The Vancouver Maritime Museum
Vancouver
Today let's move to the Pacific coast and explore this museum containing a few things about the past of Vancouver. Let's study three very different events in which the city participated in or was affected by.
Colonization
The first room of the museum is simple yet interesting. Different paintings and posters are retelling the various stages of the colonization of South America, more especially Chili. the departure of Captain Vancouver and the reasons for the exploration. Then it continues with the different parts of the journey both on water and land. In addition to different discoveries such as the Chilean Pine and its seeds, which puzzled the botanists of the time.Finally, there is also a presentation on the major figures that took part in the journey. First, there is captain George Vancouver, a first-lieutenant of the British Navy and commander of the expedition. There was also Archibald Menzies, Scotish doctor and botanist who discovered the Chilean Pine. Even the two ships used in the journey are presented, the HMS Discovery and HMS Chatham.
Japanese
Now let's go to the second part of the museum which covers a much recent part of the city's history, the immigration of Japanese.This event created many problems among the citizens of Vancouver and the Japanese immigrants. The very first one was about the industries as the city was greatly turned toward fishing. The problem is that the immigrants were quickly taking over it which angered both the citizens and the government. This resulted in restrictive measures being taken toward the Japanese population, creating further tensions. The second one occurred during WWII when most of the Japanese were isolated from the public, feared to be spies from the enemy. This event generated much more trouble in Vancouver due to the recent clash explored earlier.
The North Pole
The third and biggest room contains a real size ship that was used during the exploration of the North Pole.the main section of the room is the boat that is in the middle as you can visit it. You need to keep in mind that you have to wait for a staff member to be here to supervise your visit. Before you can go, you also have the occasion to watch a short movie about the boat (I don't remember what was in the movie). Once on the boat, we can have a preview of the life on board. Between the tide corridor and the kid-size room, we can only imagine the smell caused by the tight space. There is also the possible lack of maintenance and the movement of the sea. No life on board was far from being a sweet dream.Around the boat, there is also an exhibition on the Inuits, which provides a good introduction to these people. It explores their culture like their spiritual beliefs, music styles and instruments and also exploring why they value art crafts so much. It is also explaining to us more about their lifestyle by looking at some of the tools used by them. Some examples are shovels like knives, sunglasses made of bones or even an igloo! This exhibition is a good start if you want to explore the interesting world of the Inuits.
ending and bonus
In the end, this may not be the biggest out of the museum viewed here, but it gave good basses on what it is meant to cover. This is a place you should go if you visit the city of Vancouver and want to learn more about its past.
