Parks Canada: National Parks and National Historic Sites

A newly added interactive exhibit is giving visitors some high-tech tools to investigate the historical context of Lower Fort Garry.

Photo: Parks Canada/Parcs Canada

Lower Fort Garry: Hands-on heritage
Visitors are expected to touch the exhibits at Manitoba’s Lower Fort Garry
By Nelle Oosterom

Click map to enlarge

While the fort may not be a crime scene (though it was once a prison), a newly added interactive exhibit is giving visitors some high-tech tools to investigate the historical context of this sprawling site on the banks of the Red River north of Winnipeg.

Among other elements, the exhibit features two large tabletop screens, known as multi-touch tables, which two or more people can use at the same time. Grainy black-and-white portraits of Hudson’s Bay Company officers whirl into view at dizzying speed, along with maps of fur-trade routes and handwritten company dispatches. The exhibits expand, contract and spin off the screen with the light touch of a finger — the sensitive screen takes a little getting used to.

“The idea here,” says Paul Legris, a senior interpretive planner with Parks Canada who designed the exhibit, “is that we wanted to provide a set up for the visitor before they go onto the site.”

Built in 1830, Lower Fort Garry functioned as a trading post, depot and living quarters for Hudson’s Bay Company employees, as well as a base of operations for British troops during the Oregon boundary dispute of the 1840s. The first treaty in Western Canada (in which Ojibway [Saulteaux] and Swampy Cree First Nations transferred lands that now comprise part of modern Manitoba) was signed here in 1871, and it was briefly but famously occupied by rebel Métis leader Louis Riel. The North West Mounted Police used it as a training centre. It also served as an asylum and, later, as a golf course and playground for the Manitoba Motor Country Club, before the federal government took it over in 1951 and opened it as a historic site in 1963.

Open year-round, the new interactive display is housed in the fort’s visitor reception centre, which includes a main hallway and a gallery that show off some of the thousands of artifacts found on Fort Garry’s grounds. Behind glass, you’ll see muskets, chamber pots and even a small wooden bust of Riel. But unlike typical museum exhibits, these items speak for themselves — they are not accompanied by distracting text. “You tend to lose people’s attention when there is too much writing next to the artifact,” says Legris.

Touch other parts of the screen and short bilingual videos bring daily life of the fort’s past into focus — a burly blacksmith swelters at his forge, a maid leans against a doorway watching a rainstorm.

The displays are arranged along a wide entranceway that leads to the reception desk and opens into a large room devoted to transportation. The latter features a stunning, larger-than-life metal sculpture of men labouring to pull a York boat over a portage. Created by artist Sharon Johnson and based on a photograph taken in the 1870s, the men seem about to burst out of their back-breaking scene and tumble into the visitors’ area.

“People love it,” says Ken Green, the site’s visitor experience manager. “When people see it, they do something very un- Canadian and reach out and touch it. It’s very tactile.”

The large sculptural installations, along with the high-tech interactive displays, are new for Parks Canada. What has been done at Lower Fort Garry will eventually show up at other national historic sites in Canada, says Legris.

Nelle Oosterom is the associate editor of Canada’s History magazine (formerly The Beaver), which is based in Winnipeg.

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