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The West Coast Maritime Museum
by John MacFarlane 2021
The West Coast Maritime Museum at Tofino BC (Photo from the John MacFarlane collection.)
A trio of nautical history enthusiasts (Rod Palm, Ken Gibson and Len Clay) established the West Coast Maritime Museum in Tofino BC. I recall visiting this establishment a couple of times while I worked with Parks Canada in the 1970s and 1980s. It presented artifacts and photographs to the public but did not last long as a viable entity. The fate of the collection is not known and the memory of it has been almost forgotten.
The building has gone through several identities over the years as a whale centre, tour agency and handicrafts museum. (Photo from the John MacFarlane collection.)
To quote from this article please cite:
MacFarlane, John (2021) The West Coast Maritime Museum. Nauticapedia.ca 2020. http://nauticapedia.ca/Gallery/West_Coast_MM.php
Site News: May 08, 2024
The vessel database has been updated and is now holding 92,807 vessel histories (with 15,646 images and 13,442 records of ship wrecks and marine disasters). The mariner and naval biography database has also been updated and now contains 58,616 entries (with 4,013 images).
In 2023 the Nauticapedia celebrated the 50th Anniversary of it’s original inception in 1973 (initially it was on 3" x 5" file cards). It has developed, expanded, digitized and enlarged in those ensuing years to what it is now online. If it was printed out it would fill more than 300,000 pages!
My special thanks to our volunteer IT adviser, John Eyre, who (since 2021) has modernized, simplified and improved the update process for the databases into a semi–automated processes. His participation has been vital to keeping the Nauticapedia available to our netizens.
Also my special thanks to my volunteer content accuracy checker, John Spivey of Irvine CA USA, who has proofread thousands of Nauticapedia vessel histories and provided input to improve more than 11,000 entries. His attention to detail has been a huge unexpected bonus in improving and updating the vessel detail content.