Across Alberta, more than 100 museums are tucked into small towns and villages, drawing visitors with gimmicks, spectacles and history.
But these quaint institutions face many challenges just to keep their doors open.
Faced with underfunding, staffing shortages, and aging populations, even the largest Alberta exhibits struggle to attract visitors and demonstrate their value.
But in North Country Cinema’s film Alberta Number One, Alberta’s museums are captivating.
The documentary spotlights how much these places still have to offer and reveal.
Where it began
When Ottawa-born director Alexander Carson first arrived at film school at Concordia University in Montreal, he wasn’t all that familiar with Alberta, but two weeks into school, Carson met Kyle Thomas and Sara Corry, both Calgarians.
That initial meeting turned into a lasting friendship. Carson spent summers in Alberta with Thomas and Corry.
They became roommates and later creative collaborators throughout their time at Concordia. By the time conversations about a production company began, Calgary was a natural fit for Carson and his friends.
“You know, Montreal, Toronto – these are very kind of competitive markets, and we found actually, it just seemed like a more interesting challenge to try and establish a production company in a bit of a smaller city,” said Carson.
Thomas, Corry and Carson began North Country Cinema in Calgary in 2005, determined to take on the challenge of Alberta.
Since then, the company produced four features and various shorts. Alberta Number One is their most recent feature and, like many of their other films, it focuses on Alberta’s landscapes, cities, and people.
But this time it’s about museums. Audiences follow a film crew as they traverse Alberta’s plains and foothills, documenting unusual exhibits.
Want to know the history of a small town settlement, told entirely through taxidermied Gophers?
What about reliving the history of Western Canada in miniature?
Or what about watching the sun set, illuminated by the world’s largest oil lamp.
Alberta Number One has all of these — and many more.
The film’s featured museums are peculiar, but to Carson, more important than their novelty is their stories and what they say about the people who created them.
What do museums mean
Alberta Number One began its life as a research project into Alberta’s diverse museums, but, as the film developed, Carson and his crew began to see the sites they were studying as microcosms of the province they lived in, and the people they lived amongst.
To Carson, Alberta’s museums represent narratives.
“There’s so much, of course, geographical diversity to the province with the foothills and the mountains and the badlands and the prairies, but then also to the types of representation,” says Carson.
“The types of stories being told by these sites really range so much in terms of their politics. Some of them have quite a strong agenda, others are more whimsical and playful.”
His film does its best to portray the diverse stories told by Alberta’s attractions, but Carson is also interested in the people who visit these sites.
Carson describes Alberta Number One as a film about the experience of going to a museum.
He documents the clash between the personal stories people tell themselves and the stories that are told about them in museums.
“It’s about the messiness of the encounter between the personal narratives, the kind of the private, insular, you know, world or experience that each of the characters is living, and then the kind of public-facing narratives that are being purported or projected by the museums and public sites,” says Carson.
Carson’s characters experience a lot of dissonance as they face the stories that are told about their province and its history. Carson says this reflects his experience living in Alberta.
“I think the film just really sort of captures the complexity of Alberta, which is a very beautiful place and has wonderful people, but it also has some challenging political positions on certain issues and some contradictions there that don’t necessarily align with your lived experience of being in the place,” says Carson.
Carson’s Alberta shines in Alberta Number One. Its beauty and its contradictions are reflected in the public institutions Carson chooses to feature, but Carson’s understanding of Alberta is not the only one.
Like the film’s characters forced to contend with Alberta’s many stories, Carson hopes audiences find themselves in a similar position while watching.
He wants audiences to bring their perspectives and backgrounds, to see themselves in the film, and find their version of Alberta in it.
Alberta Number One will be available to rent on Apple TV, Amazon Prime or Google Play on Jan. 30.