The Fear Door: life as a refugee an immersive experience in new exhibit

For refugees who have been forced to flee their homes, a simple knock on the door can be frightening.

It may trigger memories of arrests, roundups, kidnappings and killings back in their home countries.

The Fear Door is the first display that visitors encounter in the Refuge Canada travelling exhibit now showing at Moncton's Resurgo Place. It's a green, wooden door with violent gouge marks.

"We want to put people in the footsteps of what it might feel like to all of a sudden have your home pulled out from beneath you, by one circumstance or another," said Marie Chapman, CEO of the Museum of Immigration at Pier 21 in Halifax, which put the exhibit together.

It was inspired by the 2015 photo of Syrian refugee Alan Kurdi who, along with his mother and brother, drowned off the coast of Turkey. His family had escaped the civil war in Syria and were hoping to eventually make it to Canada.

Museum curators were so moved by the image of the toddler's lifeless body on the beach, they decided to create an exhibit to highlight the plight of refugees and Canada's mixed record in supporting them. 

"Refugees are people like us," said Chapman. "They're moms and kids and dads and lawyers and farmers and everything." 

One of the most moving displays in the exhibit is the authentic United Nations Refugee Agency tent that visitors can crawl into.

Globally, millions of refugees are living in shelters exactly like this one, usually for years at a time.

Chapman remembers a special note sent to her from a young visitor who attended the exhibit in Kingston, Ont.

"We had a young girl who spent the first 12 years of her life in one of these tents, she said. 

"She got to show her friends where she had lived and it made her feel like 'this fancy museum tells my story, I must be worthy of that story.'"

It's the first time Resurgo Place, which is known for its fun, colourful transportation-based programming, has hosted this kind of travelling exhibit.

Sophie Auffrey, heritage development officer with the museum and transportation discovery centre, feels it's important to do so, as Moncton has recently welcomed refugees from a number of countries, including Syria, Afghanistan and Ukraine.