The Maritime Museum of B.C is proposing a floating Indigenous exhibit space on Victoria’s Inner Harbour along with a new waterfront home for the museum, in collaboration with the Esquimalt and Songhees First Nations.
Plans for the $40-million project, called the Future of History, are expected to be unveiled today.
The goal is to build a floating concrete structure on the provincial water lot that was once home to the Undersea Gardens and now features the temporary dock for the FRS Clipper passenger ferry.
The floating structure would house a Lekwungen Peoples welcome and exhibit centre illustrating how Indigenous people used waterways for thousands of years before contact.
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.
He said the provincial contribution would be the land and water lot, something they’ve been discussing with the province for two years.
It’s not the first time the museum has floated the idea of moving into the CPR Steamship building.
In 2015, shortly after the museum closed its doors in Bastion Square due to safety concerns in what was then a 126-year-old building, the museum asked the province about relocating to Belleville Street.
But after months of meetings, negotiations with landlord the Greater Victoria Harbour Authority hit an impasse. At the time, the provincial government, which was helping in negotiations, said the rent was more than the museum society could afford.
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.
“So we do see it as a very fresh and new option to consider, and we think it has what it takes to propel it forward.”
