1 March 2014 Inside This Edition February RBCM Staff Reports February Presentation Part 1: Bill Chimko, Risk Management, Security Services and Business Continuity February Presentation Part 2: Leslie Johnson, Learning Team Docent Excursion: Docent Connect, Vancouver Public Aquarium Docent Day Trip: Christ Church Cathedral Discovery and Recovery: BC’s First Dinosaur Books I Have Enjoyed: Marguerite Gayfer Allow Me to Introduce From the Editor’s Desk Docent Association Calendar and DIrectory SEE YOU AT THE NEXT MEETING Christa Cato, Buyer and Special Proj- ects Royal BC Museum Foundation will give a presentation on Behind the Scenes of the Museum Gift Shop Saturday March 29 1:30 to 3:00 The Tracker organ from Austria with its 4000 pipes surrounds the rose window of Christ Church Ca- thedral. Photo: A Graber
Transcript
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March 2014
Inside This Edition
February RBCM Staff Reports
February Presentation Part 1: Bill Chimko, Risk
Management, Security Services and Business
Continuity
February Presentation Part 2: Leslie Johnson,
Learning Team
Docent Excursion: Docent Connect, Vancouver
Public Aquarium
Docent Day Trip: Christ Church Cathedral
Discovery and Recovery: BC’s First Dinosaur
Books I Have Enjoyed: Marguerite Gayfer
Allow Me to Introduce
From the Editor’s Desk
Docent Association Calendar and DIrectory
SEE YOU AT THE NEXT MEETING
Christa Cato, Buyer and Special Proj-ects Royal BC Museum Foundation will give a presentation on Behind the Scenes of the Museum Gift Shop
Saturday March 291:30 to 3:00
The Tracker organ from Austria with its 4000 pipes surrounds the rose window of Christ Church Ca-thedral.Photo: A Graber
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Holli Hodgson, Volunteer Services Man-ager, reminded us that recognition comes up in April and that an update will be in the volunteer newsletter. Invitations will start coming out at the beginning of March and the lists of those receiving recognition will be posted soon.
Emails have been sent out regarding op-portunities for participation in two pro-grams, the Spring Break Kids Camps and Vikings. You may respond to these by email, in person or a list will be posted in the Volunteer Lounge.
A question was asked as to whether or not carts will be used for the Vikings exhibit. Chris explained that the exhibit will include interactives which are dynamic and engag-ing. There will be no carts per se but do-cent rovers will be placed at the interactive stations.
Holli indicated that 4 copies of Jack Lohm-an’s book Museums at the Crossroads? are now available in the Volunteer Library.
Janet MacDonald, Head of Learning, re-ports that with respect to Our Living Lan-guages exhibit, she will meet soon with the Cultural Resource Management Director at U of Vic and representatives of the In-digenous Languages Department to dis-cuss plans to bring student-teacher candi-dates to act as exhibit hosts. The budget will likely support weekend host coverage as well as special cultural events through the year. Janet reported on the first Swap Cafe honouring International Mother Lan-guages Day attended by about 50 people. A panel included members of the First Peo-ples Cultural Council. John Elliott, Chair of
the Council, provided a welcome and ex-plained the initiatives that are taking place to revitalize First Peoples’ languages. It was a great way to start the Swap Cafe series and an opportunity for the First Na-tions to bring their stories to the museum.
With respect to the Gold Rush Exhibit con-ceptual designs have been approved and will be soon ready to go to the designers. Work is underway to develop the learning strategies for this exhibit starting with de-veloping learning objectives then looking at interactives and later outreach strategies.
A comment was raised by a docent regard-ing participation of First Nations people in their own cultural programs and laments the fact that with docents stepping away from involvement in these programs there is now no opportunity for new docents to learn about First Nations culture and no opportunities for others to further their learning. The question was raised as to how this might be addressed. Janet re-sponded by explaining the importance of “clearing the slate” and opening the doors to the First Nations to allow them to inter-pret themselves. She emphasized the im-portance of demonstrating visually what is best practice. Collaborations might follow later.
Janet explained that discussions surround-ing the whole question of future docent programs and what form they will take are under discussion. Part of Leslie’s mandate is to look at docent programs so we will be hearing more about this. She also encour-ages us to take advantage of the programs that are taking place such as the Mother Languages event that she mentioned ear-lier and the presentation this evening at the museum which will feature two palaeontol-ogist from the Peace Region Palaeontol-
RBCM Staff Reports
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Regarding the Docent Advisory Group or DAG, plans have been formulated for school programs for next year. Further dis-cussion will take place on this plan at the next DAG meeting on Thursday March 6. This meeting is open to all docents..
One member commented that she finds the school programs in their current form work well for her. She likes the com-pressed and definite time frame for train-ing and program delivery. And the involve-ment of contract workers brings fresh and creative ideas. Chris enjoyed hearing that. He further explained that the notion of hav-ing pilot programs is to try some things and see what works. A lot of it is working. It’s not perfect but everyone is trying to use the limits in a creative way. Chris explained that a pilot project is taking place as he speaks with a pre-school class in the Nat-ural History gallery where the youngsters are introduced to the gallery with different activities. Bobby Orr is leading this effort. Chris reported seeing firsthand the positive responses and connections being made from these little people.
To connect with the earlier discussion of bringing First Nations voices to museum programs, Chris pointed out that the Won-der Sunday held in November on the Ca-noes Theme events took place in both the Modern History Gallery and the First Peoples gallery with a performance done by artist-in-residence, Lindsay Delaronde who is First Nations and some activities took place within the First Peoples gallery. Chris was guided into this endeavour by Lindsay.
ogy Research Centre.
Chris O’Connor, School and Family Programs expressed appreciation for in-viting staff to the meeting and to the do-cent executive team for their involvement. He appreciates the timing of the docent meetings which usually take place imme-diately after Wonder Sundays. Yester-day’s Wonder Sunday’s theme was Towns. Chris acknowledged the people who were involved. This event was particularly sat-isfying in that it grew out of an idea to con-nect with some of the smaller museums in the province. Chris sent out the word to some 30 different museums to see if they wanted to participate in the Wonder Sun-day on Towns. Response was positive and ten museums participated. Each sent in an activity and Chris in turn sent the ac-tivities out to the other museums. Some of those responding then held their own Wonder Sunday under the title of a Provin-cial Wonder Sunday. At the local Wonder Sunday, all ten activities led by volunteer docents were incorporated into the day - a way of highlighting the events happening around the province. Those participating included Chilliwack, Kelowna, Kamloops, Heritage Park, Prince George and Ross-land. Rossland Museum had local kids write letters to Victoria kids about a topic they are very familiar with, perhaps more so than kids here, snow. These were dis-played and the Victoria participants wrote letters back choosing the topic of oceans. Those letters were dropped in the mailbox in Old Town and are now on their way to Rossland.
School programs are proving to be really fun as well. A display case on the second floor near the entrance to the Wildlife Pho-to exhibit showed the work of classes par-ticipating in the Heritage Program.
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Bill’s elaborate title, he explained, just means if something goes wrong in the building he is involved. Risk management involves defining what the threats to the building are and defending against them. Security services is provided by contract and managed by the Head of Security for the Commissionaires. Business continuity involves keeping the business running dur-ing an emergency and getting it back on track after.
With respect to fires, Bill brought home the importance of having emergency proce-dures in place and yearly fire drills by show-ing photos and discussing the ramifications of the three fires that have happened at the museum over the years. He also dem-onstrated the importance of having heat detection systems in place in certain areas and in particular Helmcken House. The glass on the east side of Helmcken House is covered with a material that reduces the light entering the building. The very so-phisticated Italian glass on these windows can bend very easily. The heat from the summer sun passing over these windows can sometimes be so intense as to bend the glass enough that it can magnify the sunlight which in turn can cause combus-tion. Fortunately, when this happened one time, it set off the heat detectors before it caused flames.
The museum has a two stage fire alarm system. The pre-alarm or intermittent stage is a warning to get people together. It does not require evacuation. The alarm
sounds intermittently at 20 beats per min-ute. It will count down for five minutes be-fore either going off or going to the next stage which is a full alarm. A full alarm means evacuate the building immediately to the dinosaur footprints at the front of the building. School groups gather at Thun-derbird Park.
Those in wheelchairs will gather at refuge areas which are the spaces by the eleva-tors outside of the glass doors and wait for security.
With respect to earthquakes Bill showed graphic images of the damage caused by the MMI level 7 earthquake in Christ-church, New Zealand in 2010. MMI levels are based on the observed effects of earth-quakes. In our area, a level 5 earthquake, comparable to the Nisqually earthquake of a few years back which knocked things off shelves and moved Seattle about 1 inch closer to Victoria, has a 99% chance of happening within a 30 year span. A level 7 earthquake like the one in Christchurch New Zealand has a 32% chance of hap-pening here over a 50 year period. And a level 9 quake has a 17% chance of occur-ring within a 100 year span. This would be the Cascadia subduction zone nega-tive thrust that would generate a tsunami. Earthquakes are the single greatest threat that we in this area face.
Christchurch is very similar in many re-spects to Victoria and we would expect many similar results should we have an earthquake of similar magnitude. The earthquake in Christchurch resulted in many surprising cultural impacts. People have flashlights hanging at the ready. They shower with the bathroom door open. In some household after children have fallen asleep in bed they are carried downstairs
February Presentation Part 1: Bill Chimko, Risk Management, Security Services and Business Continuity “Preparing for Emergencies - What Volunteers Need to Know”
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docent programs.
Recruitment and training are done in var-ied ways. Some museums accept anyone who walks through the door. Some inter-view and put candidates through a vetting system. With respect to training some of-fer courses and lectures where the docents can attend for free and the public is invited but pays a fee creating a revenue stream which goes back into docent programs. Some training programs have a mentoring system with experienced volunteers men-toring new docents.
Docent websites are common to many of the large institutions. Training packages, videos and other resources are made available online. The website then be-comes a one stop training resource. Cre-ation of websites are sometimes collabo-rations between staff and volunteers as at the California Academy of Sciences. This particular website requires about 20 hours per week by two people to maintain. The barrier that is most commonly experienced in developing websites is fear of new tech-nology. At the Academy of Sciences a carefully structured system of shift meet-ings were organized so that everyone had a chance to be introduced to the use of the website in a comfortable setting.
Leslie made a site visit to the San Francis-co Zoo where biofact stations are used to engage visitors. These stations are carts that are facilitated by docents. Their defi-nition of biofact is anything that was once living and is now preserved. Animals that die at the zoo are carefully processed and preserved and become part of the educa-tion collection. Live specimens graduate from the animal department to the edu-cation department when they die. The volunteer who looks after the processing
to couches. Beds have been moved closer to the door. Overhead light fixtures have been removed leaving just bare lightbulbs. Many homes cannot be insured and are therefore, not sellable.
The basics for earthquake preparedness include securing things that may be in danger of falling, having an emergency kit ready and knowing two ways to get out of any building.
If an earthquake occurs drop down, take cover under a desk or table or at the base of a corner of a wall. Face away from win-dows. If you are under a table hold onto it. Do not take cover near a door in case it suddenly swings open or closed. Remain calm and count. Evacuate to Thunderbird Park.
In October 2013, Leslie attended the Na-tional Docent Symposium in San Francis-co, hosted by the Asian Art Museum of San Francisco. The symposium is a biennial event which brings together docents and museum staff from all over North America to share their common interests in docent education, exchange ideas and learn from each other.
It is Leslie’s impression that a lot is invest-ed in docent programs throughout the mu-seums in the US. Training ranges from 5 weeks to 3 years. A cohesive effort is evi-dent between museum staff and docents in the way of time, staff and resources for
February Presentation Part 1: Leslie Johnson, Schools and Families Learning Facilitator “National Docent Symposium San Francisco - A Peek into Docent Programs at Fellow Museums in the US”
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tours are 45 minutes.
Leslie had the privilege to hear Nina Si-mon. Nina took over the Santa Cruz Mu-seum of Art and History when it was fail-ing badly. Within a year she rescued the museum from financial ruin and it has not looked back. Nina is an advocate for en-gaging the community thoroughly and ac-tively in the museum experience. She is the creator of Museum 2.0 where she ex-plores ways that web philosophies can be applied to museum program design. She is the author of The Participatory Museum a guide to working with the community and visitors to make museums more dynamic, relevant and essential. Check her out on this link. You will be inspired.
h t t p : / / w w w . y o u t u b e . c o m /watch?v=aIcwIH1vZ9w
Leslie’s docent meeting presentation only covered some of the highlights of the sym-posium. A full written report is available in the Volunteer Lounge.
Check out the link to the National Docent Symposium website where all 2013 pre-sentations are posted. Go to the naviga-tion bar at the top of the home page and choose SYMPOSIA:
http://www.nationaldocents.org
and preserving is known as the “Duchess of Death”. One of our own docents, with tongue in cheek, speculated that perhaps the skull in the photo was one of the old docents who had graduated to the educa-tion collection. The zoo provides 10 week training and the commitment is for 10 hours per month.
The Heard Museum in Phoenix is a muse-um dedicated to educating about the arts, heritage and ways of life of the Indigenous peoples of the Americas with emphasis on the tribes of the Southwest. The museum represents 560 native communities. It has 100 docents. The museum recruits ev-eryone and does not interview or have a vetting process. Eighty percent of its vol-unteers are older white women. Some col-laboration with First Peoples takes place. They do have paid Native American in-terpreters. This museum offers courses for docent training which are open to the public who pay. Training is weekly for 8 months and each year they offer 3 continu-ing education events for docents.
The Asian Art Museum of San Francisco is a museum which represent 40 Asian coun-tries and covers a historical time span of 6000 years. It has over one million visitors each year with 45% being non-Caucasian. This museum has 150 active docents. In-take for volunteers takes place once ev-ery 3 years. It takes 3 years to become a trained docent with training that includes lectures, interpretive training, exams, prac-tice and shadowing in the galleries, creat-ing tours and peer review and evaluation. Sixty-five percent of those who are accept-ed to training complete it. Some courses are offered to the public which becomes a revenue source. Because the collection is so vast, tours are centred around only 20 objects each connected to a theme. These
are repeatedly reminded not to do so, visitors constantly lean beyond safe-ty barriers to gain better shot angles. Should items fall from these camera buffs’ hands and be consumed by sea life in the tanks the effects can be dev-astating. Curious seagulls also tend to ignore such warnings, posing a con-stant nuisance problem for staff.
2. The larger sea mammals such as the belugas, porpoises and otters that we watched interacting with their trainers and caretakers are all in the Aquarium because they were rescued from their natural habitats. Either they were in-jured or found ailing – usually following run-ins with boats or hunters.
We all found the opportunity to connect and share information and experiences with docents from other museums and art galleries most interesting and extremely enjoyable. We look forward to next year’s Docents Connect.
On March 3, 2014, five RBCM docents attended the annual Docents Connect which was held this year at the Vancouver Aquarium in Stanley Park, Vancouver, BC. It was a treat to meet docents from other institutions on the lower mainland and to see behind the scenes of such a wonderful institution. The Vancouver Aquarium is a non-profit organization led by a Board of twenty di-rectors. It requires over four hundred staff members and more than nine hundred vol-unteers to cater to the needs of the million plus people who visit there annually. The roles of the aquarium guides – both paid and volunteer – differ from those of docents at RBCM. Our volunteer guides constantly reminded us of two key factors:
1. Due to the fact that the exhibits there are home to thousands of forms of liv-ing aquatic animals and vegetation, all staff – including the volunteers – must be ever vigilant to the safety and well-being of both the exhibits and those coming to see them. Even though they
Docent Excursion: “Docents Connect”, The Vancouver Aquarium By Jocelyn Skrlac, Local Tour Co-ordinator Photos: Julia Burns
L to R: Mavis Begg, Jocelyn Skrlac, Betty Thacker, Terry Engels, Julia Burns
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Many of us have spent numerous hours at-tending services and events held in Christ Church Cathedral unaware of several of its wonderful ‘secrets’. Next time you’re in the Cathedral look for the following:• The little stone robin nestled atop the
capital of a right hand column on the transept aisle. This whimsical carving replicates an actual little bird that, from its lofty perch, oversaw much of the ca-thedral’s original construction.
• The intricate black hand-hammered wrought iron railing near the altar area. Originally it was specially crafted in Britain for the Westminster Abbey wed-ding of King George VI to Queen Eliza-beth, his Consort (a.k.a. “The Queen Mother”).
• The magnificent organ situated since the 1990’s around the rose window above the main entrance to the Ca-thedral. Though this custom designed Tracker organ from Austria looks simple in style, its 4000 pipes make it a very complex instrument.
• The pulpit decorated with its ornately-carved dogwood design is a single piece of wood made from the trunk of a 400 year old English Oak tree.
Because Feb-ruary 10 was BC Family Day docents invited their partners and friends to join us for our guided tour of Victoria’s Christ Church C a t h e d r a l . Th i r ty - three of us enjoyed
the fascinating tour led by longtime church member, Mr. David Barlow.
Owned by the Anglican Diocese of British Columbia, the cathedral was designed in the 1890’s in the Northern European Goth-ic Revival-style popular at that time. It opened in 1929 and was originally intend-ed to be a much bigger building. The area extending beyond the altar which contains huge spectacularly coloured and dazzling-ly bright stained glass windows was only completed in 1985.
Docent Local Tour: Christ Church Cathedral By Jocelyn Skrlac, Local Tour Co-ordinator Photos: Aki Graber
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Discovery and Recovery of BC’s First Dinosaur: Report on Presentation by Richard McCrea and Lisa Buckley, Co- Curators, Peace Region Palaeontology Research Centre By Aki Graber Photos: By Permission Richard T McCrea
I have never been to the coal-mining com-munity of Tumbler Ridge - nor has it ever been on my bucket list. But it is now! On Monday, February 24, the Royal BC Mu-seum invited co-curators Richard McCrea and Lisa Buckley of the Peace Region Pal-aeontology Research Centre to give a pre-sentation on the extraordinary story behind the discovery and recovery of BC’s first di-nosaur.
Prior to 2000, the prevail-ing opinion was that there were no dinosaurs in BC. In the sum-mer of 2000 all of that changed. Two carefree youngsters from Tumbler Ridge - Daniel Helm, 8, and Mark Turner, 11- were tubing down Flat Bed Creek, when they were tossed out of their tube, forcing them to clamber up the
creek bank to regroup. There they no-ticed some indentations in the rocks and proceeded to imagine they were palaeon-tologists, pretending the curious marks to be dinosaur tracks. With some skepticism, Daniel’s father, Charles, counselled the
boys to find a way to verify if they really were dinosaur tracks. The rest, as they say, is history. The boys’ discovery made national headlines.
This coinciden-tally happened at a time when Tumbler Ridge was experi-encing a seri-ous economic downturn; the future looked bleak with two mines closing and people leaving the town. But inter-est on the part of residents in looking for more dinosaur tracks lead to further finds and shortly afterwards the discovery of dinosaur bones. Several sig-nificant finds followed and in 2003 BC’s first dinosaur excavation was started along with the establishment of the Peace Re-gion Palaeontology Research Centre or the PRPRC.
Richard McCrea, an expert on dinosaur tracks, opened the presentation by de-scribing the finds of tracks and trackways along the eastern edge of British Colum-bia. The oldest tracks are from the late Ju-rassic period, 150 millions years ago and the most recent, from the late Cretaceous period, 65 million years ago. The tracks discovered by Daniel and Mark are that of a 95 million year old ankylosaur, an ar-moured plant-eating dinosaur.
Richard McCrea
Lisa Buckley
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be found. Perhaps an explanation for the presence of the more than 60 tyrannosaur teeth will be found. And perhaps, too, some light will be shed on the presence of the microtectons found in the debris re-moved from the excavation. Analysis of these microtectons indicate they originate from meteors. So we will wait with great interest as this story unfolds.
For more information: Tumbler Ridge – The Fossils, Lisa G. Buckley and Richard T. McCrea, 2013
Visit the PRPRC website:http://www.prprc.com
I got several books at Christmas so I thought I’d share them with you. The first one wasn’t a gift. I got it myself. This was The War That Ended Peace. The surpris-ing info that I got from this book was that there is no such thing as Peace. It’s a long and heavy tome, and best taken in small sections so you can digest the facts and look at a map to discover what country is being discussed. Then you realize what stupid mistakes were made by those in power.
I don’t read many novels (except detec-tive stories) so the nearest to a novel was an Alice Munro collection. If you’ve never read anything of hers, you’ll realize after-wards why she has achieved such fame. One story I found intriguing was “Run-away”. (Unfortunately a temporary puppy chewed the cover.) Amazing how you can feel involved with a character in just a few
The establishment of the PRPRC led to systematic efforts, starting in 2004, to find more dinosaurs. In 2007 whilst on a short prospecting hike in a previously unexplored area, a mere kilometre into their hike Lisa, Richard and fellow palaeontologist Fed-erico Fanti of Italy found a theropod toe bone and at the base of a cliff, a few more bones. Another kilometre away they could see several hills with steep slopes. At the base of those slopes several tracks were found. From there a small distance away they found the first exposed bone, then two, followed by several more. Nearly 50 kilograms of bone were found! From there they tracked the bones to a ten metre hori-zontal section where in situ bones were exposed on the side of the hill. This was enough evidence to establish an explor-atory test pit in the following year which in turn confirmed that a full excavation was warranted.
The full excavation launched in 2009 con-firmed this to be an adult hadrosaur or duckbilled dinosaur, articulated from the middle of its tail to the front of its hips. In 2010 work continued with the discovery of several ‘shed’ teeth scattered about the site which were found to be from juvenile tyrannosaurs! As work continued it was found that the skeleton was complete up to around the shoulder region. The hip bone indicated this as one of the crested had-rosaurs. By 2012 the skeleton was com-pletely undercut and jacketed with layers of burlap and plaster but it was not removed until the summer of 2013. The skeleton is estimated to weigh close to 3000 kilo-grams and is about 50 percent complete. It would have measured about 10 metres from head to tail.
Work will continue at this site with the hopes that one day the head or heads will
Books I Have Enjoyed By Marguerite Gayfer, Docent, Helmcken House and School Programs
If you have been reading the last few news-letters you may know Jocelyn Skrlac as the Local Tour Co-ordinator for the Docent Association. Last October she was asked what she does as a docent and this was her reply. “I volunteer at Helmken House and St Ann’s Schoolhouse – both during the Christmas school programs and the summer openings to the public. I also en-joy helping out at Wonder Sundays and have had the pleasure of a couple of Night at the Museum hap-penings. I’m cur-rently part of the DAG and also a GAWG where three of us are designing a learn-ing station based on the theme of “One Hundred Years Ago; The Hundred Mile Diet” which compares the differences and similarities between the ways in which people in this area fed themselves in yes-teryear vs today. Some weeks I find that I wouldn’t mind be-ing able to find a cot in the Museum’s base-ment so as to save time travelling back and forth from my home every day or so! I ab-solutely love this place!”
Those volunteers who did the WorldHost training last month might agree that we could add “ambassador extraordinaire” for the Royal BC Museum to Jocelyn’s volun-teer bio.
pages.
My husband and I each got a copy of Bill Bryson’s latest work One Summer. He writes interesting travel-type stories; we have a whole row of his books. They are about different areas. This one is about America in 1927 (an auspicious year!) but he also wrote one when he was in Eng-land.
Another anthology I got is called This is the Story of a Happy Marriage. Ann Patchett is a writer who charts her life as she learned how to write. It was very interesting. Her studies in the craft of writing and her career in contributing to magazines show how she developed her skills.
The book I’m reading at the moment is Chris Hadfield’s An Astronaut’s Guide to Life. I was afraid that the publicity sur-rounding the launch of this chronicle was not leading me to find it interesting. But I am enjoying it.
I wonder how many of you know of the Mit-ford family? I was also given Sisters, the lives of these girls, 6 in all, plus one broth-er. Unity was a Fascist and great admirer of Adolf Hitler. She tried to commit suicide the day war was declared between Britain and Germany, and remained an invalid till she eventually died. Her sister Diana mar-ried Mosley, the leader of the British Fas-cists and was imprisoned at the outbreak of war. Jessica was a Communist; Nancy was a best-selling novelist. Deborah be-came Duchess of Devonshire. Pamela was also a supporter of Hitler. Fascinating.
Allow Me to Introduce... By Aki Graber
Jocelyn SkrlacPhoto: Terry Jabusch
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Please note that all links and email ad-dresses in the newsletters are now active. To open the links just hover your mouse over the addresses until a hand appears, then click.
Sincere thanks to Jocelyn Skrlac, Margue-rite Gayfer and Julia Burns for your contri-butions this month. Submissions for future issues are most welcome. Please send your contributions for the April edition by Wed April 9. Aki
Saturday Mar 29 1:30 - 3:00Mon Apr 28 AGM 10:00 am - Noon
