The Royal BC Museum is located on the traditional lands of the ləkʷəŋən peoples, known today as the Songhees and Xʷsepsəm (Esquimalt) Nations. We acknowledge and respect the history of Indigenous peoples, who are our partners in museum matters and community alike.
contributors
ON THE COVER:
Sonic wall detail from Beyond the Beat: Music of Resistance and Change, an original exhibition from the Canadian Museum for Human Rights, at the Royal BC Museum from May 30, 2025, to January 5, 2026.
10
1
CEO Welcome Message
3 feature Global Threads: How Indian Cotton Transformed the World Dive into the fascinating history of India’s printed and painted cottons that have dressed the world for millennia.
5 natural history
The Story of Spirit Bear Conservation and Conversation in British Columbia
7
natural history
Three Days at Cloud City: An Exciting Dinosaur Discovery on the Spatsizi Plateau
9 feature Up Close and Personal: Imaging the Miniature and Microscopic How do you photograph a tiny insect with all its incredible detail? Join our invertebrate zoologist and learn about macro photography.
11 exhibits A Deep Dive into Marine Conservation with Shane Gross
12
museum spotlight An Oasis of Arts and Community: The Nk’Mip Desert Cultural Centre
15
3
13
natural history
Coastal Species Found Living and Reproducing in the Great Pacific Garbage Patch
15 feature
Beyond the Beat: The Voices that Unite, Inspire, and Fuel Social Change
Take a closer look at the titular exhibition, a tribute to groundbreaking and history-making moments when music made a difference.
21 natural history
Newt a Problem: They’re Small, They’re Spotted, They’re Super-Spreaders
23 bc archives From the Archives
27
learning and engagement What Are You Doing After Hours?
28 publishing What Was Said to Me
33 events calendar What’s On
Welcome
Tracey Drake c Eo
Dear friends,
As we journey through 2025, I find myself reflecting on the tremendous progress that the Royal BC Museum has made and the incredible opportunities that lie ahead. Building on this foundation, we’ve made significant updates to our core galleries, opened new exhibitions, and brought in films and events that will offer fresh perspectives and meaningful experiences for everyone who visits the museum. As a provincial museum, we evolve through research and learning, two important ways to engage with the culture and environment in which we live. As we move forward, we do so with an unwavering commitment to fostering an environment that inspires creativity, critical thinking, and a deeper understanding of the world around us.
This year will see the continued development of PARC Campus, the new home for the provincial archives, research, and collections. As an institution, our important mandate includes researching, conserving and chronicling the history, heritage and evolution of life in British Columbia. Whether that is learning more about
the prehistoric creatures who roamed these lands, discovering and describing new species, understanding more about how people lived at different moments in time through cultural artifacts, documentation and more—all of this is work that visitors to PARC Campus will be able to get to see in action when it opens.
Museums are—and should be— educational institutions. Learning and engagement play a vital role in fulfilling this responsibility. Our Learning team does everything from holding interactive exhibition tours to hosting a monthly lecture series on a variety of topics, which include intellectual and scientific contributions from our curators and researchers. We observe, collect, research, then write and think critically about the world around us in many ways. However, it is just as important to consider how we do these things as it is to do them.
We acknowledge that reconciliation must be at the core of all that we do, along with respecting the Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples Act (DRIPA) and acting on the Truth and Reconciliation Calls to Action.
Our repatriation and reconciliation efforts are essential priorities for us as we continue to promote inclusivity and understanding across all aspects of our work. As part of this work, we recently appointed an Indigenous Relations team to guide us in our journey of upholding these commitments and prioritizing relationships with local nations, the First Peoples’ Gallery
Official opening of the Hayashi Photography Studio with the Matsubuchi family and MLA Nina Krieger.
Museums are— and should be—educational institutions.
Committee, Indigenous Advisory and Advocacy Committee, and Indigenous communities throughout the province. We continue to work to build trust-based relationships, delivering on our word and learning and growing along the way.
In recent months, we have made significant additions to the core galleries. One exciting addition is the Hayashi Photography Studio, a new display in Old Town on the museum’s 3rd floor. This new display takes you back in time to an early 20th-century Japanese Canadian photography studio in Cumberland, inspired by a photo from 1917. It’s a powerful look at the history and heritage of the Japanese Canadian community—what they have accomplished and endured. Like other parts of Old Town, the Hayashi Photography Studio is intended to evolve over time as we learn more. Learning more should mean doing more—and that has been at the core of our work as we continue to reimagine our provincial museum. I am proud to witness the commitment our team has towards this goal. Dedicated collaborative work across various teams within the museum led to the reopening of the replica of the HMS Discovery, waterwheel and cannery display in late 2024, and a new addition to Becoming
BC—Forgotten Landscapes—which includes long-lost landscape paintings.
Our hope is to inspire and invite visitors to think deeply about the world’s history and our place in it. Whether questioning historical narratives, contemplating new discoveries or interpreting collections, we continue to work diligently in partnership with communities and other cultural organizations to create a space that invites reflection, discussion and meaningful dialogue.
I believe our exhibition lineup for 2025 reflects this commitment. We recently welcomed the exhibition Global Threads: The Art and Fashion of Indian Chintz from the Royal Ontario Museum, a significant showcase of the material history of painted and printed Indian cottons, spanning many centuries and continents. Another important exhibit that challenges dominant historical narratives is Odysseys and Migration
from the Chinese Canadian Museum, recounting migrant journeys that shaped Chinese Canadian identities and culture since the 18th century. Lastly, we look forward to welcoming Beyond the Beat: Music of Resistance and Change from the Canadian Museum for Human Rights in May, featuring exciting artifacts from legendary artists and displays that tell the history of social and political change sparked by music. As we look toward the future, we are excited to continue our journey of discovery, learning and connection. The Royal BC Museum is more than just a place to visit—it is a space to reflect and be inspired, and I, for one, am continually inspired by what we as a community can accomplish.
Thank you for your continued support.
Kind regards,
Tracey Drake Chief Executive Officer
Filming an episode of The Upside with Jeff King (CHEK News).
Global Threads
How Indian Cotton Transformed the World
Clothing has been and remains one of the touchstones of culture, tradition and aesthetics, often acting as a marker of national identity. Today, with growing global fashion practices, this marker appears to blur and slowly disappear in most parts of the world, big cities and small communities alike. But how might we trace today’s textile production and consumption practices to its origins?
The Royal BC Museum’s current feature exhibition, Global Threads: The Art and Fashion of Indian Chintz, on loan from the Royal Ontario Museum (ROM), attempts to answer this question with its comprehensive look at the history, art and vibrant beauty of Indian cotton cloths that have dressed India and the world since ancient times. The desire for material beauty, however, was a double-edged sword.
Cotton acted as an instigator of global movement, connecting the world in positive and unprecedented ways but simultaneously intensified the slave trade and European monopolization of cotton textile production.
While “chintzy” has become a derogatory term for something gaudy or cheap-looking, its origins are far from it: wearing Indian chintz was a fashion statement for millennia, its production highly involved and artful. The process of painting and printing on cotton resembled—and resembles today— the creation of an artwork with its complicated patterns and bright colours.
The exhibition features an impressive 80 intricate and multicoloured cotton objects spanning 10 centuries and 4 continents, from 13th century archaeological fragments to contemporary works from today’s most prolific clothmakers.
The desire for Indian cotton textiles changed the fashion industry, ultimately transforming the entire supply and demand mechanism on which the world operates.
“Cotton has been a great global connector or mover, for good and for bad, one might say,” says Sarah Fee, Senior Curator of Global Fashion & Textiles at the ROM. “For thousands of years, it was South Asia who mastered and controlled the art and science of creating beautiful, colourful cotton cloth. Indian cottons clothed people all across Afro-Eurasia and the Indian Ocean for thousands of years, and then after 1500 in the Americas, too.”
Today’s fast fashion practices and surplus production of standardized clothing is undoubtedly widespread, but one can trace its beginnings to
Europe’s demand and subsequent imitation of Indian chintz. This demand shaped the world: Europe sold Indian cottons from South Asia in West Africa in exchange for slaves, took these slaves to the Americas to force them to labour in plantations and fields for various goods that would allow them to purchase more textiles from India. The eventual monopolization of the textile industry by Europe, combined with the need for new, faster technologies, then sparked the Industrial Revolution.
“Europe’s attempts to imitate Indian cloth from 1750 led to many of the environmental and human troubles we are still reckoning with today,” says Fee. “British industrial textile factories relied on American-grown southern cotton, which led to clearing forests and displacing Indigenous groups and multiplying Black enslavement.”
Eventually, Britain became the biggest manufacturer of cotton in Europe as their control over trade routes and major Indian cities increased, mechanizing the process of textile production in attempts to meet increasing demand. However, this attempted monopoly did not destroy chintz culture in India. To this day, artisans and artists in India continue to create beautiful cotton designs and paintings using colors derived from native plants, as opposed to Europe’s artificially synthesized
Ipek Omercikli E d ITor
the desire for indian cotton textiles changed the fashion industry.
colours that were developed by chemists to imitate the originals. In this way and others, Indian cottons gave way to scientific breakthroughs alongside artistic and economic ones.
The ramifications of overproduction are felt more deeply today with the fast fashion industry directly feeding into a myriad of other practices that are detrimental to the environment, combined with exploitative labour. “[…] we are still facing cotton’s legacies: manufacturing colourful cottons has moved back to Asia, but now made in megafactories, with ongoing environmental and human costs,” says Fee, among which are “pollution, toxic dyes, monoculture cotton, water depletion, underpaid labour and dangerous working conditions. We as consumers today are still movers, part and parcel, of these global circuits and consequences.”
It is a good reminder to think about what we consume comes from, as well as from where and made by whom, under what conditions. Alongside the fraught history, though, is creative artisanship and vibrant cloths that are born from it.
See India’s painted and printed cottons and learn the history behind them at the exhibition Global Threads: The Art and Fashion of Indian Chintz at the Royal BC Museum until September 28, 2025, on loan from the ROM.
lFrench-born designer Brigitte Singh went to Rajasthan, India in the early 1980s to study miniature painting, but fell in love with its printed cottons. Courtesy of Brigitte Singh.
Global Threads is produced and circulated by ROM (Royal Ontario Museum), Toronto, Canada.
The Story of Spirit Bear Conservation and Conversation in British Columbia
black bears , white bears , spirit bears , what do you see ?
Black bears (Ursus americanus) are widespread mammals that eat nearly anything from vegetation to insects to berries to fish. They are four-legged conservationists who help maintain balance in ecosystems across the province. Despite their name, not all black bears are actually black. Did you know that some black bears are white? These rare white bears, called spirit bears or Kermode bears (Ursus americanus kermodei), live along BC’s central and northwest coasts. Though most spirit bears are black, about one in ten have a creamy white coat thanks to a recessive mutation in a melanin-related gene.
Spirit bears have long shared territories with Indigenous peoples. Today, they live primarily in the Great Bear Rainforest, a protected area established by a partnership between the Coastal First Nations Great Bear Initiative, the Na̲nwak̲olas Council and the Government of British Columbia.
a family of white bears in forgotten landscapes
This family of white spirit bears was mounted as taxidermy for an exhibit in one of the provincial museum’s earliest galleries, located where the Provincial Legislature stands today. After more than 100 years, the bears were in dire need of proper care and conservation so that they could be displayed in their original case once again. Can you spot the differences between these two photographs taken over a century apart?
eye spy the differences
The most obvious absence is our large bear. Unfortunately, he had to be left out due to his poor condition. After over a century of outdated storage, the large bear’s internal iron frame had corroded, causing the plaster mount to crumble. We decided that displaying him would be too risky as he could sustain even more irreversible damage. Fortunately, the other four bears were in relatively good condition. However, the
Print of the white spirit bear family in their original display case. BC Archives F-07368
The white spirit bear family on display in the Forgotten Landscapes display at the Royal BC Museum in Fall 2024.
Sally G. Kim obj Ec TS co NSE rvATor
Chinn
SPIRIT
BEARS ARE PIVOTAL COMMUNITY MEMBERS IN THE TEMPERATE RAINFORESTS OF COASTAL BC.
medium bear’s paws were torn and required repairs. This is when the conservator—not conservationist—stepped in.
conservator to the rescue
There are several ways to treat the tears in the paws and there is no one-size-fits-all fix. We asked ourselves the following questions to choose the right materials for the repair:
◊ How extensive is the tear?
◊ Is the skin of the paw flexible, stiff or brittle? If it is flexible, how flexible is it?
◊ Can the skin support itself? Are there additional components weighing down the tear?
A thorough inspection revealed that while the skin remained flexible, the underlying mount was rigid and shattered. The plaster fragments were pulling away from the skin, and along with the claws and foot pads, weighing down the paw and worsening the tear over time.
There are various conservation-grade fabrics made of physically durable and chemically stable materials that could act as a supportive backing for the tear. In this case, we chose Hollytex®, a porous and inert polyester that allows moisture through while blocking dust and dirt. It is a good support material because it is flexible yet strong with excellent dimensional stability.
A suitable adhesive must be strong enough to join the Hollytex® to the skin while retaining the skin’s flexibility. To treat the medium bear’s paw, we decided to use a type of proprietary acrylic emulsion called Lascaux® that dries to a flexible, transparent film. Two different kinds of Lascaux® adhesives were mixed to take advantage of their unique working properties for an elastic yet minimally tacky finish.
One sheet of Hollytex® was cut to fit the shapes of the areas in the paws that needed support. At least two coats of Lascaux® were applied to both sides of the fabric, which was then inserted between the loose skin with claws and the mount. The skin was held in position against the adhesive-backed insert material on the mount using weight bags and set to cure overnight.
Voilà—the paws of this bear have been repaired and stabilized, so this bear is ready to join the family on exhibit!
bears as conservationists
Spirit bears are pivotal community members in the temperate rainforests of coastal BC. In the fall, they eat nutrient-dense salmon and redistribute these nutrients to the forest soils as they traverse their territories. Spirit bears rely on the richness of coastal rainforest ecosystems and in turn the ecosystem relies on them. Human activities like logging, oil and gas development, and climate change threaten this reciprocal relationship.
The family of white spirit bears is back on display after the conservation treatments they needed. We hope that this sparks conversations about their conservation in the wild. Protecting these bears and their habitat is crucial: happy bears mean happy forests, which in turn means a healthy ecosystem.
The medium bear’s torn paw before repair.
The paw after being repaired.
Three Days at Cloud City
A piece of a small theropod (meat-eating) dinosaur limb bone found at the Cloud City Bonebed—it’s hollow inside, just like today’s theropod.
The Cloud City Bonebed was found near the top of the mountain. We also collected dinosaur bones from the boulders on the slopes below the bonebed. Photograph by Thomas Cullen.
The 2024 Spatsizi Plateau palaeontology team. L-R: Derek Larson, Victoria Arbour, Thomas Cullen, Emily Cross, Brady McBride and Teague Dickson.
An exciting dinosaur discovery on the Spatsizi Plateau
Victoria Arbour
c U r ATor of pA l AEo NTolo Gy
It is our second day searching for fossils on the Spatsizi Plateau in July 2024, and my colleagues—Dr. Thomas Cullen, an assistant professor at Auburn University in Alabama, and Emily Cross, my MSc student at the University of Victoria—and I have come upon a broad, flat sandy area right below the pyramidshaped summit of the mountain we are camping underneath during this 10-day palaeontological expedition. Tom leans over and says, “Oh, there’s a bone fragment here.” Immediately after, Emily says she’s found a bone too. Then I spot one. By the end of the day, we’ve filled our backpacks with Ziploc bags of bones and teeth to bring back to camp. The rest of the team—Derek Larson, palaeontology collections manager and researcher at the Royal BC Museum; Teague Dickson, my MSc student at the University of Victoria; and Brady McBride, a former summer intern at the museum—are surprised and delighted by this unexpected windfall. We return to this site—now nicknamed Cloud City because it is often enshrouded in clouds for part of
the day—two more times during our stay on the plateau. Over the course of those three days, we find teeth from tyrannosaurs and horned dinosaurs, foot, toe and claw bones from a small predatory dinosaur, vertebrae and chunks of limb bones from one or more large plant-eaters, and countless bone fragments to puzzle out back in the lab. We are also excited to find a layer of volcanic ash, which can be used to determine the age of these rocks and the dinosaur bones they contain.
Most of the bones we have spotted during previous visits to the Spatsizi Plateau in 2019 and 2022 are embedded in large boulders, which we trim down using a rock saw, crack hammers, heavy-duty chisels, and a lot of elbow grease. It’s a slow process, and it can take half a day or more to collect a single bone. Some bones will take even longer—months or years—to prepare fully out of the rock using pneumatic tools in our lab at the museum. In 2022, we collected about 15 bones. Because of the richness of Cloud City, in 2024 we returned to the museum with over 90 specimens of bones, bags
of bone fragments, and rock samples.
Derek and I are particularly excited about the small foot bones from Cloud City. Small meat-eating dinosaur fossils are rare even in places where dinosaur bones are abundant, like Dinosaur Provincial Park in Alberta. It will take at least a few years to clean these bones and compare them to other (known) species, but we can’t wait to figure out what exactly we have found. You can watch this work being done in our new state-of-the-art fossil preparation lab at the Royal BC Museum’s PARC Campus, scheduled to open to the public in 2026. The fossils we have collected from Spatsizi Plateau Wilderness Provincial Park are found on the traditional and unceded territory of the Tahltan Nation, and we are grateful for their permission to conduct this research on their land. Fossils are protected in British Columbia and cannot be removed from the ground without permission from the Fossil Management Office, BC Parks or Parks Canada.
Funding for this research was provided by a generous grant from the Trebek Initiative and Royal Canadian Geographic Society, as well as BC Parks and the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada.
Watch Dr. Victoria Arbour talk about the team’s findings and their significance on This Week in History, filmed in partnership with CHEK News, on our YouTube channel @RoyalBCMuseum.
Top: The team painstakingly scours the ground for dinosaur bones and teeth at the Cloud City Bonebed on the Spatsizi Plateau.
Imaging the Miniature and Microscopic
At the Royal BC Museum, one of our responsibilities is studying BC’s amazing plant and animal diversity. Knowing what lives in our province is crucial to our understanding of its environment. But what species do we have, exactly? Some species differ in very subtle but distinct ways. This process of identifying and naming species is known as taxonomy, and for marine biologists like me, it can involve very close examination of tiny organisms. To get a closer look at things, we rely on special equipment and techniques.
Macro photography
When studying small subjects, we need to magnify or zoom in on them to make their details clearer. This technique, known as macro photography, is how people produce
the amazing close-up images you may have seen of insects or flowers. There is a catch, however. Every camera lens has a “depth of field”—the amount of the subject that will be in focus at one time. Think of taking someone’s portrait—their face is in focus, but the background is blurry. The more you zoom in on a subject the smaller, or shallower, the depth of field becomes. At high magnifications, it’s difficult to get the entire subject in focus. Even focusing on the head of a tiny fly might leave its wings and legs out of focus.
Focus stacking
To overcome this, we turn to an incredibly clever piece of technology called “focus stacking.” Even with a very shallow depth of field, we can
take a series of photos of the subject, from its highest point to its lowest. Even if we have to take 50 photos, or more, we ensure every part of the subject is in focus at some point.
The next part is computer wizardry. We can load these photos into special focus stacking software, which analyzes all the images and distinguishes between in-focus and out-of-focus pixels. It selects what’s in focus from each image and “stacks” or merges them together. In under a minute of processing time, we have a single image with all the tiny, exquisite details in focus. Magic!
Microscopy
Even macro lenses have their limits. For smaller subjects, we turn to microscopes with more powerful lenses and
Hugh MacIntosh coll Ec TI o
m ANAGE r , IN v E r TE br ATE zoolo Gy
A robber fly viewed with a macro lens. lEfT: The wingtip is in focus, but the body is out of focus. rIGHT: The body is now in focus but the wings and legs are not.
A series of 64 images from the highest to the lowest point of the specimen. Even though each photo only captures a narrow range of focus, stacking software can pull these together into one sharp image.
Amphipod collected from Victoria. Even tiny animals have incredible details and beautiful colours.
One of the amphipod’s tiny claws, viewed at 20x magnification. lEfT: Image taken with microscope camera. mIddlE: Sketch using camera lucida. rIGHT: Finished illustration of amphipod claw.
illumination. By mounting a specimen onto a microscope slide, we can keep it flat and steady while we examine it. Special optical filters can also help accentuate the contrast and detail of tiny structures. An adaptor allows us to attach a digital camera and capture what we see in high resolution.
Illustration
It may seem archaic, but when it comes to describing new species, many scientists still rely on old-fashioned illustration. Some specimens are so small and colourless that they are difficult to photograph; a line drawing excels at accentuating the fine details of a specimen’s anatomy. This is not a true test of artistic ability, though— we use a periscope-like microscope attachment called “camera lucida” or drawing tube. This allows the user to view the specimen on the microscope as well as a piece of paper on the desk next to them. At first it seems strange to look down the microscope and see a tiny crustacean and your hand holding a pencil at the same time, but it’s quite straightforward to then trace what you’re examining. This also means you are drawing it exactly as it appears in the microscope, with no artistic licence taken with its shape or size.
Conclusion
They say a picture is worth a thousand words, and for taxonomic purposes,
they’re right. Detailed identification guides are valuable, but without good accompanying images, it’s much more difficult for someone to make comparisons. Additionally, many species can lose their colour or shrivel when preserved, so by taking images while they are freshly collected, we capture their appearance as it is in life—handy for the next person that encounters them in the field. Lastly, people are often put off by “creepy crawlies,” but there is real beauty to be found in these tiny organisms. They may have striking colours, tufts of bushy hair, curious eyes or exquisitely delicate limbs. Photos like these help people get a closer look at something so unfamiliar, and if they come to see the beauty in them as well, then I consider it a job well done.
An amphipod–a tiny marine crustacean, viewed at 3x magnification.
Watch Dr. Hugh MacIntosh talk about macro photography and focus stacking on This Week in History, filmed in partnership with CHEK News, on our YouTube channel @RoyalBCMuseum.
A Deep Dive into Marine Conservation with Shane Gross
Samantha Rich
d
Floating on the water, delicate water lilies are a bucolic foil for their thick tentacled roots anchored deep into the mud below. They provide a refuge for marine life beneath the surface. Amid this swaying underwater foliage, swarms of western toad tadpoles are fighting for their very existence as they migrate to their feeding grounds. Snorkelling for hours in a lake near Campbell River on Vancouver Island, professional marine conservation photojournalist Shane Gross waited patiently for the silt-induced visibility to clear. For his photograph of teeming tadpoles titled “The Swarm of Life,” he was awarded the Adult Grand Title Winner 2024 in the prestigious Wildlife Photographer of the Year competition from London’s Natural History Museum.
Born in land-locked Regina, Sask., Shane has always had a love affair with the ocean and eventually move to Bahamas for 10 years. “I have a strong connection to the Bahamas as that was my first time in the ocean as a kid on vacation with my family when I was four years old. I later got certified for scuba diving there at 15. And, it’s a shark sanctuary that’s been protected since 2011,” he explains. After watching the film Jaws countless times, “I wanted to be just like the oceanographer, Richard Dreyfuss’ character, Matt
Hooper!” Shane confides. Now based in Nanaimo, his obsession and fascination with sharks has been a life-long pursuit as a photojournalist.
Shane has circled the globe photographing the most exotic of underwater creatures. In 2024, a record-breaking 59,228 photographs from 117 countries were submitted, with “The Swarm of Life” taking the biggest prize of the competition.
“As I swam amongst the swarms of tadpoles I felt great joy in seeing such abundance and aesthetic beauty, but I also felt pressure to do the scene, and the animals, justice. The love of tadpoles and, by extension, amphibians among the public has become so apparent as I hear reactions to my image from around the globe,” says Gross. “This warms my heart as we urgently need to solve the challenges this great group of species and their habitats face and we can only do that with love and passion.”
Wildlife Photographer of the Year is on now at the Royal BC Museum until April 27, 2025, and will be making a welcome return in 2026.
Shane Gross spent hours snorkelling in the lake to capture the perfect shot. Courtesy of Shane Gross.
An Oasis of Arts and Community
The Nk’Mip Desert Cultural Centre
cnúk Jenna Bower
The Osoyoos Indian Band’s international awardwinning Nk’Mip Desert Cultural Centre (NDCC), located in Osoyoos, BC, is vital to sharing and preserving syilx, Okanagan, culture — past, present and future. The NDCC transitions visitors through their rich historical culture to who they are as a people today. Since its opening in 2007, the NDCC has been an essential vehicle for teaching syilx identity, culture and work ethic to youth.
The Nk’Mip Desert Cultural Centre has been working on repatriation for the Osoyoos Indian Band for their cultural
belongings to be returned home. Through their growing relationship with the Royal BC Museum, and at the request of the maker, they have successfully repatriated a painting belonging to qʷayxnmitkʷ Jane Stelkia. Jane created this painting while she was a student of Anthony Walsh at the Inkameep Day School on the Osoyoos Indian Band Reserve in the late 1930s to early 1940s. Unaware that the painting still existed, Dr. Andrea Walsh, Professor of Anthropology at the University of Victoria, came across it in the Royal BC Museum collections in 2018.
The painting was unveiled at the Nk’Mip Desert Cultural Centre’s Annual Fall Banquet Fundraiser where, to welcome the painting home, members of the community sang and danced an endangered traditional Okanagan style dance. At 94 years old, qʷayxnmitkʷ Jane Stelkia was able to witness the return of her painting with her family and speak about her time at the Inkameep Day School. There are many precious artworks and cultural belongings still out there in museums around the world, and some are in private collections or people’s homes waiting to be sung and danced home.
The Nk’Mip Desert Cultural Centre features syilx exhibits on the Inkameep Day School, walking trails, outdoor sculptures, hands-on interactive displays, a replicated syilx
village, a brand new pit house, film experiences, live animal exhibits, and coming this summer, a brand-new immersive theatre experience. The NDCC offers a family-oriented cultural and nature experience showcasing the living culture of the syilx people and the region’s unique desert habitat. Check out their website, nkmipdesert.com for more information on their interpretive programming, group rates, or how to donate.
j
l
Top: qʷayxnmitkʷ Jane Stelkia’s painting done at the Inkameep Day School. Courtesy of the Royal BC Museum collections.
Exterior of the Nk’Mip Desert Cultural Centre.
A photo from the unveiling of the painting with (left) cnúk Jenna Bower, (middle) qʷayxnmitkʷ Jane Stelkia, (right) Dora Stelkia.
Part of the replicated village at the Nk’Mip Desert Cultural Centre.
Coastal Species in the Great Pacific Garbage Patch
Henry Choong
Examples of floating plastics collected in the North Pacific Subtropical Gyre during The Ocean Cleanup’s 2018 expedition. Photo courtesy of The Ocean Cleanup.
On March 11, 2011, a devastating earthquake and the resulting tsunami struck northeastern Japan, carrying five million tons of debris from coastal areas into the ocean. While much of the debris sank near the shore, about 1.5 million tons of concrete, Styrofoam, plastic, and other human-made objects—ranging from docks and fishing vessels to everyday household items—drifted into the Pacific Ocean. As anyone who has ever peered over the sides of docks knows, any object or structure entering the sea is rapidly settled by marine life. Biofilms (“slime”) typically form within days, followed by algae, sponges, tubeworms, bryozoans (“moss animals”) and hydroids, which are gelatinous animals related to corals and jellyfish, within 6 to 12 months. These form the basis of communities which include more familiar animals such as anemones, molluscs and crustaceans. Many of the tsunami debris items were made of plastic, which survives longer at sea than natural materials such as wood. Plastic objects made ideal rafts, transporting coastal communities of organisms across vast distances. Although natural rafting by trees or kelp is well-known, transoceanic rafting on this scale was unprecedented due to the sheer proportion of human-made materials in the debris. This transport of species to new places on human-made material can lead to biological invasions, a process already occurring globally. I study hydroids. In 2012, when objects from the tsunami began washing up on the coast of North America, I joined colleagues from the Smithsonian Environmental Research Center, Williams College-Mystic Seaport, the Royal Ontario Museum, Fisheries and Oceans Canada and many other research organizations to investigate the biology, ecology and dispersal of species on the Japanese tsunami debris. By 2015, at least 100,000 tsunami debris items had landed in North America. Their unique biology and life cycle enabled hydroids to survive and thrive during the arduous journey across the Pacific. By 2018, we had documented over 300 species from 16 different phyla (a taxonomic grouping of organisms), including hydroids, that were transported, alive, across the Pacific Ocean to new locations, including Vancouver Island and Haida Gwaii, on the tsunami debris. This unprecedented event confirmed that coastal species can survive in the open ocean for at least six years. The Japanese tsunami marine debris biological collection now resides permanently at the Royal BC Museum. However, the story of the Japanese tsunami marine debris and its hitchhikers is far from over. Tsunami debris continued to land in North America into the spring of 2020, but not all of it ended their journey on this side of the Pacific. The prevailing ocean currents carrying the debris forms the Eastern North Pacific Subtropical Gyre (ENPSG), one of five major oceanic gyres. The ENPSG has a clockwise subcircular pattern and some of the tsunami marine debris ends up in an area within the gyre, thousands of kilometres from the nearest continental margin, popularly known as the Great Pacific Garbage Patch.
could coastal organisms
continue to survive so far from home, in the open ocean?
Despite its name, however, the Great Pacific Garbage Patch is not composed of floating islands of garbage. It is primarily made up of plastic debris dispersed over a wide area. Over time, larger pieces of plastic debris fragment into microplastics suspended in the upper water column. Could coastal organisms continue to survive so far from home, in the open ocean?
To answer this question, my colleagues and I examined floating plastic debris collected in the Great Pacific Garbage Patch. This study took place as part of a larger research program known as Floating Ocean Ecosystems (FloatEco), funded by NASA, to investigate the biological and physical underpinnings of the ENPSG. The non-profit organization The Ocean Cleanup facilitated collection of floating plastic debris during two expeditions aboard the Maersk Transporter in November 2018 and January 2019. We found evidence of living coastal species on 70.5% of the debris analyzed. We identified 484 marine invertebrate organisms on the debris, of which 80% were species that are normally found in coastal habitats. The number of coastal species—such as mussels, crabs and hydroids—identified rafting on plastic was over three times greater than that of pelagic (open-sea) species. Our analysis showed that the diversity of all organisms was highest on rope, and that fishing nets harboured the highest diversity of coastal species. We also found evidence of sexual reproduction among both coastal and open-ocean species, including hydroids and crustaceans called amphipods and isopods.
Our discoveries, published in Nature Ecology & Evolution in 2023, show that species originating on the coast can survive and reproduce on plastic debris that may have travelled thousands of miles over several years. These species may represent a new type of ecological community in the ocean we call a “neopelagic community.” Further research is needed to understand how these species survive, and the ecological and evolutionary consequences of the establishment of coastal species in the high seas.
Coastal podded hydroid Aglaophenia pluma and open-ocean gooseneck barnacles Lepas living on floating plastic collected in the North Pacific Subtropical Gyre. Photo courtesy of The Ocean Cleanup, in coordination with Smithsonian Institution.
Coastal aggregating anemones (Anthopleura sp.) found on a black floating plastic fragment collected in the North Pacific Subtropical Gyre through collaboration with The Ocean Cleanup during an expedition in 2018. The anemones pictured show evidence of fission, also known as cloning, through separation of their tissue into a new individual. Photo courtesy of Smithsonian Institution, Linsey Haram.
Beyond the BEAT
Beyond the Beat Theatre, Canadian Museum for Human Rights. Photograph by Aaron Cohen.
The voices that unite, inspire, and fuel SOCIAL CHANGE
“Resurgence” section of the Beyond the Beat exhibition, Canadian Museum for Human Rights. Photograph by Annie Kierans.
Music connects and transforms, and its power is undeniable. Commercial jingles, childhood lullabies, songs that transport you back to high school dances and late summer nights around campfires, hymns and memorial processionals—music soundtracks our lives in both intensely mundane and unspeakably profound ways. Its ability to evoke powerful emotions and unearth forgotten memories is scientifically proven, but is also universally understood in the simplest of terms—music makes you feel things. And it’s that most basic fact that makes music such an obvious catalyst for growth, connection and transformation.
Beyond the Beat: Music of Resistance and Change, created by the Canadian Museum for Human Rights in Winnipeg, Man., is a tribute to ground-breaking and history-making moments when music made a difference, to the musicians, artists and activists who created music that would change the world.
“A lot of people are like, oh, human rights, that’s for lawyers,” says Jodi Giesbrecht, Vice President of Archives,
Collections and Research at the Royal BC Museum, and former Head Curator and Director of Galleries at the Canadian Museum for Human Rights. “A show like this is really intending to show people that issues around racism, sexism and homophobia are human rights issues. They affect all of us.”
Music moves us—to tears, to action. We’ve been raised on anthems from powerhouse women like Aretha Franklin, Celine Dion and Beyoncé, damned the man alongside rebels like the Clash and D.O.A., and felt seen through LGBTQ+ icons like Elton John and Melissa Ethridge.
“This show is really about songs and artists that have made a difference in terms of human rights and social justice,” says Giesbrecht. “That was our throughline to keep coming back to. And in recent years, there have been so many artists and musicians who have used their platform to speak out on those topics.”
The exhibition takes a thematic approach, moving topic to topic instead of being a march through time.
Amanda Richardson
comm UNI cATI o NS S p Ec IA l IST
“There’s a section on racial justice with historical and contemporary content,” says Giesbrecht. “Everything from the civil rights movement and the March on Washington, carrying that all the way up to Black Lives Matter and contemporary protests. And then there’s a section on LGBTQ rights and women’s empowerment, taking that similar approach. Within that theme, there’s content from the 50s and 60s, all the way up to today. There are also Indigenous artists from Willie Dunn and Alanis Obomsawin to the Snotty Nose Rez Kids throughout the exhibition as well.
“There isn’t really a prescribed path that visitors have to take through the exhibition. It’s really open to exploration.”
In all, there are six thematic sections with an additional section curated by staff and contractors of the Royal BC Museum that explores these moments with a BC focus. Alongside the core themes of solidarity, race and resistance, resurgence of Indigenous music traditions, empowerment and equality, environment and climate change, and censorship, are areas looking at the early labour movement, Black history in Vancouver, the origins of west coast punk, and even the City of Bhangra, a festival in Vancouver dedicated to a traditional style of dance and music originating from the Punjab region.
“It’s a very contemporary exhibit, ”says Lorne Hammond, retired curator of modern history at the Royal BC Museum, who has led the work on the BC-centric additions to the exhibition. “It’s dated to say it’s a ‘hip’ exhibit—that shows how old I am—but it’s a very contemporary exhibit aimed at a contemporary audience. History is the 1950s, the 1990s, 1978 to 1981… those time periods that people are just starting to realize had historical importance.”
“I wrote the song (‘Brush Lady’) during the 1960s. There were huge problems back then and there still are now. No real respect for Indigenous women.” —Alanis Obomsawin, Canadian filmmaker
There are musicians synonymous with activism and social change, like Neil Young or k.d. lang., but others may be a bit more surprising. Throughout the process of curating the exhibition, Giesbrecht says she was shocked to learn about new sides of familiar artists.
Eleanor Collins on The Eleanor Show, 1955. It was the first national variety television show in North America hosted by a Black artist. Courtesy of the Estate of Eleanor Collins.
“You probably grew up knowing who Rita MacNeil is,” says Giesbrecht of the Nova Scotia-born folk singer. “What I didn’t know was that she was a radical feminist in the 70s and the RCMP spied on her and thought she was a menace to society. A danger.”
MacNeil, who passed away in 2013, was often seen in her later career as a comforting, familiar figure, hosting a variety show and televised specials, and even opening her own tea house, appropriately named Rita’s. But in the early years, MacNeil found her footing in feminism and the women’s movement. It was revealed years later that the now defunct Royal Canadian Mounted Police Security Service branch was known to have surveyed feminists, including MacNeil.
“One of her outfits on display, as well as some original letters from the 70s from the RCMP, basically being like, we need to get after that menace. Everybody sees this very gentle folk singer who’s this Canadian treasure, but at one point, she was actually seen as a menace to Canadian society,” says Giesbrecht.
Elsewhere in the exhibition are tributes to other legendary artists who moved the needle of social justice and reform, including one artist with an unlikely connection to Vancouver, New Orleans-born jazz musician Louis Armstrong.
“Louis Armstrong and his band came up by train and arrived at the Hotel Vancouver and were kicked out based on colour,” says Hammond. “They had a room for Louis Armstrong, but they would refuse his band and his entourage.
The young desk clerk found them a hotel down the street at the Devonshire Hotel. The Devonshire manager not only was happy to have everybody there, he put flowers in the room of every member of the entourage. And from that moment on, the Devonshire was where Black artists stayed if they played in the clubs in Vancouver.”
Hammond says that while society has come leaps and bounds over the past 75 years, that kind of treatment was very much a reality in BC back in the 1950s.
“I can’t think of a bigger name that’s more revered than Louis Armstrong, and that’s how he was treated.”
On the scene at the same time was a lesser known but no less impactful Edmonton-born artist, Eleanor Collins, known by some as “Canada’s First Lady of Jazz.”
A gifted singer and mother to four, Collins’ 80-year career saw her lead CBC’s first ever multi-racial TV broadcast in 1954, play a pivotal role in ending blackface in local theatres, and open doors for countless Black artists, before ultimately being inducted into the Order of Canada in 2014 at the spritely age of 95.
“She was a great woman. She received the order of Canada. She had a stamp in her honour for her 100th birthday and she was the first Black artist and the first woman in Canada to have her own TV show, The Eleanor Show,” says Hammond. “It took
The Dishrags consulting the first Ramones album in a Vancouver record store, 1978. The band went on to open for the Ramones in 1980.
Photograph by Robert Strazicich/Base Records.
quite a lot of doing, but I eventually found her daughter. Her daughter, Judith Maxie, is a film actress. I worked with Judith on the story of her mother to try and get it exactly right.
“I’m very proud that Eleanor Collins is in the exhibit. She was a great woman, and she did it her own way.”
For the BC focused sections of the exhibition, Hammond sourced posters, instruments and clothing from the provincial archives, the City of Vancouver archives, and the Vancouver Public Library archives, as well as through personal and second-hand connections to the artists themselves. Hammond was also able to take his pick from more than 1,100 digitized political concert posters at the Simon Fraser University archives, and the Museum of Vancouver was generous enough to loan out a leather jacket belonging to Gerry Hannah, bassist for Canadian punk rockers Subhumans and member of the 1980s urban guerrilla group the Squamish 5.
“This [part of the] exhibit is not about the history of punk. It’s about punk as a genre of musicians, as political activists,” says Hammond. “But I was amazed at how much has been preserved and digitized and is being used in
[music] is also one of the greatest teachers we can have, particularly in times of political unrest.
classrooms to talk about contemporary culture issues.”
Hammond also used the exhibition as an opportunity to bring awareness to artists outside the mainstream who made a significant impact through their music, such as outspoken Victoria-based punks NOMEANSNO, Richmond-raised singer Ferron, and Indian singer and rapper Sidhu Moose Wala.
“One of the groups I connected with was the Dishrags. They started when they were 15, as a local band playing in their high school. By the time they were 18, they were opening for the Ramones and the Clash in Vancouver and were one of the first women’s punk bands in North America,” says Hammond.
“When you look at early punk, there are a lot of important women in punk but they’re statistically a minority. Punk seems to be a lot of sweaty guys throwing themselves around in a mosh pit, but that’s not true. The women made a real serious difference.”
Music can change your perception of a person you thought you knew well and open your eyes to communities you would otherwise never have insight into. It’s also one of the greatest teachers we can have, particularly in times of political unrest.
“I think it’s important to show positive things for youth about our society and how we’ve improved our society, how we’ve evolved and how people fit all in across the spectrum of diversity and are making us the society we are today,” says Hammond.
“I think expressing our values, which I think this exhibit does, is an important thing to do politically at this moment in time as well.”
Learn more about the music of resistance and change, and find your place amongst the noise at Beyond the Beat, on May 28, 2025, to January 5, 2026, at the Royal BC Museum.
Save Clayoquot Sound poster, 1993. There were many urban talks, concerts, protests and related events held in support of the protest against old-growth logging. Perry Giguere Collection, Simon Fraser University Library, MSC197-0797.
Newt a Problem
they ’re small , they ’re spotted , they ’re super - spreaders
When I was a kid, I was obsessed with newts. I searched every stream and garden pond for them. In the 1970s, I could buy newts if I wanted a pet—back when the Hudson’s Bay Company sold pets. Today, the newt and salamander trade has dried up. Importation is banned because of the risk of disease transmission from pets to wild newts and salamanders. This disease, Bsal (Batrachochytrium salamandrivorans), is the salamander equivalent of the chytrid fungus that has decimated frog and toad populations worldwide.
There is a newt indigenous to BC— the rough-skinned newt—which looks almost identical to the California newt I had as a kid, with its brown back and orange belly. Our newt is protected under the BC Wildlife Act, so you will have to look elsewhere for a pet.
Have people imported newts in recent years? Yes. In 2018, an alpine newt (Icthyosaura alpestris) from Europe was found on Denman Island. Another was found about one kilometre north of the first record in 2022. They didn’t get here on their own—someone’s pets were either intentionally released or escaped. I think a road trip is in order
to see if there is a self-sustaining population on Denman Island.
I’d like to say that’s it for regional newty naughtiness, but in 2019, people in Washington, USA, noticed eastern newts near Lake Fazon, south of Everson. Eastern newts are tiny, no longer than your middle finger. These records show eastern newts are established about 15 km south of the international border in the Nooksack drainage. The nearest record in Canada is near Sioux Narrows in western Ontario.
You may think, “That’s newt a problem. They are way south of BC, and eastern newts are tiny.” But the eastern newt has a terrestrial phase in its lifecycle—an eft—which is pumpkin orange and travels over land to new breeding ponds. This tiny tangerine terrestrial traveller is the reason the species is known as a “super-spreader.” Efts can travel between ponds and streams, and their developing larvae can travel within streams. There are several streams flowing from the lower mainland into the Nooksack River, a direct connection for these wee wanderers to find their way into BC. And there is always the risk of human assistance. People like to keep these charming
little newts as pets, myself included.
I should also mention their secret weapon: Eastern newt skin secretes tetrodotoxin—the same class of poison found in pufferfish. The eft’s gaudy guise is an advertisement known as aposematic colouration which reminds predators to never nibble newts. Our native rough-skinned newt and the introduced alpine newts are also toxic and warn predators with a defensive posture. They arc their backs like a contortionist, a posture known as the unkenreflex, exposing their bright orange belly. Predators take heed.
Any bets on when the first eastern newt will appear in the wild in BC??
jKeep an eye out for eastern newts and their pumpkinorange efts near the US border.
lEastern newts in Washington likely originated in the pet trade.
A rough-skinned newt. Read more about our native newt in the Royal BC Museum handbook Amphibians and Reptiles of British Columbia
Gavin Hanke
c U r ATor of v E r TE br ATE zoolo Gy
Alpine newts are distinct with a dotted crest, orange belly, and black spots along their side.
I’D LIKE TO SAY THAT’S IT FOR REGIONAL NEWTY NAUGHTINESS, BUT...
From the Archives:
This poster was issued by the National War Savings Committee around 1915. Thrift stamps could be collected and used to buy Victory Bonds and even children were encouraged to buy them. The savings campaigns were successful; the 1915 campaign resulted in the purchase of $100 million dollars’ worth of Victory Bonds.
Terry’s frequently advertised their weekly specials in Victoria theatre programmes. Most were selfexplanatory—coffee nut ice cream, tutti frutti or walnut. Others were more eclectic, including servings of “springtime kiss,” “what’s his name” or the curiously named “chop suey sundae.” Unlike its savoury counterpart, the popular sundae contained a mix of dried fruits, chopped nuts and syrup. The actual ingredients varied by shop parlour and could include anything from figs to pineapple and sugar or maple syrup.
A r ET ro S p EcTI v E o N A dv Er TISING
Taryn Jones A rc HI v IST
PDP03583
I was surprised to see a tamale parlour advertised in Vancouver in the 1920s. The restaurant was owned by Sid Beech, an Englishman who was known as a long-time sportsman and Canadian amateur billiard champion. The Tamale Parlour opened in the early 1920s and offered a diverse menu ranging from tamales to ravioli. It was known as a gathering place for sports celebrities. Beech learned his Mexican recipes from a friend and kept the recipe closely guarded.
Welsh immigrant and larger-thanlife character George Jones arrived in Vancouver circa 1905 and soon established a horse shoeing business. As the days of the horse and buggy slowly waned, Jones eventually turned to auto repair before expanding his business interests. A man of many talents, he was a noted soloist, founder of the Jones Institute of Physical Culture, a golfer, motorist, oil well and gold mining man, and one-time Mr. BC at the age of 52.
NWp PR Va C 1928-2
Saturday Sunset, January 30, 1909, page 14
From the Archives:
This image is a page from an advertisement clipping book for 1913-1914 for the British Columbia Electric Railway Company. It promotes electric vehicles and trucks. Retail sales were a major source of profit for the company, whose retail locations dealt in appliances and for the early 20th century, electric vehicles. Experimentation with electric vehicles began in the 19th century and continued well into the early 20th century before being supplanted by combustion powered automobiles.
Map CM-A915, showing the Southeast district of Vancouver Island, was issued by The Province in 1896. It is among the oldest bicycle route maps in British Columbia. When overland travel options included railways, horses or walking, the invention of the safety bicycle in the late 1880s was a revolution in independent travel. It led to increased demand for improvements to roadways and eventually to maps such as this being issued. Advertisements on the verso promote relevant shops and equipment, including lunch baskets and food options for the hungry rider.
CM-A915
MS-1321
A r ET ro S p EcTI v E o N A dv Er TISING
Stu Hill A rc HI v IST
NWp 971.92 B862t is a visitors guide to Victoria, issued between 1898 and 1902, by the then newly formed British Columbia Electric Railway Company. One side shows a map of Victoria and neighbouring communities with the company’s streetcar network marked in red. The other describes various attractions to be reached by streetcar, from the naval yards in Esquimalt, to Beacon Hill Park, to the bicycle racetrack in Oak Bay. Further advertisements promote the company’s Vancouver and Westminster lines.
In 1890, if you wanted to find a person, a business or an institution, your best resource was the city directory. Similar to a phone book, directories provided information including street and name listings of individuals and businesses, population figures, government listings, operating newspapers, schools, and libraries. They were ideal for posting advertisements. This page, from the 1890 edition of Williams’ Victoria Directory, advertises some businesses that would not commonly be found today.
NWp971.92 B862t
NW909 V645W 1890
What Are You Doing After Hours?
Ashley Dryburgh
d I r Ec Tor of l EA r NING AN d ENGAGE m ENT
Experience an unforgettable evening at the Royal BC Museum with After Hours, returning in 2025. This interactive, adults-only event series invites you into the galleries and exhibits after the museum has closed.
Each After Hours event is focused on a different theme, rotating between different exhibits and galleries so no two evenings are ever the same. This year, themes include “Celebrating Pride,” “Love in the Wild,” and “Beyond the Beat,” in honour of the 2025 feature exhibition of the same name. Though the themes change, the highlight of each event remains the same: a series of interactive stations that invite adults to make, play and learn. They are hosted by museum staff, including curators and collection managers, and frequently by community partners highlighting art, culture and community in Greater Victoria.
organizes the series. “Maybe you typically visit with your kids and want a chance to see it with an adults-only crowd. Or maybe you don’t often come to museums and want to try something new with like-minded people over a drink and a bite.”
Long-time visitors may remember Happy Hours (which happened right after work) or Night Shift, the late-night party that was particularly popular at Halloween.
“After Hours offers a happy medium between those two,” continues Jennifer. “It takes the social aspects of a late-night party and mixes it with some unexpected learning.”
For the first time this year, the museum is also offering Pay What You Can (PWYC) tickets for this event. 10% of total tickets will be available as PWYC to ensure the event is accessible to a wide range of guests.
Researcher
There is a growing trend across cultural organizations like galleries and museums to be sites for connection, play and learning for adult guests, and After Hours is one such example.
“We’ve designed the series as a different way to explore the museum,” says Jennifer Vanderzee, part of the Learning and Engagement team who
“I want people to leave with three things,” says Jennifer. “Something they’ve made to bring home, a new idea or learning, and a sense of connection.” Based on the popularity of last year’s events, the people of Victoria agree.
After Hours runs May 8, June 19, July 24 and September 18 from 7 to 9 pm. Tickets and more details can be found at rbcm.ca/afterhours
T op : Entomology Collections Manager and
Claudia Copley sharing her passion for insects with After Hours visitors.
After Hours in the forest diorama at the Royal BC Museum.
What Was Said to Me
The Life of Sti’tum’atul’wut, a Cowichan Woman
By Ruby Peter (Sti’tum’atul’wut), in collaboration with Helene Demers
EXCERPT FROM CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Because I was only eleven or twelve years old when I started working on the tractor—plowing, disking, harrowing, seeding. This is all during the spring. Going to school was a very important role. The hard times that we had in school about the language; but it seemed like that our parents seemed to have set their lives into trying to have us work, trying to better with our lives in both worlds, in the white society and in our Indian ways. By the time I was a teenager, a lot of things had come back, things that went underground, like potlatches that they used to have that was forbidden, that we couldn’t have the Indian dances, and our language that was forbidden, that we were getting punished for. It seemed that a lot of our people, the parents that came out of residential school—a lot of the parents, a lot of the people that were in residential school were away from home for seven to eight years from nine until they were sixteen. Some of them didn’t come home until they were sixteen years old. Some of them left at seven years old and they never made it home until they were eleven, twelve years old. There were many reasons for that happening. Like one person that, persons that I knew, they never came out of residential school from the time
they left at seven and eight years old, and they never came out until they were twelve and thirteen years old. This was just an example of young people being sent away, and the mother didn’t have no way of keeping them home and she just left her children there—in residential school. Then when they came out, they only understood part of their language. They didn’t speak it at all, and this happened to a lot of the people. They didn’t get to learn the teachings.
People that were from the Mask Dance Sxwuyxwi that were left in residential school, they didn’t get the teachings about the Sxwuyxwi and the Longhouse and their own teachings about raising families. This was lost, completely lost from these young people that were in residential school.
And there were many of them.
Although Sti’tum’atul’wut passed away on January 8, 2021, just a few months before her book rolled off the press, she was consulted closely on every stage of editing and image collection. Royalties from the book now go to Sti’tum’atul’wut’s family.
Ruby Peter with Helene Demers backstage at the University of Victoria convocation in 2019, where Ruby received UVic’s highest recognition—an honorary Doctor of Laws. Sonya Bird, 2019.
What Was Said To Me is on sale now, from Royal BC Museum Books. Purchase a copy from your local bookstore, the Royal Museum Shop or at rbcm.ca/books.
ROYAL MUSEUM SHOP INTRIGUING & UNIQUE
SEE FULL SCHEDULE AND GET TICKETS
EXPLORE NEW WAYS TO LEARN
Can’t get here in person? No problem! We bring the museum to you with our Digital Field Trips These live, interactive programs are led by our staff and designed to be inquiry-based, ensuring a dynamic and engaging experience.
Learn more about Digital Field Trips at rbcm.ca/dft
DONATE TODAY
Your gift supports all of the Royal BC Museum’s endeavours, including education, research, conservation, repatriation, exhibition development and caring for the collections.
Thank you for your support.
For more information, visit rbcm.ca/support
CORPORATE MEMBERSHIP
Enhance your corporate culture, provide exclusive benefits to clients and employees, and foster a culture of philanthropy. Find out more at rbcm.ca/corporatemembership
Learn more about these events and others at rbcm.ca/calendar
exhibitions
Wildlife Photographer of the Year
On now until April 27
Immerse yourself in the intriguing natural world through the lenses of professional and amateur photographers, giving voice to our planet’s beauty and fragility. rbcm.ca/tickets
Global Threads: The Art and Fashion of Indian Chintz
On now until September 28
Step into a fascinating world of colour and discover how India’s vibrant cottons inspired global fashion trends, transforming everything from t-shirts to floral prints. rbcm.ca/tickets
Odysseys and Migration
April 18, 2025, to May 3, 2026
Explore the unique migration journeys that have shaped Chinese Canadian experiences and identities with Odysseys and Migration, developed by the Chinese Canadian Museum. rbcm.ca/tickets
Beyond the Beat: Music of Resistance and Change
May 30, 2025, to January 5, 2026
Feel the rhythm and discover how music has shaped the course of history and inspired social change with Beyond the Beat: Music of Resistance and Change. rbcm.ca/tickets
IMAX® victoria
Elephants: Giants of the Desert
On now
Explore the incredible survival and adaptation of Namibia’s desert elephants, navigating harsh landscapes, finding hidden water, and coexisting with iconic wildlife in a breathtaking adventure. rbcm.ca/tickets
T.REX
On now
This groundbreaking documentary brings T. Rex to life with cuttingedge CGI and expert insights, exploring new discoveries, famous fossils, and the evolving science behind the legendary predator. rbcm.ca/tickets
adult programs
Slow Burn Dating: Desire & Flirting
July 10 I 7–9 pm
55+
November 6 I 7–9 pm
Ages 25–55
Tired of online dating? With dating apps losing their spark, we’re offering a refreshing alternative—an evening of low-pressure connections and inspiring conversations.
$40 * Pay What You Can tickets available
After Hours
Move: May 8 I 7–9 pm
Pride: June 19 I 7–9 pm
Rock On: July 24 I 7–9 pm
90s Night: September 18 I 7–9 pm
After Hours is returning in April with all new themes! Explore the museum after hours for adults only.
19+ | $30
kids programs
Science Saturday: Salish Sea
April 26 I 1–3 pm
Explore the Salish Sea through student artwork, stories and displays inspired by boat explorations with Eagle Wing Tours. Included with admission or membership
all ages
Astronomy Day
May 3 I 10 am –4 pm
The local astronomical community and the Royal BC Museum invite you to a day that’s truly out of this world. Free
talks
Books, Zines, Prints, and Site-Specific Works
April 25 I 7–8 pm
Join artist Marlene Yuen for a talk exploring her artistic journey and the creation of Journeys Here, a mural featured in the Odysseys and Migration exhibition.
$25
Beyond the Wall: Curating Graffiti Jams in Public Spaces
May 29 I 7–8 pm
Dive into the art and culture of graffiti jams—events where urban artists come together to create, collaborate, and celebrate urban expression.
$25
live at lunch
A Cavalcade of Arthropod Biodiversity
May 21 I 12–1 pm
Staff and colleagues of the Royal BC Museum Entomology Collection continue to expand and share our knowledge of the insect biodiversity of the province. Free
Beyond the Beat
June 18 I 12–1 pm
Join Jodi Giesbrecht who will share about the development and challenges of creating the exhibition and some of her favorite stories behind the artifacts.
Free live online
Join us for this free online program! Each livestream is 30 to 45 min.
Dinosaurs! Adaptations and Habitats
April 30 I 10:10 am
Explore how dinosaurs used their bodies to thrive in their habitats millions of years ago.
Ages 4–8
Amazing Adaptations
May 22 I 11:10 am
Join us for a visit to the Natural History gallery to explore how various BC animals have evolved extraordinary adaptations to navigate and flourish in their local habitats.
Ages 4–8
*Information up-to-date at time of printing. Subject to change. Visit rbcm.ca/calendar for the most up-to-date information.
MEMBERS GET MORE
With unlimited year-round access to a world of ancient marvels, modern innovations and immersive experiences, members really do get more.
COMBO PASS
( IMAX® Victoria & Museum)
Unlimited entry to museum galleries and feature exhibitions
Unlimited IMAX® Victoria documentary films
Discounted Hollywood feature films
Up to 20% off at select partners and attractions
ROYAL BC MUSEUM MEMBERSHIP
Unlimited entry to museum galleries and feature exhibitions
