The Heritage Park Museum stands as a living history museum that is dedicated to weaving a narrative that accurately portrays the past of the City of Terrace and it has been around since 1983.
The land on which the museum resides was once farm land before it eventually was used as the home for a military hospital during World War Two.
And coinciding with the hiring of the museum’s current Curator and Executive Director, Quinn Beblow, are some changes made at the site in recent times that Beblow described in more detail;
“We have an Indigenous Nisga’a carver, Geo McKay, doing his art on site. We have also added more interpretive and engaging elements to our exhibits. We now have kiosk that takes credit and debit at the front, and we’re really trying to modernize and become a more inclusive space to Indigenous stories and other diverse stories within the area.”
Beblow also explained where her ideas for modernizing the museum came from;
“Since starting my position here, I really wanted to grow my education, to actually be able to make those changes. So since then, I’ve gone through a year long collections management certification through the University of Victoria. And I’m halfway through getting my masters of museum education through UBC. So a lot of those changes have been inspired by the education I’m pursuing right now.”
Most of the changes are still getting implemented but despite that fact, Beblow confirmed that even more changes are being planned right now;
“I want to build our relationships with the Kitselas and the Kitsumkalum and Kermode Friendship Society and hopefully have more Indigenous perspectives on the themes in our museum. And I also want to have projects like expansion and creating a new entranceway and cleaning up a lot of our storage spaces. We have a new climate controlled storage space for our artifacts to professionalize our collections.”