NOW

OPEN

MAKING HISTORY TOGETHER

About The Exploration Place

Past, Present, and Future

Making History Together

Since we opened as The Exploration Place in 2001, we have welcomed over 2 million visitors, hosted countless events and exhibits, and have won awards at all levels for our programming. We have built deep and meaningful relationships with the Lheidli T’enneh Nation, the Regional District of Fraser-Fort George, the City of Prince George, and most importantly, with all of you.

Our
Mission

To provide learning opportunities that foster an understanding of significant past and current issues shaping our community by linking experiences within the Regional District of Fraser-Fort George to the world in a unique, participatory Museum of regional history, science, and technology.

Our Core Values

Community is central to an individual’s understanding of themselves and their relationship with the world.
“Pride of Place” is necessary for an individual to embrace their community.
A Community is defined by its inclusiveness, fairness, intercultural, and environmental respect.
A life-long relationship with the Arts is important to personal identity, self-expression, and quality of life.
Such a relationship begins at birth and should encompass all aspects of arts, culture, and heritage.

Our Commitments

The Museum identifies the following commitments as priorities for its activities:

Youth
Respect for natural environment of the region
Institutional self-sufficiency
Community identity
Regional economic development
Life-long enjoyment of museums
Inclusiveness, fairness, intercultural respect
Excellence in museum services

Read the DEIA Statement

Leadership Team

The Exploration Place Museum + Science Centre is owned and operated by the Fraser-Fort George Museum Society, a non-profit society and registered charity.

Tracy Calogheros

Chief Executive Officer

250.981.5910

Email Tracy

Alyssa Leier

Curator

250.981.5913

Email Alyssa

John Calogheros

vp – Facilities

250.981.5912

Email John

Barbara Laass

Vp – finance

250.612.8209

Email Barb

Robyn Curtis

VP – Development & Partnerships

250.981.5915

Email Robyn

Alyssa Gerwing

VP – Operations

250.981.5915

Email Alyssa

Management

Jeni Arnott

Manager – Food Programs & Services

Steve Carras

Manager – VISITOR SERVICES

Shailina Sarrazin

Manager – PROGRAMMING

Board of Trustees

Helena Trudel

PRESIDENT

Clarisse Halbert

Treasurer

Kathryn Louro

VICE PRESIDENT

Chris King

SECRETARY

Peter James

PAST President

Elissa Gagnon

TRUSTEE

Brittany Smith

Trustee

Chuck Nisbett

Trustee

Dr. Todd Whitcombe

Trustee

Vacant

Lheidli T’enneh Nation Representative

Susan Kelly

Trustee

Heather Sanford

Trustee

Lyn Hall

Trustee

Timeline + History

Of the Exploration Place

The Exploration Place Museum + Science Centre is an anchor in the cultural stream of our community. Steeped in ancient history, the north-central interior of British Columbia has stories to tell of its ancestors, geology, flora, and fauna; stories that have shaped who we are today and what our community will look like in the future.

Our Museum is a waypoint on our collective journey, a place to revisit our past and share our successes while we dream about tomorrow. Our youngest visitors are first carried through the front doors by parents and grandparents, returning over and over as they explore the world around them and find their place within it.

Click Here for Our Full History

Land Acknowledgement

The Exploration Place sits on a place of great historical and cultural significance.

We gratefully acknowledge that the Museum is located on the unceded territory of the Lheidli T’enneh First Nation.

Lheidli T’enneh means “the people who live where the two rivers flow together,” a name that emphasizes the deep connections between Lheidli T’enneh culture and place…

DEIA Statement

The Exploration Place’s mandate includes the priorities of inclusiveness, fairness, and intercultural respect. The Exploration Place acknowledges, honours, and celebrates the diverse and unique range of communities, ideas, experiences, approaches, and perspectives.

Where we go from here.

The Exploration Place is seeking a consulting team to help create a strategic plan that will guide our operations over the next three years. As we move into a significantly altered operating reality in terms of a post-COVID world and a new facility while recognizing the impacts of Truth and Reconciliation, social justice, and climate change, we aim for this three-year-plan to end with the establishment of our “new normal”.

Deadline extended to February 12, 2023

request for proposal

Timeline & History of The Exploration Place

The Fraser-Fort George Regional Museum began operating as a Class A Museum in 1981, with the Fraser-Fort George Museum Society officially designated in 1958. After temporary homes in multiple different venues, the Museum acquired a permanent home in 1972. The new Museum was built as a reconstruction of Fort George on its original site in Fort George Park (now Lheidli T'enneh Memorial Park). Upon discovering that the original "Fort" consisted of two small log buildings, a trading post and a residence, committee members embarked on a more exciting (albeit fake) version containing a full stockade with two bastions, based loosely on Fort Langley and Fort St. James. Opened by the Governor General on May 15, 1972, the new Museum cost $125,000. It boasted a full environmental system with temperature and humidity controls and ultraviolet shields on the lighting.

Many stories have been told of the fire that destroyed the Museum around 3:00 am on the morning of December 6, 1975. What is certain is that the fire broke out in the caretaker's quarters. Despite all attempts, it took the entire building and collection to ashes, with the exception of the taxidermy collection, which had been sent out for cleaning.

The Fraser-Fort George Regional Museum was ultimately rebuilt in the Park with emphasis on enhanced fire protection and a modern-looking building. The Fort George Museum Association became the Fraser-Fort George Museum Society, incorporated in 1976. Construction began in 1977 and was completed in 1980 at the cost of $780,000, featuring state-of-the-art environmental controls, fire suppression, and intruder detection systems. Once the building was complete, a call went out to the community to rebuild the collection. The new Museum opened on Dominion Day 1981. It underwent a facility expansion in 2001 and has been operating since as The Exploration Place Museum & Science Centre, the largest cultural institution in BC's Northern region.

STEAM education is becoming an ever-increasing priority. The Museum has run summer science and technology camps since 1996, started a STEAM-based after-school program in 2001, and a STEAM-based preschool in 2007. With over 17 successful years of northern British Columbia outreach under our belts, we have continued to offer outreach activities into BC's entire northern region, now branded as the Symbiosis STEAM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Art + Design, and Mathematics) Ecosystem. We have scaled our efforts significantly through our partnership with Science World. In 2015, we signed a Memorandum of Understanding with Science World British Columbia to work together as strategic partners for outreach into northern British Columbia. In 2017, the STEAM Ecosystem (a province-wide network of people, resources, and technology all aimed to bring both formal and informal education together to cultivate equitable access to STEAM learning for all learners across the province) was born. Prince George became the first pilot community for Symbiosis, managed by us at The Exploration Place. As of 2019, we were the designated Symbiosis Regional Hub, and as such mentored several other pilot communities throughout British Columbia, while also conducting broad-scale outreach into small, rural, remote, and Indigenous communities in our province that would not ordinarily have access to the resources and experiences that we have to offer here in Prince George.

The emphasis has increased concerning Indigenous artifacts and repatriation and the desire of First Nations to have agency over their own heritage. Today the Museum acts as the official repository for the Lheidli T'enneh First Nation, with a Memorandum of Understanding signed between the two parties in 2017. The goal of this MOU is to protect and preserve the cultural assets of the Lheidli T'enneh, sharing traditions from their perspective while establishing a protocol for access, research, display, preservation, and collection of Lheidli objects and stories. In 2017, The Exploration Place and the Lheidli T'enneh First Nation received the Governor General's History Award for Excellence in Community Programming for the permanent gallery Hodul'eh-a: A Place of Learning. The gallery is a learning place for community members, with open programming space to allow for knowledge transfer, research, cultural expression, and healing.

As an interactive museum and science centre, we closed our doors in March 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic and were the first facility in our city to do so. We seized on this time of change and transformation to recreate our visitors' experiences upon our reopening with shifts in our curatorial focus and programming, as well as a building-wide renovation and rebranding. This shift reflects an exciting new vision, adapted to the future while strengthening our learning from the past and present.

We have been tapped by national, provincial, and even international organizations to participate in task forces, advocacy, and board committees to work through not just COVID-19 as it relates to our industry but also systemic racism and climate change.

We reopened our doors to the public on October 29, 2022.

Land Acknowledgement

Lheidli T'enneh means "the people who live where the two rivers flow together," a name that emphasizes the deep connections between Lheidli T'enneh culture and place. Lheidli T'enneh Memorial Park encompasses the historic Lheidli T'enneh cemetery and is the site of the original village site of Lheidli. In this place, for at least nine thousand years, the Lheidli T'enneh have met the challenges of their environment and followed the rhythms of the seasons.

We have been actively working for over two decades to build and strengthen meaningful relationships with this land, our community, and with the people who have occupied and continue to occupy this territory. As such, we embrace the responsibility not only to acknowledge the significance of our location but also to tell a more complete and inclusive story of our region's history. The Museum has worked alongside the Lheidli T'enneh to protect and preserve their cultural assets and to share their long and rich history and traditions from their perspective. From our exhibits and programming to our engagement in repatriation projects, we are committed to working in partnership with the Lheidli T'enneh and other First Nations to strengthen our region's connection to the Indigenous community, history, land, language, and culture.

Our commitment to learn and teach is ongoing. We recognize that friendships are reciprocal and must be continuously tended. The trust, understanding, and friendship established between the Museum and the Lheidli T'enneh will continue to ensure that the Museum is a place where cultural learning and practice transfers yesterday's knowledge to tomorrow's leaders in a way that both respects traditions and celebrates our collective futures.

DEIA Statement

The Exploration Place’s mandate includes the priorities of inclusiveness, fairness, and intercultural respect. The Exploration Place acknowledges, honours, and celebrates the diverse and unique range of communities, ideas, experiences, approaches, and perspectives. As such, The Exploration Place pledges to embrace cultural differences and advance equity, access, and social justice as the fundamental foundations of our work. We are committed to eliminating discrimination, ensuring equitable treatment, and promoting accessibility at all organizational levels, our curatorial practices, our physical building, and all of our programming. We commit to diversity on our Board of Trustees, staff team, volunteers, partners, collaborators, and audiences. The Exploration Place looks to be a leader, modelling inclusiveness and diversity throughout the Regional District of Fraser-Fort George.

When everyone is welcome, respected, and included, and when all can fully and actively participate in our work both present and future, The Exploration Place, our members, and our society will be stronger, more successful, more caring, and more just.

Ball Python

Juju joined our Ambassador team during our closure. Ball pythons are shy by nature, but with some time and effort, they learn to trust their caregivers. She is still a bit hesitant but is slowly starting to feel more comfortable around people. In the wild, you can find ball pythons throughout the grasslands and open forests of West and Central Africa. As the most popular snake species kept as a pet worldwide, most people have had the pleasure of seeing one of these beautiful animals at some point in their lives. Unfortunately, due to their extreme popularity as pets, one of the greatest threats to this species in terms of conservation is the over-collection of wild populations for distribution in the pet trade. While captive breeding has seen an increase in recent years, most of those sold in the pet trade are still wild-caught, simply because the cost is much lower than that of breeding and raising captive specimens. For this reason, tens of thousands of these animals are collected from the wild and exported from Africa for the pet trade every year. The ball python is one of the smallest species in their genus, reaching maximum lengths of 3-5 feet, with females being larger than their male counterparts. In the wild, these snakes are estimated to live roughly ten years, while in captivity, a lifespan of about 20-30 years is typical. There have been many documented cases of captive individuals living 40-60 years, including one 62-year-old female who mysteriously produced a fertile clutch of eggs despite being housed alone at the Saint Louis Zoo for more than 20 years.

BECOME A COMMUNITY KEEPER

VIDEO

Black-Billed Magpie

Anyone who’s been to the museum in person since 2015 will likely recognize this cheeky bird. Loki has formed unique relationships with many guests and staff alike over the years and definitely isn’t shy about picking favourites. The stimulation of observing and interacting with guests of all ages is something that he certainly enjoys.

Did you know that magpies, a member of the corvid family, are some of the most intelligent birds on the planet? In fact, corvids are some of the most intelligent animals known to exist, with a brain-to-body mass outmatched only by humans, great apes, and aquatic mammals such as dolphins. Magpies have shown the ability to imitate human speech in numerous languages and voices, are capable of tool use, and possess problem-solving ability on par with that of a small human child.

Loki was rescued from a dog attack as a hatchling when he and his siblings fell from their nest. Unfortunately, he was the lone survivor of his brood. Because he is very imprinted on humans, thus not eligible for release into the wild, Loki was brought to live in the museum and was integrated into the Biome as an Animal Ambassador. He has been one of our most interactive and popular Ambassadors ever since. Loki is very intelligent, able to mimic human speech, and performs many different little tricks and games.

BECOME A COMMUNITY KEEPER

NOW

MAKING HISTORY TOGETHER

About The Exploration Place

Past, Present, and Future

Making History Together

OurMission

Our Core Values

Our Commitments

The Museum identifies the following commitments as priorities for its activities:

Leadership Team

Tracy Calogheros

250.981.5910

Alyssa Leier

250.981.5913

John Calogheros

250.981.5912

Barbara Laass

250.612.8209

Robyn Curtis

250.981.5915

Alyssa Gerwing

250.981.5915

Management

Jeni Arnott

Steve Carras

Shailina Sarrazin

Board of Trustees

Helena Trudel

Clarisse Halbert

Kathryn Louro

Chris King

Peter James

Elissa Gagnon

Brittany Smith

Chuck Nisbett

Dr. Todd Whitcombe

Vacant

Susan Kelly

Heather Sanford

Lyn Hall

Timeline + History

Of the Exploration Place

Land Acknowledgement

The Exploration Place sits on a place of great historical and cultural significance.

DEIA Statement

Strategic Plan – Request for Proposal

Where we go from here.

Deadline extended to February 12, 2023

Timeline & History of The Exploration Place

Land Acknowledgement

DEIA Statement

Ball Python

VIDEO

Black-Billed Magpie

Our
Mission