Stag Special

Have you had a chance to explore the RCA Museum’s in-house temporary exhibit In the Service of Peace: Canada’s Peacekeepers?

Unveiled last fall, senior curator Jonathan Ferguson created the exhibition with the help his curators and summer students. In the exhibit, Ferguson covered Canadian peacekeeping from the 1950s to the present, from classic peacekeeping missions in the Middle East to the Balkans.

The museum last did a peacekeeping exhibition in the late 1980s.

Museum staff traced the long history of Canadian peacekeeping which does not receive the attention it deserves. Our nation’s peacekeeping continue to be a source of pride, but it’s also complicated.

The exhibit shows the iconic blue headdress on museum mannequins, which started with the creation of the United Nations Emergency Force in 1956.

Curators covered the major peacekeeping topics by location, such as Southeast Asia, Sub-Saharan Africa, Cyprus, Balkans and Middle East.

They included an actual an actual peacekeeping checkpoint and an observation post. During many missions, it was common for soldiers to operate them.

There are three vehicle on display — white UN Iltis, an AVGP Grizzly used in the Balkans, and a white UN tracked Lynx used in Cyprus.

This exhibit includes many personal artifact from soldier who participated in peacekeeping missions. Notable artifacts include a white tropical patrol tunic worn by Capt H.F. Leggett at an official wedding in Laos in 1957. Plus Capt Ian Anderson’s combat shirt, cut off when he was wounded in Bosnia in 1994.

The exhibit also features Izzy Dolls from MCpl Mark ‘Izzy’ Isfeld, who served in Croatia from 1992 to 1994. He was killed during his tour in 1994.

This UN peacekeeping exhibition runs until May.