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The Royal British Columbia Museum , 675 Belleville St (museum: daily 9am-5pm; National Geographic IMAX Theatre daily 10am-8pm; museum $9.65, IMAX Theatre $9.50 (double feature $14.50), combined ticket $15.50; museum tel 356-3701 or 1-888/447-7977, IMAX tel 480-4887, www.rbcm1.rbcm.gov.bc.ca ), founded in 1886, is one of the best museums in the Northwest, and regularly rated, by visitors and travel magazine polls, as one of North America's top ten. All conceivable aspects of the province are examined, but the aboriginal peoples section is probably the definitive collection of a much-covered genre, while the natural-history sections - huge re-creations of natural habitats, complete with sights, sounds and smells - are mind-boggling in scope and imagination. Allow at least two trips to take it all in. From the word go - a huge stuffed mammoth in the lobby - you can tell that thought, wit and a lot of money have gone into the museum. Much of the cash must have been sunk into its most popular display, the Open Ocean , a self-contained, in-depth look at the sea and the deep-level ocean. Groups of ten are admitted into a series of tunnels, dark rooms, lifts and mock-ups of submarines at thirty-minute intervals. You take a time-coded ticket and wait your turn, so either arrive early or reckon on seeing the rest of the museum first. Though rather heavy-handed in its "we're-all-part-of-the-cosmic-soup" message, it's still an object lesson in presentation and state-of-the-art museum dynamics. It's also designed to be dark and enclosed, and signs wisely warn you to stay out if you suffer even a twinge of claustrophobia. The first floor contains dioramas , full-scale reconstructions of some of the many natural habitats found in British Columbia. The idea of re-creating shorelines, coastal rainforests and Fraser Delta landscapes may sound far-fetched, yet all are incredibly realistic, down to dripping water and cool, dank atmospheres. Audiovisual displays and a tumult of information accompany the exhibits (the beaver film is worth hunting down), most of which focus attention on the province's 25,600km of coastline, a side of British Columbia usually overlooked in favour of its interior forests and mountains. Upstairs on the second floor is the mother of all the tiny museums of bric-a-brac and pioneer memorabilia in BC. Arranged eccentrically from the present day backwards, it explores every aspect of the province's social history over two centuries in nit-picking detail. Prominently featured are the best part of an early twentieth-century town, complete with cinema and silent films, plus comprehensive displays on logging, mining, the gold rush, farming, fishing and lesser domestic details, all the artefacts and accompanying information being presented with impeccable finesse. Up on the mezzanine third floor is a superb collection of aboriginal peoples' art, culture and history . It's presented in gloomy light, against muted wood walls and brown carpet - precautions intended to protect the fragile exhibits, but which also create a solemn atmosphere in keeping with the tragic nature of many of the displays. The collection divides into two epochs - before and after the coming of Europeans - tellingly linked by a single aboriginal carving of a white man, starkly and brilliantly capturing the initial wonder and weirdness of the new arrivals. Alongside are shamanic displays and carvings of previously taboo subjects, subtly illustrating the first breakdown of the old ways. The whole collection reflects this thoughtful and oblique approach, taking you to the point where smallpox virtually wiped out in one year a culture that was eight millennia in the making. A section on land and reservations is left for last - the issues are contentious even today - and even if you're succumbing to museum fatigue, the arrogance and duplicity of the documents on display will shock you. The highlights in this section are many, but try to make a point of seeing the short film footage In the Land of the War Canoes (1914), the Bighouse and its chants, and the audiovisual display on aboriginal myths and superstition. The National Geographic Theatre in the museum plays host to a huge IMAX screen and a changing programme of special format films. Outside the museum, there's also Thunderbird Park , a strip of grass with a handful of totem poles.
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