‘This is who we are’: B.C. senior constructs mini museum to showcase Canadian design

Adam finds out why a B.C. senior has built a mini-museum along his suburban fence.

SAANICH, B.C. — Allan Collier is assembling a wooden chair that was designed and constructed in Canada, after falling in love with woodworking when he was a boy.

“I admired my cousin who had a workshop right next to his bedroom,” Allan recalls as he turns a screw into the chair’s bent wooden frame.

While it was no surprise Allan grew up to be a woodwork teacher— “you don’t have to sit down; you’re active with your hands,” he says — it was astonishing the day he happened upon four chairs by a famous designer at a local thrift store.

“It was fantastic. I thought, this is interesting,” he says.

It inspired Allan to start searching for all sorts of notable furniture, amass a collection of almost 200 historical items, and earn attention from folks who run galleries and museums across the country.

“It’s not until you have a bunch of this stuff that suddenly something clicks,” Allan says. “These connections come together.”

Although Allan could easily see items from his collection by flipping through the pages of catalogues from all the furniture exhibits, he’s been asked to curate what regular folks couldn’t.

“I just thought I’d make a connection with local people,” Allan says, before walking over to the unique fence that frames his back yard.

Along the structure that faces his suburban Saanich street near the corner of Cumberland and Palmer roads, Allan decided to build a large display case that’s turned into a mini museum.

“I don’t have to get a grant. I don’t have to approach a (traditional) museum,” Allan explains. “I can just do it.”

Now, every morning Allan cleans the condensation from the plexiglass front of the structure and displays items from his collection that are connected in interesting ways, which he explains with informative art gallery-style signage.

The current exhibit features a trio of chairs: two from Europe and one from Canada.

“I’m very happy to just have a few people walk by and learn something about design,” Allan says. “And hopefully it sticks.”

And hopefully, seeing as the five exhibits Allan has staged in the past couple months have included at least one piece that’s been designed and constructed in Canada, it reminds us of our potential.

“There are quite a few (local) designs that meet the standard of international design,” Allan says. “This is who we are. We had an industry like this in Canada, and I don’t know how many people know that.”

And if our local designers and manufacturers can take a seat on the international stage again, along with being celebrated in custom-made mini museums in a suburb, they can be incorporated in homes around the globe.

“I think it’s more relevant now than ever,” Allan says. “To promote the idea of Canadian design.”