Where did the wonder and world-building go?

In mid-conversation with my father about the history of the area around the Granite Curling Club, his eyes narrow as his thoughts turn inward: “I went there once, you know, the old amphitheatre. I couldn’t have been more than five years old.”

I can see him searching behind his eyes to piece the memory together. “We were there to see a figure skater, Barbara Ann Scott. I can’t think why — we were never a family to go out to entertainment — life just wasn’t like that then. It was a really special thing to be able to do.”

I’m suddenly transported to the Ice Capades at the old Winnipeg Arena, the light-up wand topped with a tuft of acrylic strands in my little hand, my blue-and-white Icelandic sweater hand-knit by my aunt, flashing and glowing under the black lights.

There are places from our childhood that seem like magical, impossible dreamscapes, long gone and personal to each one of us.

The linen closet I used to crawl into to sleep, the elm tree in the yard where I would sit high up in the branches eating Oreos, fuzzy landscapes of birthday parties at McDonald’s or the eerie-excited feeling aboard the Nonsuch.

Where was it that we all climbed into wheelchairs and zoomed around to learn what it was like? Where was it that was full of telephones in every room, through which was a new friend every time we listened? Was there a little grain elevator somewhere? Did I imagine it?

If you are of a similar vintage, you may remember these features of the original Manitoba Children’s Museum on Pacific Avenue. I was one of the first-generation kids to explore that space, as it opened in June of my kindergarten year in 1986.

By the time the “new” museum opened in 1994 at The Forks, I’d moved on from being a guest at the museum to a babysitter for a family who would regularly bring their three children there for me to watch while they took a break.

Those are the days of the crawl-through-and-slide-down Oak Tree and Beaver Lodge. The antique train that runs through the building was kitted out to be a kid-friendly version of period-accurate rail travel.

The children I looked after would fancy themselves in dozens of different scenes on that train: teenage runaways, pioneer children headed to their first homestead, royalty waving to adoring crowds.

The playscape allowed them endless possibilities for play and exploration. There were train tickets to stamp and plastic food to be served. They’d eat the same piece of pie 10 times and then compare belly sizes. Cosy in the Beaver Lodge, they’d be mother and baby, or little beavers learning to swim.

These are the magical memories in the minds of some of the parents who now bring their own children to a once-again updated museum — if a 15-year-old renovation can be considered “updated.”

I haven’t seen my own kids — all born after 2011 — engage with joy at the children’s museum the way I was used to in the other phases of life, and I believe it’s because the renovation seemed to disregard the fact children need wonder, curiosity, imagination and possibility in which to learn and grow.

The open space of the current museum leaves little to discover as it’s already clearly on display. The train has been stripped and replaced with bright plastic seats and reading materials. Gone are the tickets, the food, the mysterious ambience.

The multi-level play structure, perhaps new to Winnipeg in 2011, is now found (in more deluxe versions and better repair) in any number of indoor playgrounds.

There is nowhere for a child to enter into a world of their own making, and by doing so, explore the world that awaits them as they grow. Instead, there are a series of prescriptive displays that invite initial curiosity, but are soon “completed,” without ways to re-invent and re-imagine.

Last week the museum’s executive director told the Free Press of the not-so-rosy financial situation the facility was in.

While this is disappointing, and perhaps a bit alarming, it isn’t surprising. The museum hasn’t kept up with the changing array of attractions for children in Winnipeg, nor embraced the true ways children play and learn. It is well overdue for an upgrade that honours our province and its children.

The museum is now curated by the generation who first picked up the phones and discovered one another, who stamped train tickets and went on a thousand different journeys.

Surely we can re-imagine the space in all the ways it could be for the next generation of curious, imaginative, brilliant minds.

winnipegfreepress.com/rebeccachambers