Topics: Human rights violations
Exhibitions
Dimensions in Testimony
Saturdays at 1:15 p.m. (English) and 2:15 p.m. (French). Times are subject to change.
Interact with two Holocaust survivors using innovative technology that allows you to ask questions and get real‐time responses. Now and into the future, museum visitors, including students, will be able to converse with these eyewitnesses to history.
Reclaiming Power and Place
May 3, 2025 - April 5, 2030
Discover how two local Indigenous artists/matriarchs respond to the need for justice by creating awareness through art and action.
Love in a Dangerous Time: Canada’s LGBT Purge
January 31, 2025 to early 2026
From the 1950s to the 1990s, the Government of Canada systematically investigated, harassed and fired 2SLGBTQI+ members of the Canadian Armed Forces, the RCMP and the federal public service destroying careers, ruining lives and inflicting psychological damage on the community.
Climate Justice
June 2022 to June 2025
This new exhibit explores the connections between human rights and climate change.
Stories
We are Roma
By Gina Csanyi-Robah with Shayna Plaut, Ph. D.
Most Canadians know the Romani people as “Gypsies,” mythical wanderers of the earth, travelling free spirits who shun both work and education. But for millions of Roma around the globe, discrimination, exclusion and persecution of their communities and culture has been anything but a myth. This is also true in Canada, where Roma struggle for recognition, inclusion and human rights. This is our story of activism against injustice, racism and discrimination.
Information Disorder in Times of Conflict
By Saranaz Barforoush, Ph. D. and Shayna Plaut, Ph. D.
The distortion of facts doesn’t just blur the truth — it shapes how the world sees a conflict, downplaying real suffering and making it easier to see others as “the enemy.” Disinformation is a direct threat to human rights. We see examples of this weapon of war taking a toll in conflicts today.
Persecution of queer Canadian soldiers in wartime
By Sarah Worthman
Modern anti‐2SLGBTQI+ hate echoes the myths and prejudices of the past, threatening to erase queer soldiers’ stories again.
“My future children will never get to experience the home I knew”
By Damhat Zagros
A first person’s reflection on being forced from home and wrestling with what that means for him and for future generations. The article provides evocative narrative as well as background on international law as it relates to refugees and internally displacement peoples and the intergenerational effects of trauma and displacement.
Gender‐based violence across Canada
By Julie S. Lalonde
Violence limits and threatens the lives of women in Canada every day. The legal system and communities can do more to support and defend targets of male violence.
Justice after genocide: Rwandan Canadian community activism
By Jeremy Maron
Explore how members of the Rwandan Canadian community mobilized to pursue justice, within Canada, for the 1994 genocide against the Tutsi in Rwanda.
Canada, antisemitism and the Holocaust
By Jeremy Maron
Widespread antisemitism in Canada in the 1930s and 1940s kept the nation’s borders closed to Jews trying to escape the Holocaust.
Covering the Holodomor: Memory Eternal
By Jeremy Maron
Explore the role of journalists and the media in hiding and revealing the story of the genocidal famine in Ukraine engineered by Josef Stalin.
Remembering the Srebrenica Genocide
By Jeremy Maron
Kerim Bajramovic and Aida Šehović are both Bosniaks touched by the Srebrenica Genocide in different ways. Their perspectives offer distinct personal lenses through which we can learn about Srebrenica and its legacy.
Us vs. Them: The process of othering
By Clint Curle
Explore the relationship between othering, human rights violations and the process of genocide through the lenses of the Holocaust and the Rohingya genocide.
What led to the genocide against the Tutsi in Rwanda?
By Jeremy Maron
Learn how division, dehumanization and incitement of hatred set the stage for genocide.
Canada’s Indian residential schools: Childhood denied
A story about Indian residential schools and their legacy
The story of Black slavery in Canadian history
By Steve McCullough and Matthew McRae
Canada celebrates being a destination for Americans who escaped slavery via the Underground Railroad. But slavery was also part of Canada’s history for more than 200 years.
Armin Wegner: Witness to the Armenian Genocide
What does it mean to stand up for human rights? Read the story of a medic who risked his own safety to document the evidence of atrocity.
“A cauldron of hell”: The story of Canada’s Hong Kong veterans
By Matthew McRae
On December 8, 1941, the Japanese army launched an attack on the then‐British colony of Hong Kong, located in Southern China.
A Yiddish poem from the Holocaust
A single poem reminds us that even in the midst of atrocity, human dignity persists.
Resource guides
Rohingya
We invite you to explore this guide as a starting point in learning more about the Rohingya people.
Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women, Girls and 2SLGBTQI+ People
In this guide, you will find links to resources related to the epidemic of missing and murdered Indigenous women, girls and 2SLGBTQI+ people in Canada and the United States.
Talking to Kids about the Israeli‐Palestinian Conflict
In this guide you will find links to resources that can help when talking with children and youth about the current and ongoing Israeli‐Palestinian conflict.
Canada’s residential schools
In this guide, you will find links to resources related to the residential school system and the stories of children who were taken from their families and sent to residential schools.
