McCord Museum's Keys for History Web Project Receives 2nd Canadian Heritage Grant

Montreal, Monday, November 24, 2003 — The McCord Museum and its partners were pleased to learn of the recent success of their application for funding under the Canadian Content Online Program (CCOP) of the Department of Canadian Heritage. The Hon. Sheila Copps, Minister of Canadian Heritage, awarded a total of $752,541.00 for the second phase of Keys for History, a dynamic Web-based resource that allows secondary students and the general public to gain a fresh understanding of their collective past. Thanks to this generous grant, almost 32,000 documents and artifacts related to significant themes in Canadian history will be digitized, and a number of these will also be contextualized in 18 thematic Web tours. These tours will amount to miniature virtual exhibitions, in keeping with the McCord's tradition of innovative Web programming. The new content will be available online as of April 1, 2004.

Keys for History will make accessible a wealth of Canadian material culture currently held in the collections of the project's partner museums. Photographs, archival documents and historic objects will be preserved in digital form and interpreted — in a fun and dynamic fashion — in both official languages. Students and the general public will be familiarized with many fascinating events in Canadian history from the beginning of the 20th century to today, from conscription in 1917 and the Great Depression of the 1930s, to the construction of Vancouver's Lion's Gate Bridge. Additional themes include pastimes and philanthropic activities in cities, education in Acadia and Montreal's growth as an urban center.

The McCord Museum is spearheading the second phase of the Keys for History project with the contribution of several public and private partners, including the New Brunswick Museum, the Centre d'études acadiennes de l'Université de Moncton, the North Vancouver Museum and Archives, the Guelph Civic Museum, Sygraf Inc., SonoDesign, and McGill University, as well as teachers' organizations and school boards throughout Quebec, Ontario, New Brunswick and British Columbia. Keys for History is accessible at: www.mccord-museum.qc.ca/keys.

Keys for History will be carried out in conjunction with ClioClic, a project initiated by the McCord and several partner universities in 1999 with the support of the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada. Drawing upon current secondary school curricula, ClioClic is a pedagogical tool for using online museum-based resources, designed to encourage the use of material culture in the teaching of Canadian history. ClioClic can be viewed on the McCord Museum Web site at: www.mccord-museum.qc.ca/clioclic.

Photographs available upon request.

 

Source and information:      
Nike Langevin, (514) 398-7100, ext. 251

 

We acknowledge the financial support of the Department of Canadian Heritage through the Canadian Culture Online Program