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'Dirty Pool'
Philistines
on council cut Aquatic Museum adrift
Dallas Hansen
Thursday, July 27, 2006
In
the
spring of this year, I received a letter from Vaughan L. Baird, QC,
president of the Aquatic Hall of Fame and Museum of Canada at the
Pan-Am Pool. Mr. Baird wrote that he liked my piece on Ben Franklin,
who invented swim fins, and invited me for a tour of the AHF&M,
which I had never visited.
The
AHF&M was vast, filled with interesting art and memoribilia:
olympic posters, Pierre Trudeau's swim trunks, sculptures by various
notable artists—including Danish sculptor Kai Neilsen, and
Frenchman Jean René Gaugin, son of the legendary Paul
Gaugin. In
fact, the Aquatic Hall of Fame and Museum's art collection left me
sufficently impressed to remark, only half jokingly, to Mr. Baird,
“You might have a better collection here than the Winnipeg
Art
Gallery.”
Posters
from
every Summer Olympics since they began in 1896 can be seen here, as
well as posters from the Commonwealth and Pan-Am Games. “That
collection alone,” says Mr. Baird, “is very
valuable—the largest of its kind in the world.”
It's
been
nearly 40 years since Baird—a retired constitutional lawyer,
former Manitoba diving champion, and one-time vice president of the
federal Progressive Conservative party—co-founded the Aquatic
Hall of Fame and Museum. This week, however, the Aquatic Hall of Fame
and Museum is leaving Winnipeg.
For
several
years, the AHF&M has been embroiled in a bureaucratic battle
with
the City of Winnipeg's Planning, Property and Development Department.
It all started in 1999, when the AHF&M had raised $1.7 million,
to
build a 10,000 square-foot addition to the Pan-Am Pool for the
AHF&M's board room, offices, and exhibition gallery. Dedicated
during the 1999 XIII Pan-Am Games by HRH Princess Anne, the space has
been dubbed the Royal Gallery.
“But
from the beginning,” claims a July 20 press release from the
AHF&M, “the Department of Planning cast covetous eyes
on the
Royal Gallery....” The City effectively took control of the
Royal
Gallery and appropriated it for lawn bowling.
“It
was an inside job,” says Faith Ceasar, the AHF&M's
curator.
“Someone in the lawn bowling community knew someone in the
planning department and they took it away from us.”
“Every
cent raised [to build the Royal Gallery],” claims the press
release, “was given on the understanding and condition that
the
Royal Gallery was to be used exclusively by the Hall of
Fame....”
Worse,
earlier this year, council passed a revised Facility Use Agreement that
spelled financial disaster for the AHF&M. Hitherto, the Hall of
Fame's estimated $4 million collection was owned and
“self-insured” by the city. The revised agreement
would
return ownership of the collection back to the AHF&M itself,
which
would be stuck with an annual insurance bill of at least $25,000.
Moreover, the new agreement demands the AHF&M replace their
glass
display cases with plexiglass ones, at an estimated cost of $200,000.
Mayor
Sam
Katz voted against any revision of the new agreement, having, according
to the AHF&M, “prefaced his vote by resigning as the
Hall of
Fame's Honourary Chairperson—thereby ending a tradition begun
with Stephen Juba and maintained by each succeeding mayor up until Mr.
Katz.”
“It's just unbelievable,” says Mr. Baird,
“becaues
he's never been to it, never seen it. I've invited him for a tour
several times but he always says he's too busy.”
And so this week the Aquatic Hall of Fame and Museum of Canada and its
spectacular collection is no longer be on display at the Pan-Am Pool,
as City workers pack everything up and move it to storage where it will
only gather dust—until, that is, the collection finds a home
in
another city.
The corridors of the Pan-Am pool—well-used for walking and
running both—will feel vacuous without the AHF&M's
exhibits.
And Winnipeg, One Great City, will have lost some of its greatness.
What could Mr. Katz, and the councillors (O'Shaughnessy, Clement, De
Smedt, Magnifico, Pagtakhan, Steeves, and Eadie) who voted with him,
have been thinking? Is it just an ideological opposition to public
ownership of anything outside of basic infrastructure? Or are they just
philistines who have no use for art, history, and the honouring of
Canada's aquatic culture and its finest athletes?
Regardless of the answer, the AHF&M has occupied the Pan-Am
Pool
since its opening, and the existing arrangement cost the city very
little and worked very well. Our Mayor's indifference here is an insult
to Mr. Baird, who not only spent half his life volunteering here, but
ensured the Pan-Am Pool was built right.
“I convinced them to put a roof on it,” says Mr.
Baird.
“An open air pool would've been useful only fifty-three days
a
year.”
Mr. Baird and the Aquatic Hall of Fame and Museum of Canada deserve
better than this, and so do the aquatic peoples of Winnipeg. |
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