Spotlight on Museum Volunteers
It is National Volunteer Week, and the Museum would like to take this opportunity to thank the hundreds of volunteers who donate their time, helping the Museum to provide its visitors with a better understanding of our collective heritage.
The Museum’s Volunteer Interpreter Program (VIP) provides volunteers with the opportunity to deliver live interpretation of selected special exhibitions to Museum visitors. VIP volunteers engage visitors through a variety of hands-on activities that highlight exhibition themes or artifacts. Since 2003, the Canadian Museum of History has offered 24 VIPs, which have enriched the exhibition experience of hundreds of thousands of Museum visitors.
Photo of one of our Volunteer Interpreters in action in the Vodou exhibition. Canadian Museum of History, photo Frank Wimart, IMG2012-0385-0010
Cathy Dimitriou is one such VIP volunteer who gives her time to support programs at the Museum. Cathy first started working with the Museum in 1992 as a member of the Hellenic Community of Ottawa’s Cultural Committee. In this capacity, she organized a number of events at the Museum and became acquainted with other volunteers, who helped her to organize an exhibition on ceramic art in Greece for the 1999 Greekfest.
A few short years later, Cathy decided to become a Museum volunteer herself. “I was attracted to the idea of volunteering at the Museum for the pleasure of learning,” Cathy said. When the Museum presented the exhibition on Greek culture in 2008, she volunteered to engage with visitors through the Museum’s Volunteer Interpreter Program.
Since 2008, Cathy has worked on several of the Museum’s exhibitions, including Tombs of Eternity: The Afterlife in Ancient Egypt, Afghanistan: Hidden Treasures, JAPAN: Tradition. Innovation., The Horse, Vodou and Canada’s Titanic – The Empress of Ireland. Although that first exhibition on Greek culture remains her favourite, she also enjoyed working on Afghanistan: Hidden Treasures, where she had the opportunity to meet the Ambassador of Afghanistan to Canada.
Photo of Cathy Dimitriou, one of the Museum’s volunteers.
She is now looking forward to the Museum’s upcoming exhibition The Greeks – Agamemnon to Alexander the Great. “I am anticipating a huge success and a great time. Our community members, particularly the Cultural Committee of the Hellenic Community of Ottawa, are very eager to help in any way that we can to make this exhibition a memorable one.”
Thank you to Cathy and to the hundreds of volunteers who donate their time to engage Museum visitors and foster conversations about our shared history. Keep an eye out for volunteers in our upcoming exhibition The Greeks – Agamemnon to Alexander the Great, on display from June 5 to October 12, 2015 at the Canadian Museum of History.