[BCMA] Summer heats up with events at the Royal BC Museum

Fri May 29 11:52:01 PDT 2015

MEDIA ADVISORY

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May 29, 2015

Summer heats up with events at the Royal BC Museum

VICTORIA, BC – It’s the summer of Gold Rush! El Dorado in BC at the Royal BC Museum, but there are plenty of fun event options for everyone, prospector or not.

The Royal BC Museum will again host the Aboriginal Cultural Festival, a three-day celebration of Aboriginal peoples, arts and culture organized by Aboriginal Tourism BC, beginning on Friday, June 19 and wrapping up on Sunday, June 21 – National Aboriginal Day. The festival is hosted on the traditional territory of Esquimalt and Songhees Nations in Victoria.

Last year, more than 15,000 people visited the Aboriginal Cultural Festival. The festival is an excellent experience for locals and visitors to enjoy. Visitors can pair festival-going with a visit to the Our Living Languages: First Peoples’ Voices in BC exhibition, celebrating its one-year anniversary on June 19.

Starting on June 1, step back in time and visit one of the oldest houses in BC – still on its original site. Helmcken House was built by Dr J.S. Helmcken in 1853 and grew from a cabin to a busy family home. Helmcken House is open to the public until September 7.

Photographs tell an amazing story about BC’s gold rush, but the photographers themselves are another story altogether. Join Royal BC Museum Curator of Images Don Bourdon and the team from Luz Studios on June 2 for Gold Rush Photographers: A Living History, to take a closer look at the how and why of photographs taken during the gold rush era.

Merchants, prospectors, card sharks, heroes and villains – even a herd of camels – found themselves in Victoria on their way to and from the goldfields. Their tales still echo around the wharves and streets of our capital city. Gold Rush Tales Walking Tours, with John Adams, will provide a lively, informative and entertaining walking tour focused on the stories and legends of British Columbia’s gold rushes.

Walking tours start June 1 and run through to September 6, starting out from the Royal BC Museum daily at 1 pm. Book in advance to assure a spot through royalbcmuseum.bc.ca.

For almost thirty years musicologist Ida Halpern recorded First Nations’ ceremonies and practices. The records in the Halpern fonds of the BC Archives represent a unique and irreplaceable documentation of the culture and identity of First Nations communities across the Pacific Northwest. Learn more about this collection with Archivist Raymond Frogner at Indigenous Languages in the House of Memory on June 24 at 7 pm at the Royal BC Museum.

The third nature walk of the Field Trippers series takes place on Sunday, June 14 at Willows Beach. This Beach Seine will be guided by Invertebrate Collections Manager Heidi Gartner, Curator of Invertebrates Dr Melissa Frey, Curator of Vertebrate Zoology Dr Gavin Hanke and Bird and Mammal Preparator Darren Copley.

For the months of July and August, our Species at Risk exhibition will be traveling throughout the Okanagan region. Join us as we give a proper send-off to this unique traveling exhibition at June 28’s Wonder Sunday, and learn a thing or two as well. Wonder Sunday is an interactive, learning-based special event that happens from 1 to 3pm on the last Sunday of every month (excluding December, July and August).

About the Royal BC Museum

The Royal BC Museum explores the province's human history and natural history, advances new knowledge and understanding of BC, and provides a dynamic forum for discussion and a place for reflection. The museum and archives celebrate culture and history, telling the stories of BC in ways that enlighten, stimulate and inspire. Looking to the future, by 2017 the Royal BC Museum will be a refreshed, modern museum, extending its reach far beyond Victoria as a world-class cultural venue and repository of digital treasures.

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Media contact:

Royal BC Museum Media Inquiries

250-387-3207

news at royalbcmuseum.bc.ca<mailto:news at royalbcmuseum.bc.ca>

@RoyalBCMuseum<https://twitter.com/RoyalBCMuseum>

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