If you’re looking to treat your mother right this Sunday, the Western Development Museum (WDM) is hosting an event that celebrates Canadian women and their contributions to society.
The museum’s Mother’s Day activity runs from 1 to 4 p.m. and features a craft that mothers and their children can work on together. There are also other activities on which the little ones can work, including a word search, picture colouring and designing bookmarks.
The second part of the event is a series of films that will be shown continuously throughout the day that celebrates women’s contributions over the decades, courtesy of the National Film Board, explained Karla Rasmussen, WDM education and public programs co-ordinator.
“We’ve had a wonderful relationship with them the last few years,” she said. “They allow us to screen their films for free. And the wonderful thing about it, is it’s all Canadian content.”
The first movie is Great-grandmother, which was made in 1975. This is an homage to the women who moved to the Prairies, from the early days of prairie settlement up to 1916. That was the year when Manitoba women became the first females in the country to vote. The film draws on recollections of pioneer women and entries from their diaries.
The second film is Mother of Many Children, which focuses on the central place of women and mothers within Aboriginal culture.
A third film being shown is Freaks of Nurture. Rasmussen noted that this is a humorous film that uses stop-motion animation to depict a mother-daughter relationship.
The fourth film — and Rasmussen’s favourite — is an animated biographical film called Louise. It is about an actual woman from rural Manitoba and her daily life.
“She’s coping with gophers in her garden (and) reaching cupboards that have grown taller as she’s grown older. It’s quite humorous. I think we all know a Louise somewhere in our lives,” said Rasmussen.
The final film is Grasslands Project, which looks at women in agriculture and celebrates their courage and resiliency on the land.
“It’s a tip of the hat to them in an often male-dominated place,” she added.
Aside from these activities, it’s always a good day to visit the museum, said Rasmussen. It has been a challenge to encourage women to visit the WDM, since many of the exhibits are steel and metal vehicles that make up the museum’s transportation theme.
The museum has used different approaches in the past to attract women, such as showing films about females who built airplanes in factories during the Second World War. Rasmussen acknowledged it is difficult sometimes to do something that reflects women in the exhibits.
“If you’ve not brought a lady in your life up to the museum, because you think it’s a men’s themed museum, kind of break out of that stereotype a little bit,” she continued.
There are many exhibits about Saskatchewan’s history, with one of the more popular exhibit featuring a timeline of the province’s history that looks at women’s contributions.
For more information about the WDM’s Mother’s Day activity, call 306-693-5989.
