Visiting the Industrial Past: Representation and Meaning at Nova Scotia's Museum of Industry

;. ~~ (Re)Visiting the Industrial Past: Representation and Meaning at Nova Scotia's Museum of Industry By Meghann E. Jack A thesis submitted to the School of Graduate Studies in partial fulfillment ofthe requirements for the degree of Master of Arts Department of Folklore Memorial University of Newfoundland July 2010 Contents Acknowledgments 11 Abstract IV Figures v Chapter 1. Punching the Museum Time Clock 1 Chapter 2. New Ideas of Region: Revisionist Heritage at The Museum of Industry 40 Chapter 3. New Ways of Visiting the Past: Exploring Interpretations oflndustrial Heritage at the Museum of Industry 89 Chapter 4. The Streaker, The Stroller, and The Studier: Consuming Industrial Heritage at the Museum of Industry 136 Conclusion 172 References 176 11 Acknowledgements 1 would like to extend sincere thanks to the staff of the Museum of Industry, Stella11on, Nova Scotia for graciously accommodating my research interests. Their kind reception and generous allocation oftime and resources made my fieldwork an enjoyable experience. A special thanks is directed to staff members Debra McNabb, Paul Lalande, Andrew Phillips Mary Guildford, and Michael Mills. Thanks also to Kelly, Denise, Stephen, Scott, Derek, Cheryl, Christine, Mary Enid, Barb, Jamie, and the craft volunteers for supporting my research. Randy Muir was helpful through various stages of this thesis, and Peter Latta was a most obliging tour guide and infom1ant. The faculty, staff members, and students of the Department of Folklore, Memorial University of Newfoundland, are a great crowd of people to whom I owe much thanks. In particular, I am grateful for the invaluable assistance offered by secretaries Sharon Cochrane and Cindy Turpin, and the thoughtful encouragement I received from department head, Dr. Diane Tye. Dr. Gerald L. Pocius is the very best of advisors, and I an1 plea ed to be counted as his student. Generous with his time and also his books, he shows me much patience and kindness. Above all these things, he is an outstanding scholar who encourages me to read, think, and write in new ways. I owe a great deal to him for the completion of this thesis. My parents are always in my comer offering love, support, motivation, and guidance. 1 appreciate their constant encouragement of my academic pursuits. My mother transcribed the visitor survey responses. For doing this tedious and tiresome task, I am most thankful. My father always offers me sound, practical advice, imparting that great gift of common sense when I am Ill feeling indecisive, confused, and frustrated. As he often reminds me, ' an education is no burden to carry. ' While writing this thesis and completing my master' s degree often proved challenging, I have always kept this conviction. IV Abstract This thesis examines questions ofrepresentation and meaning at the Museum of Industry, a pmi of the Nova Scotia Museum, located in Stellarton, Nova Scotia. An ethnographic approach to studying a museum, it views the Museum of Industry as a social space wherein the perspectives of cultural producers and cultural consumers are considered. The museum space the displays, texts, and objects of the exhibits- is also considered in this approach. The Museum of Industry produces nanatives of industrial, technological, and social achievement to historically validate a post-industrial province. Pmirayals of an ascent to industrial success, and later, adaptability in the wake of industrial decline, serve as a reminder of previous economic strength and current viability, dispelling regional stereotypes and re-describing Nova Scotia as an industrial place, both worthwhile and competent. The Museum of Industry focuses on interpreting the past through identifiable human characters and interactive, engaging exhibits so that visitors encounter the past in a personalized way. Lastly, museum visitors are active rather than passive consumers ofNova Scotia's industrial heritage, making meaning through the way they put to use or relate industrial he1itage representations in their own lives. The study contributes to an understanding of how the industrial past is represented, and what the public consumes, within the Nova Scotia heritage world. v Figures 1. The Mu eum of Industry, Stellarton, Nova Scotia 7 2. Christine greets visitors at the reception desk 8 3. Lunch time 9 4. A view of the museum on a dreary November day 17 5. Michael Mill is the first person visitors see 19 6. The Museum of Industry exhibit floor plan 20 7. This way to the exhibits 21 8. The pioneer or pre-industrial gallery 23 9. Steel ingots on display in the iron and steel exhibit cluster 24 10. A view from the mezzanine 25 11. A miner"s lunch can and water jug 27 12. Debra McNabb, MOl Director, has a chat with Mae 29 13. 'Punch In ... Feel History' 53 14. The pioneer or pre-industrial gallery contextualizes indu trialization 56 15. The Samson 59 16. Made in No a Scotia' 61 17. Gleaming Trenton glassware 61 18. Looking ahead in the lower gallery 63 19. Paul polishes the Volvo B-18 68 20. Mary Guildford, Curator of Collections, stands beside the Albion 80 21. A recent newspaper advertisement for the MOl 98 VI 22. Weekly volunteers demonstrate dome tic crafts in the pioneer gallery 102 23. This craft area places value in women' s unpaid domestic work 105 24. An MOl postcard of Mae's kitchen 107 25. The housewife's labour 110 26. ' Living Better with Electricity' 113 27. "If my hu band could only see me now!" 117 28. An MOl postcard shows women assuming new roles outside of the home 119 29. Antiquated hair styling equipment 120 30. Museum of Indu try promotional rack card 123 31. " ow you men get back to work"' 127 32. The McKay car's luxury features 128 33 . Scott assists visitors with the boxed chocolates assembly line game 129 34. Pumping water into the grishnill interactive 130 35. The textile mill exhibit cluster 131 36. The 'wild animals' car during March Break activities 133 37. "l think I can, I think I can'· 137 38. A mother points out the innicacie of the loom to her young child 138 39. A box ofMoir' s chocolates 155 40. The Shopmobile·s interior 159 Chapter 1 Punching the Museum Time Clock Introduction The TransCanada Highway runs through the middle of Pictou County, pushing eastward the foreign and rental car license plates of summer tomists destined for Cape Breton Island. Some of these tourists will pull aside at the visitor information centre at the Irving gas station, stretch their legs and consult their Doers and Dreamer travel guide to consider what they may see or do in this small region of central Nova Scotia. Some will stay only briefly, waiting in a long line of cars to board the ferry to Prince Edward Island. Others will note in their guidebooks the picturesque image of the shiretown, Pictou, and look there to find the essence of Scottish heritage in the emigrant ship Hector, a floating monument to the Highland Diaspora and the first Scots settlers who landed in the province aboard her in 1773. Still others will drive along the Northumberland shoreline to sea bathe in the wannest waters north of the Carolinas. Compelled by one or another of the many reasons people visit museums, some of these tourists will wind down the long ramp of exit twenty-four towards the small town of Stellarton and the Museum oflndustry. They may be surprised to see such a very large and modern building devoted to a provincial industrial story when they have encountered so little evidence or mention ofindusbial activity, past or present, in their tJ·avels. Driving through Pictou County, they will view from the highway the large dark mounds of earth excavated from the single open pit coal mine and if the wind is blowing in a particular direction, smell the toxic stench of the struggling pulp and paper mill, but they will not realize that at the turn of the nineteenth century, Pictou County was the heart of an industrial Nova Scotia. Instead, the ova Scotia most tourists 2 encounter, and in which local residents live and work, is a province where leisure, tourism, and what Bella Dicks terms a "backward-looking heritage" (2000b, 9) has, in part, replaced resource exploitation and manufacturing in a new post-indushial service economy. Highly selective cultural images, historical naiTatives, and physical geographies are given new meaning as a palatable and marketable product. The unsavoury grime of the industJ·ial past is excluded from this cultural commodity so that Nova Scotia is primed for tourist consumption. Since the 1920s, the landscape of Nova Sco6a has rapidly de-industrialized and new service- based industries have emerged as the province struggles with economic stagnation and outmigration; 1 both the tangible and intangible presence of an industrial past and identity has greatly diminished in the province. Tourism has welcomed the local landscape reclaiming its more pleasing pre-industrial appearance. As puffs of smoke ceased, rivers receded, and the earth settled and re-greened when heavy industry and manufactming left the province, post-industrial Nova Scotia is now, largely a camera-ready panorama of farmland, forest, scenic coastline, and heritage attractions, dotted with one major urban centre, Halifax. As industry ceased, buildings were demolished or rehabilitated and re-developed in the ''new retailing and service landscapes that have replaced industry" (Summerby-Murray 2002, 49). Some industrial towns and former industrial sites have found new meaning as heritage representations of their past selves (Binkley 2000). The town of Glace Bay, Cape Breton for instance, has re-imagined it fonner mining identity in heritage enterprise. The Cape Breton Miner's Museum, a coal mining interpretative centre with an underground mine tour lead by a retired miner, capitalizes on Glace Bay's former purpose as a mining center, memorializing the industrial past, but also transfom1ing the town as a 1 According to the Nova Scotia Office of Immigration, the job sector that is service based accounted for 75.2% of all jobs in Nova Scotia versus 24.8% in the goods producing ector.

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