The Royal British Columbia Museum is misplaced in the B.C. Ministry of Tourism. It should belong to the Ministry of Post-Secondary Education, not the Ministry of Tourism.
When the BC Provincial Museum became the Royal BC Museum, it switched from a provincial museum to a world-class tourist attraction.
Local research functions were either abolished or curtailed. The linguistic department with the archive of First Nations language recordings was closed, and the Syesis journal that published provincial research in natural and social sciences was considered a failure and stopped. Local research and surveys were curtailed or abolished.
In the old BC Provincial Museum, every department had its own books, reprints, and manuscripts library. The departmental libraries in the Royal BC Museum were centralized and carefully sorted by the Library of Congress Index. When this task was done, the whole library was closed, and the holdings were given away to whoever was interested in them. It did not make any sense.
This winter, in anticipation of the earthquake, biological collections are moving to Sidney. From there, they will be moved again to Langley, to the new RBCM Collections building in 2026 or 2027.
The old BC Provincial Museum belonged under the BC Provincial Secretary. The Royal BC Museum is misplaced in the Ministry of Tourism, which treats it as a tourist attraction.
To restore its original function, RBCM should be moved to the Ministry of Post-Secondary Education.
The BC Museum Act defines the function of the Royal BC Museum, and the RBCM museum directors don’t have to ask the public what those functions are.
Adolf Ceska
Saanich
