A touring exhibition opening in Toronto this week is inviting the public to follow along in the footsteps of a giant.

Fresh off the halls of the Canadian Museum for Human Rights in Winnipeg, the “Mandela: Struggle for Freedom” exhibit opens Thursday at the Meridian Arts Centre (formerly known as the Toronto Centre for the Arts). Organizers say it’s an opportunity for people, especially those who are too young to have known the perils of Black South Africans during apartheid, to experience the life of Nelson Mandela and the movement that formed around him.

Through various imagery, sound installations, digital media and original artifacts from South Africa, visitors will learn how Mandela’s fight for justice and human dignity made him an outlaw and forced him into hiding. They will see a replica of the eight-foot-by-seven-foot prison cell that was Mandela’s home for 18 years at Robben Island, a place that was a leper colony and animal-quarantine station outside Cape Town.

The exhibition will also feature materials reflecting the nation’s joy at Mandela’s long-awaited release from a 27-year prison sentence in 1990, as well as the first democratic elections in 1994 and Mandela’s efforts to rebuild a country that had been ravaged by injustice and racism.

Curator Karen Carter said Canada in general and the city of Toronto in particular have a special connection with Mandela and so it’s befitting for the exhibition to be held here. Mandela visited Toronto just a few months after his release from prison to thank Canadians for supporting him, and would come back two more times after that (in 1998 and in 2001). He accepted an honorary doctorate from Ryerson University. He’s one of only six people to receive the honorary Canadian citizenship. A school in Regent Park is named after him.

“The amount of people here who have their own ‘Mandela stories’ of how he has touched them personally, you get a real sense that people feel they know him,” she said. “This exhibition is an homage to Toronto and the relationship this city has with him and his legacy.”

Ahead of this exhibition, dozens of photos chronicling his visits to Toronto were on display at Brookfield Place gallery.

Share your thoughts

The Mandela exhibition also seeks to serve as a reminder of how important good leaders are to society, Carter said. The efforts of both Mandela and Archbishop Desmond Tutu in fostering truth and reconciliation in South Africa, for example, gave Canada a model for its own reconciliation process with Indigenous people, she said.

She especially hopes young people can draw inspiration from the exhibition to become agents of change from the community grassroots level to the political landscape, learning about cruel history and ensuring it doesn’t get repeat.

“At a time now where there’s so much extremism on the international political stage, Mandela reminds you how to lead with your humanity front and centre,” Carter said.

“He and his people went through horrible atrocities and he came out the other end with kindness, forgiveness and humanity. So for me this exhibition is about the best type of leadership possible and our need to be reminded of that at this particular time.”

The Mandela exhibition is on until Jan. 5. Admission is $10, and $5 for students. It was developed by the Canadian Museum for Human Rights in collaboration with the Apartheid Museum in Johannesburg, South Africa. The Star is among other partners.

Throughout the exhibition period, a series of discussions will be taking place at the centre exploring various issues such as youth activism, apartheid policies in Canada and South Africa, trans and two-spirit issues and social change, resilience and humanitarianism. These discussions are free to attend.