Ottawa museum to work with ITK, others on food-themed festival

Guests attending A Taste of the Arctic in Ottawa, April 2013, were treated to mouth-watering dishes such as candied char tartare and pepper-seared rare tataki of caribou loin. The sautéed Arctic shrimp martinis, above, were one of the more popular items. (PHOTO BY LISA GREGOIRE)

Sisters Charlotte, left, and Abigail Carleton of Ottawa wowed an audience of children and adults April 13, 2013, throat-singing in the Glass Lantern of the Canadian Museum of Nature as part of the museum’s Extraordinary Arctic festival. (PHOTO BY LISA GREGOIRE)

OTTAWA — Buoyed by the success of the April 2013 Extraordinary Arctic exhibition and hoping to maintain a northern interest until they launch a permanent Arctic exhibit in 2017, the Canadian Museum of Nature in Ottawa has announced next year’s northern exhibition theme: Edible Arctic.

The whimsical theme allows the museum to highlight both the science of the Arctic food chain as well as the cultural aspects of northern foods: hunting, sustainability, traditional preservation methods and even modern issues such as food insecurity.

“We definitely wanted themes that included cultural and scientific expertise,” said Laurel McIvor, the Edible Arctic project lead.

With so much Arctic research capacity at the museum and the potential to work with a variety of Inuit organizations in Ottawa, Edible Arctic seemed like an ideal all-inclusive topic.

The festival, which will unfold at the museum from April 2 to April 7, 2014, is a pared down version of the month-long Extraordinary Arctic festival held earlier this spring, but it will contain some of the same elements, and some new ones.

The timing is perfect. “A Taste of the Arctic,” Inuit Tapiriit Kanatami’s annual spring celebration of Inuit food, music, culture and fashion in Ottawa will be held in conjunction with Edible Arctic, as its concluding gala event.

“A Taste of the Arctic” yearly attracts a who’s who of Inuit leaders, politicians, civil servants, artists and business people but the ITK is hoping this partnership will broaden its appeal to include people who visit the museum.

People who can afford it, that is.

Tickets for the event cost $199 but in return, patrons get an extraordinary array of gourmet-prepared northern foods and deserts, complimentary beverages and a packed line-up of Inuit entertainment, including a sealskin fashion show.

The museum was hoping to host the event in 2014, but ITK had already decided to keep the same venue as 2013 — the lobby of the National Arts Centre in downtown Ottawa, which has a stage riser and rich acoustics.

The week-long Edible Arctic will feature a variety of events at the museum including evening talks, National Film Board screenings and programs for children and families.

Last year, the museum relied on expertise and consultation from ITK, Nunavut Sivuniksavut, the Ottawa Inuit Children’s Centre and others to make the experience authentic for visitors and this year will be no exception, McIvor said.

Staff are a hoping to break out of the confines of the museum galleries and set up outdoor exhibits this time around, perhaps a scientific field camp and an Inuit summer camp so visitors can get an idea of how people live, and conduct research, in the North.

“From our perspective, a lot of the details still have to be worked out,” said Dan Smythe, the museum’s senior media relations officer.

And Edible Arctic isn’t the only northern feature at the museum next year. Smythe said an art display featuring the x-rays of northern fishes will launch Jan. 11, 2014 in the Stone Wall Gallery, the museum’s basement lobby space which leads to live critters in the Animalium and a small movie theatre.

The museum owns one of the largest collections of fish specimens in the world and definitely the largest collection of Arctic fishes, Smythe said.

From time to time, researchers will take them from their fluid preservation tanks and take x-rays to examine their bones to determine, for instance, skeletal variations in species.

One recent x-ray revealed a fish inside a fish, Smythe said, that researchers didn’t know was there.

But aside from their scientific usefulness, large format x-rays of fish are also beautiful and interesting to look at, he said, because of the hundreds of tiny bones.

The Smithsonian Institution once put on an exhibit of fish x-rays, Smythe said, but to his knowledge, no Canadian museum has ever done so.

Both Edible Arctic and this display of Arctic fish x-rays feed an ever growing public desire for northern content, Smythe and McIvor said.

And that desire is increasingly sophisticated, McIvor said. The museum-going public is concerned about the impact of climate change on the northern environment and fascinated with Inuit culture.

But financial and logistical barriers will prevent most Canadians from visiting the North, she said, so they feel compelled to learn about the place from others who live and work there. Pretty displays of polar bears and seals are no longer enough, she said.

“This is what makes Canada unique: our indigenous culture,” she said. “It’s historic and it’s deep. People feel a connection to that.”

And a multi-layered interactive exhibit like the one the museum has planned, allows Canadians to be participants in a dialogue about the Canada’s northern future, and past.

“Not just seeing things,” Smythe said, “but engaging in a conversation.”