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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: November 2, 2024
The vessel database has been updated and is now holding 94,538 vessel histories (with 16,140 images and 13,887 records of ship wrecks and marine disasters). The mariner and naval biography database has also been updated and now contains 58,599 entries (with 3989 images). Vessel records are currently being reviewed and updated with more than 35,000 processed so far this year.
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.
Also my special thanks to my volunteer content accuracy checker, John Spivey of Irvine CA USA, who continues (almost every day) to proof read thousands of Nauticapedia vessel histories and provided input to improve more than 14,000 entries. His attention to detail has been a huge unexpected bonus in improving and updating the vessel detail content.