$40M Inner Harbour floating first nations maritime museum

Maritime Museum, First Nations pitch $40M attraction for Inner Harbour

At the same time, the museum is proposing a move into the CPR Steamship Terminal building, the former home of the Bateman Gallery and current home to restaurants and temporary facilities during the $290-million Belleville Terminal redevelopment project.

Angus Matthews, a volunteer Maritime Museum board member, said the plan is to engage with the Esquimalt and Songhees First Nations as equal partners in telling the history of the coast.

“It is an Indigenous story told in a floating, purpose-built structure on the harbour, and what you might call a colonial story told in a colonial building on the shore,” he said.

“The two of them, side by side, are an attempt to reach a bridge to understand the good and the bad of history in the past.”

That kind of ambition comes with a hefty price tag.

Matthews said the plan is for the Maritime Museum to contribute $1 million, and raise a third of the $38 million from corporate sponsors, a third through a local fundraising campaign and a third from the federal government.

https://www.timescol...harbour-9668395

Last year, the museum, currently housed in the Victoria Conference Centre, proposed switching places with the Bateman Gallery, which until it closed last year was in the CPR Steamship Terminal building.

That never happened and the Ministry of Transportation, which is landlord of the building, said the $290-million Belleville Terminal redevelopment project would require use of part of the CPR Terminal building as a temporary facility for FRS Clipper and U.S. Customs and Border Protection as the project is built out.

Matthews remains optimistic that this time, things will come together. “It’s an idea that’s never been tried by a museum that we can find anywhere in Canada in terms of two independent perceptions of history being told in a shared facility,” he said.

Edited by Victoria Watcher, Today, 05:08 AM.

The partnership envisions two things: The Steamship Building housing the maritime museum alongside a floating structure dedicated to the Songhees and Esquimalt Nations – offering a Lekwungen welcome centre and exhibit space. This new space would emphasize the local Nations’ presence and deep connection to coastal waters, which dates back thousands of years.

“By including Lekwungen maritime history, we can show that settler and First Nations people have shared experience and intertwined histories,” Songhees Chief Ron Sam said in a news release.

“This opportunity returns the Lekwungen Nations to a place of prominence here in our traditional territory, where residents and visitors will be welcomed and come to understand our proud history,” added Esquimalt Chief Jerome Thomas.

The goal is to present Victoria’s four million annual visitors with a more comprehensive account of the region’s history, where the narratives of Lekwungen and settler experiences stand together. With an Inner Harbour facility for Lekwungen Peoples to tell their own story, the exhibit would offer two distinct, yet interconnected, perspectives.

https://www.vicnews....harbour-7592611

Edited by Victoria Watcher, Today, 09:19 AM.

Only thing between the dream and reality is $40M in taxpayer dollars.

Is anyone else getting bored of this style of building? It's all so predictable.

Is anyone else getting bored of this style of building? It's all so predictable.

It's not very indigenous.... 

Being fundamentally a tourist town, and with the downtown "tourist" facilities getting more than a bit tired (think of the Prov Museum), this is a good idea, if a lot grander than the City of Victoria tends to think in 2024.

The marine history, and the First Nation history is really all we've got to offer outside of our location, and the trinket shops on Government Street. Places like the Butchart Gardens are spectacular, but it's hardly "downtown".

At heart, we're really just a small coastal town in a great location, full of Government workers and retirees. Our once long list of focused tourist attractions downtown is now down to one or two locations, mostly long in the tooth and uninspiring.

Angus Matthews personal cred is what could actually make this happen. He's got a long history of getting big things done in and around Victoria. This would be his biggest if he can pull it off.

I'm not at all hopeful though, as the City of Victoria under successive city governments has deteriorated to the point where having, and then realizing an actual vision of success is sadly non-existent. 

We should be a city of festivalas and concerts.  But we ran one guy out of town that had that vision and the Symphony thing is gone, and we don't even dare bring in good acts for the Leg lawn anymore.

The Art Gallery should be downtown, the casino should be downtown, but we can't get our act together on that either.

We lack leaders.