Canadian Museum of Human Rights still wallowing in petty political squabbles

In the quarter+ century since Izzy Asper first proposed a Museum of Human Rights for Winnipeg, I’ve often poo-pooed the idea. Seems kinda smug and pretentious. Relegating human rights to a museum doesn’t bode well for human rights, in my view. As I predicted, planning for the project was soon mired in endless squabbling between various interest groups over who deserved more floor space. The rancour continues to this day. While the planning team was able to mollify, at least somewhat, the Ukrainian and Jewish lobbies, they left many others disgruntled. One of the groups that felt excluded were Arab-Canadians. They were finally thrown the bone of a temporary exhibit commemorating their expulsion from their homes on the creation of Israel. This has riled up Canada’s Jewish lobby. Today, CBC informed us that Gail Asper, Izzy’s daughter and Chair of the Asper Foundation, was resigning, because the Nabka exhibit would not have been to her father’s liking, and since her family had once put in $20 millions in seed money CBC obviously figures she has a point. Here’s a few things CBC doesn’t mention. While Izzy Asper’s fortune may have provided the first 20 mil, the federal government spends more than that every year just to keep the lights on in the joint. Another thing CBC neglects to mention is that serious museums world-wide are managed by professional curatorial staff, not by the children of wealthy donors. Not that these visionary donors have been able to see their vision through. Izzy Asper was riding high in those days. He was on Forbes Billionaire List!… but not for long. Izzy’s master stroke was to pay Conrad Black $3+ billions for his portfolio of money-shredding media properties!(probably the last time in his career Conrad walked away from a deal with the satisfation that he’d totally pantsed the guys on the other side of the table). In 2002 Asper sponsored a cross-Canada speaking tour for The Greatest Leader Since Moses. He was and his children remain outspoken promoters of Netayahu’s Greater Israel project, which ultimately demands the expulsion of the remaining non-Jewish population of Palestine. Alas, Izzy’s golden age as a billionaire media mogul was short-lived. By the time Canwest’s 4.5 billion market cap was down to twenty bucks (and I’m talking market cap here, not share price) Izzy’s vanity project had long transformed into a goverment project, with somewhere in the range half a billion in taxpayer funds to date. In one of my early posts on this farce, I positted that Winnipeg, which was at the time the child povery capital of Canada, would at least now have a venue to which they could take their hungry children and show them they don’t have it too bad after all.