There is a parallel in the histories of the city of Vancouver and the Vancouver Museum. Soon after the C.P.R. arrived in 1887, an art association was formed. In 1894, it expanded into the "Art, Historical, and Scientific Association of Vancouver", and its members began collecting artifacts for a museum.
In 1905, the museum opened in the Carnegie Library, and began an uphill climb, that was to survive two World Wars, and the great depression. These calamities took their toll on the citizens of Vancouver, but when times were toughest, they rallied behind their museum.
More Than One Hundred Years Old: A Vancouver Museum Retrospective
On April 17, 1894, a public meeting was called by a dedicated group of Vancouver citizens who decided their eight-year-old city was in need of its very own museum. They met at the O'Brien Assembly Room to organize the Art, Historical and Scientific Association of Vancouver.
A constitution and bylaws were drawn up, the Reverend L. Norman Tucker was elected president, and artifacts collected by the association became the nucleus of the very first Vancouver Museum.
On November 1, 1894, the Governor-General officially opened the exhibition of pictures and curios on the upper floor of Alderman Dunn's building on Granville Street. "The object of our Association," said Rev. Tucker, "is to cultivate a taste for the beauties and refinements of life. We have the opportunity of making the hard and unlovely lot of our toiling and struggling fellow citizens a little less hard and unlovely."
For the first few years, the newly-formed Association rented premises to hold exhibitions of art and curios, while constantly appealing to the city for its own facility. From the anteroom of Christ Church, the society moved to two temporary locations on Granville Street. In 1895, there was another move to the elementary school of Burrard Street, and then back to Granville.
In 1897, Sara McLagan became the first vice-president of the Art, Historical and Scientific Association. On September 29, 1888, Sara and her husband J.C. McLagan founded the Vancouver Daily World, the first large afternoon daily newspaper in Vancouver. After Mr. McLagan died in 1901, Sara carried on as publisher, managing editor, editorial writer, proofreader, and often reporter. In 1903, she became the first female president of the Art, Historical and Scientific Association. On the 26th of August that year, the Society agreed to hand over its collection to the City of Vancouver, provided the city agreed to "provide all proper means to preserve and keep preserved the said collection."
Permanent space for the Museum was finally found on the top floor of the new library building which was provided to the city by American philanthropist Andrew Carnegie. The doors opened on April 15, 1905 and over the next eight months, more than ten-thousand people signed the first guest register.
The first recorded item contributed to the Museum was a stuffed Trumpeter swan. H.J DeForest was appointed the first curator. From its early days, donations to the Museum were cosmopolitan and eclectic. Dr. W.A. Briggs donated his collection of Siamese Buddha in 1907. Pauline Johnson bequeathed her performance costume in 1913 and Captain Henry Pybus, Master of the CPR's Empress of Japan, donated numerous items including a complete samurai warrior outfit.
From 1914 to 1918, the world was embroiled in a terrible war and the enormous casualties left no Vancouverite untouched. People from across Canada and overseas continued to donate their treasures to the Vancouver Museum, while local donations continued to pour in. Soon, the Vancouver Museum was crammed from floor to ceiling, and during the next decade, artifacts came in at an astounding rate.
One Museum committee was appealing to the city for more space, while another had an elaborate plan to create a replica of a First Nations village right in the middle of Stanley Park. As it turned out, neither committee would achieve its goal. The big news in 1922 was the discovery of the burial chamber of Tutankhamen. This amazing discovery coincided with the donation of an authentic mummified child from a tomb in Luxor, Egypt. The mummy was donated to the Vancouver Museum by Dr. George Kidd. Natural history collections continued to be popular, and in 1932, Dr. Newton Drier gave the Museum his collection of 750,000 shells.
During the Dirty 30's, entertainment was a luxury few people could afford. The City of Vancouver, which had exuded such boisterous confidence during the first decades of the century had become strangely still. For many local citizens, the Vancouver Museum had become a haven where they could forget their troubles for a little while as they studied treasures from all corners of the globe.
From 1939 until 1945, the world was once again at war. Attendance at the Museum soared to new heights as the City of Vancouver bustled with service people and war workers. As a wartime precaution, the most valuable of the Museum's treasures were removed to an underground vault for safekeeping. After the war, the Vancouver Museum was getting desperate for more space. Museum president R. Monro St. John wrote at the time: "It is still nothing more than a glorified attic, overflowing with the immense accumulation of valuable collections crowded into every corner and piling up in the basement storeroom."
In 1951, the Museum received a letter from Thor Heyerdahl of "Kon Tiki" fame accepting his honourary membership card. In it, he told us how much he appreciated the honour, especially because the "Vancouver City Museum" was one of the first buildings he had ever visited in the "New World" when arriving by boat directly from Oslo to Vancouver to carry out research on Northwest Coast First Nations peoples. In 1994, we received a fax from Mr. Heyerdahl accepting our invitation to become a 100th Anniversary Ambassador.
By the time the province of British Columbia celebrated its centennial year in 1958, there were fresh hopes for a new museum and library. The library realized its dream and relocated to a new complex at Robson and Burrard, while the Vancouver Museum was left behind to occupy all three floors of the Carnegie Building. Leaking ceilings and falling plaster limited the space the Museum could safely occupy and once again, the directors appealed for new premises. Their pleas were finally answered when it was announced that Vancouver would receive a new museum as part of Canada's Centennial in 1967.
The new Vancouver Museum, called the Centennial Museum until the name was changed in 1981, was designed by the well-known architect, Gerald Hamilton. Initially the building was to house only the museum. A generous gift by the late H.R. MacMillan allowed the architect to incorporate a planetarium into the design. From the beginning, the distinctive dome atop the Museum became one of the best-known landmarks on the city skyline. The shape of the dome is similar in shape to that of a woven basket hat made by Northwest Coast First Nations peoples.
After the Vancouver Museum had settled into its new home, permanent displays, exhibitions and educational programs were produced about the natural, cultural and human history of the Vancouver region. A conservation department was added to protect and preserve the city's collection and the new Canadian Cultural Property Act made it possible to obtain rare and important treasures to add to the Museum's growing collection.
Now, as Canada's largest civic museum moves into its second century, it continues to explore the human and natural history of the Vancouver region, the Pacific Northwest Coast and Pacific Rim with exciting, ever-changing new exhibitions. The Vancouver Museum continues to celebrate the rich legacy and heritage of our diverse multicultural society through varied programs.
Contact Information:
1100 Chestnut Street
Vancouver, BC
Canada V6J 3J9
Phone: 604 736 4431
Fax: 604 736 5417
© Source: Vancouver Museum - Text and images property of respective owners.
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