and significance not only with respect to the Oblate congregation, but intrinsically bound to the people that they lived with and served. In the work of Brother Sareault and Father Ebner, this deep community connection translated into an appreciation of the particular gifts and penetrating beauty of the lives of the people of the Canadian North. This love for the cultures within which they spent so much of their lives gave rise to a strong dedication to preserve and share the wisdom and way of life of the Northern peoples. Thus, Br. Sareault and Fr. Ebner, in their work at the Northern Life Museum, addressed the individual's concern for history, knowledge, and a sense of place. This, I believe, constitutes a meaningful answer to the question I posed, "what does the museum have to do with the religious vocation?" The museum, conceived of in the religious context, has the potential to minister to the memory, to nurture the intellect, and to care for the soul.
For if we refer ourselves to the inner memory of the mind by which it remembers itself, and to the inner understanding by which it understands itself, and to the inner will by which it loves itself, where these three always are together, and always have been together since they began to be at all, whether they were being thought of or not; the image of this trinity will indeed appear to pertain even to the memory alone; but because in this case a word cannot be without a thought…this image is rather to be discerned in these three things, viz. memory, intelligence, will.19
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This project has been supported in part by the Canada-Alberta Agreement on French-language Services; the opinions expressed do not necessarily reflect the views of the Governments of Canada or Alberta.
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Institut pour le Patrimoine, Campus Saint-Jean, University of Alberta
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