A few minutes earlier at a packed press conference, the Friends of the Canadian Museum for Human Rights Inc. announced the official launch of the worldwide architectural competition to design the museum.
Moe Levy, executive director of the Asper Foundation and Master of Ceremonies for the morning, noted that Israel Asper was scheduled to make the announcement himself on October 7 at a meeting of the Assembly of First Nations in Vancouver. That was the morning he died of a heart attack.
"We are devastated by his passing," Levy said.
The press conference began with a clip of an interview Asper did for CBC on July 29. In that interview, he envisioned the Queen, Nelson Mandela and the descendants of Martin Luther King and Gandhi coming to Winnipeg in 2007 or 2008 for the official opening of the museum.
"There is a tendency among Canadians to aim for the middle,"Asper told the interviewer. "We should be reaching for the stars."
He envisioned the museum as an international icon the equivalent of Big Ben in London and the Eiffel Tower in Paris. Mayor Glen Murray noted that it was great privilege for him to have known Israel Asper and heard him expressing his passion for his community and country. Murray spoke of the importance of human rights in holding Canada together. He recalled some of the stains of the past, such as the residential schools for aboriginal children, the university quotas for Jewish and other Eastern European students and the Chinese Exclusion Act.
"We are travelling on a Canadian journey of social rights and inclusiveness," the mayor said. "This museum will serve to inspire the imagination. It is our duty to take up the torch from Israel Asper and make his passion and his dream our own."
Following comments from representatives of the provincial and federal governments - Levy noted that Ottawa has pledged $30 million to the project - Gail Asper (Israel Asper's daughter), managing director of the Asper Foundation, announced major gifts of $500,000 each from the Manitoba-based Wawanesa Insurance Company and Morley and Marjorie Blankstein to the project as well as smaller but still sizeable pledges from Sheldon Berney, Mel and Karen Lazareck and Bison Transport.
Marjorie Blankstein said that she and her husband contributed because of their desire to support "Izzy", because the museum will be a major boost to the city and because it is a positive, proactive project. "Thirteen years ago, I had the opportunity to visit Auschwitz and Buchenwald," she said. "I saw what prejudice and hatred can do."
Gail Lord, a consultant to the project, introduced the members of the international jury that will evaluate the architectural submissions. They include Gail Asper and Moe Levy, historian Michael Bliss, leading Canadian journalist Robert Fulford,
Dr. Victor Rabinovitch, president and CEO of the Canadian Museum of Civilization, architects David Covo and Dr. Raymond Moriyama, heads of the Schools of Architecture at McGill and Brock Universities respectively, Gustavo Da Roza, former head of architecture at the University of Manitoba, and Roisin Heneghan, winning architect for the Grand Egyptian Museum Competition.
Doug Gillmor, who is also acting as a consultant on the project, outlined the timeline for choosing the winning design. Architects from around the world will have until mid-December to enter their submissions. Thirty of the submissions will be selected, with that group narrowed to eight semi-finalists. The three finalists will be selected around the end of March, with the winner to be announced on July 1, 2004. The three finalists will be awarded $100,000 each.
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