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Vancouver Maritime Museum Heritage Harbour

Heritage Harbour

There is an ever-changing floating maritime heritage venue well worth return visits at the Vancouver Maritime Museum. Fronting on the exciting Vancouver Harbour is the Heritage Harbour of the Museum. There are always fascinating vessels moored there and photo ops are easy.

Senator Ray Perrault officially opened the Vancouver Maritime Museum's harbour, breakwater, and wharf on June 17, 1980 to complete Phase One of the Maritime Museum's Expansion Plan. Work on Phase One of the Expansion Plan was spearheaded by the late Elsje Armstrong who had a vision of a world-class Maritime Museum in Vancouver. With the help of the BC Heritage Trust and with donations from corporations, members, and the general public, a 500-foot breakwater and new mini-harbour was begun in 1980.

The economic recession slowed completion of the harbour, but in 1982, the Government of Canada came to the rescue. With timely support by Senator Ray Perrault, the government supplied the funds needed to armour the breakwater with rock, dredge the harbour, and build the floats.

The Vancouver Maritime Museum does not own any floating heritage vessels itself, but every summer 9–15 vessels (depending on size) with a connection to BC history, or vessels that may be of interest to the public and/or provide variety/contrast. The harbour site, adjacent to the Museum is also a good location for viewing the ships at anchor awaiting berthage in Vancouver Harbour.

Editor's Note: Thanks to Jamie Purves (Programs & Education Officer) and Carrie Schmidt (Librarian/Archivist) of the Vancouver Maritime Museum for the background on the Heritage Harbour.

Nauticapedia

Site News: December 03, 2024

The vessel database has been updated and is now holding 94,691 vessel histories (with 16,234 images and 13,917 records of ship wrecks and marine disasters).

Vessel records are currently being reviewed and updated with more than 45,000 processed so far this year (2024).

The mariner and naval biography database has also been updated and now contains 58,599 entries (with 3996 images).

Thanks to Ray Warren who is beginning a long process of filling gaps in the photo record of vessel histories in the database. Ray has been documenting the ships of Vancouver Harbour for more than 60 years.

Thanks to contributor Mike Rydqvist McCammon for the hundreds of photos he has contributed to illustrate British Columbia’s floating heritage.

My very special thanks to our volunteer IT adviser, John Eyre, who (since 2021) has modernized, simplified and improved the update process for the databases into semi–automated processes. His participation has been vital to keeping the Nauticapedia available to our netizens.

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