EXCITING NEWS

REOPENING
FALL 2022

CHECK BACK

FOR
UPDATES

MAKING HISTORY TOGETHER

About The Exploration Place

Temporarily CLOSED for renovations.

Stay tuned, as we have some sneak peeks planned for you as we work towards our grand reopening.

Find information related to our closure, including updates on the Living Evolution Adaptation & Expansion renovation project, reopening dates, and memberships.

Past, Present, and Future

Making History Together

On March 13, 2020, The Exploration Place Museum & Science Centre closed to the public. We will reopen our doors in the Fall of 2022, with a brand-new, updated Museum experience.

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.

We are taking the unexpected opportunity offered by this closure to renovate our building…

Click Here for more info

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

Click Here to Email Tracy

Alyssa Leier

Curator

250.981.5913

Click Here to Email Alyssa

John Calogheros

vp – Facilities

250.981.5912

Click Here to Email John

Barbara Laass

Vp – finance

250.612.8209

Click Here to Email Barb

Robyn Curtis

VP – Development & Partnerships

250.981.5915

Click Here to Email Robyn

Meet the Team

The faces of The Exploration Place, Origins Kitchen, Elements Retail and our ongoing events and programs. We can’t wait to meet you!

Jaclyn Baxter

Manager – Virtual Community Programs

Jeni Arnott

Manager – Food Programs & Services

Zayn Bismeyer

Retail Manager

Elizabeth Schoenthal

ASSISTANT CURATOR – PALEO/GEOLOGY COLLECTIONS

Chad Hellenius

Assistant Curator – Botany

Josh Seymour

ASSISTANT CURATOR | INDIGENOUS CONTENT

Bailey Holloway

Programming Assistant

Frank Vander Lans

Exhibit Technician

Kaitlyn Liukaitis

Veterinarian

Drew Gilchrist

ANIMAL Keeper

Julian Lachapelle

RETAIL CLERK

Sabrina Paterson

ANIMAL KEEPER

Board of Directors

Peter James

President

Clarisse Halbert

Treasurer

Kathryn Louro

VICE PRESIDENT

Chris King

SECRETARY

Elissa Gagnon

TRUSTEE

Helena Trudel

TRUSTEE

Brittany Smith

Trustee

Chuck Nisbett

Trustee

Helen Buzas

Lheidli T’enneh Nation Representative

Susan Kelly

Trustee

Heather Sanford

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.

Why is the Museum still closed?

On March 13, 2020, The Exploration Place Museum & Science Centre closed to the public due to COVID-19. 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.

We are taking the unexpected opportunity offered by this closure to renovate our building. Our last renovation was in 2000, so it will be exciting to open our doors again with brand new experiences! The Exploration Place is rising to the challenges we've all faced over the past 18 months with an entire rethink of the museum we all know and love.

Further applying the lens of Reconciliation to our planning and decision making, broadening our storytelling to better include the role of underrepresented groups in the post-contact development of the area, tackling climate change in our work and our programs, and ensuring that we can continue to properly serve all of our visitors has resulted in an ambitious renovation project we are calling Living Evolution.

We are working towards a fall reopening. Supply chain delays and trades shortages have extended our closure a bit longer than we had hoped, but we are doing our best to complete the project as soon as possible. We want to thank all of you for your support during this time, as always.

Though our building is physically closed, we are still hard at work, offering virtual and in-person programming in the community, as well as through our new online collections database.

Stay tuned to our social media channels, as we continue to offer sneak peeks planned as we work towards our grand reopening. We are excited to reimagine a community forum that remains relevant, engaging, and fun!

Don't hesitate to get in touch with us if you have any questions or concerns regarding our operation during this temporary closure at info(at)theexplorationplace(dot)com.

Please allow 2-3 business days for us to get back to you.

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 are the designated Symbiosis Regional Hub, and as such will mentor 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.

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.

EXCITING NEWS

CHECK BACK

MAKING HISTORY TOGETHER

About The Exploration Place

Temporarily CLOSED for renovations.

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

Meet the Team

Jaclyn Baxter

Jeni Arnott

Zayn Bismeyer

Elizabeth Schoenthal

Chad Hellenius

Josh Seymour

Bailey Holloway

Frank Vander Lans

Kaitlyn Liukaitis

Drew Gilchrist

Julian Lachapelle

Sabrina Paterson

Board of Directors

Peter James

Clarisse Halbert

Kathryn Louro

Chris King

Elissa Gagnon

Helena Trudel

Brittany Smith

Chuck Nisbett

Helen Buzas

Susan Kelly

Heather Sanford

Timeline + History

Of the Exploration Place

Land Acknowledgement

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

DEIA Statement

Why is the Museum still closed?

Timeline & History of The Exploration Place

Land Acknowledgement

DEIA Statement

Our
Mission