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CANADA
Across Canada with Via Rail Alberta Beef Alberta - Cypress Hills Alberta Dog Sledding Alberta's Edmonton Festivals Alberta - Edmonton Shopping British Columbia -Barkerville British Columbia - Vancouver and Victoria British Columbia - Victoria- Inn at Laurel Point British Columbia - Victoria - Spinnakers Manitoba's Beluga Whales Manitoba's Polar Bears North Western Aurora Nova Scotia Birding Nunavut Adventure Ontario - Toronto's CN Tower Ontario - Toronto's Fairmont Royal Hotel Prince Edward Island Kayaks Prince Edward Island Music Quebec City / Montreal Quebec City Quebec City Cuisine Saskatchewan VIA Rail's Fall Foliage Corridor VIA Rail's Scenic Canada Yukon - Dawson City  HOTEL FINDER BOOK FOR The Hotel Grand Pacific here OTHER VICTORIA HOTELS BRITISH COLUMBIA HOTELS Find your perfect hotel accommodation in British Columbia, Canada here PACIFIC COACH LINES  Pacific Coach Lines specializes in providing regular scheduled services between Vancouver and Victoria - a convenient coach service between the mainland and the island. Pacific Coach Lines also offers a wide range of Victoria day trips and a Vancouver city tour. All sightseeing tours include complimentary hotel pick-ups and drop-offs in Vancouver from over 25 hotels. PLC also offers hotel packages (including transportation services on Pacific Coach Lines). such as the Victoria & Butchart Gardens Escape and the Vancouver Escape from Victoria. For more inforamtion visit the web site at http://www.pacificcoach.com  |
CANADA - BRITISH COLUMBIA - VICTORIA : ALL ABOARD THE TITANIC: THE ARTIFACT EXHIBITION by Kevin Retief  The adventure begins as you walk up the gangplank and take your boarding pass assigning you an identity of one of the actual passengers aboard the ill-fated Titanic on her maiden voyage in April 1912.I am Mr Ernst Gilbert Danbom travelling 3rd class with my wife Anna, my son, and friends, travelling from Sweden to a fruit farm in California. Just as this was no ordinary voyage, this is no ordinary exhibition. And the twist is that you don’t know if you’re one of the survivors until the very end of the tour of artifacts and the authentically recreated state rooms. Running at The Royal BC Museum until October 14, 2007, “Titanic, The Artifact Exhibition” is the first Western Canada showcase of 281 artifacts recovered from the Titanic’s resting place 3,800 metres below the surface of the North Atlantic Ocean. It is an exhibition made all the more poignant for local residents by the contribution of nearby Bowen Island resident, Don Marshall, of an essay titled “A Personal Experience on the Titanic” written by his mother in 1914. From the moment you step into the series of galleries, all lit in a deep-sea blue and enhanced by eerily evocative sound effects, you’re taken on a journey of discovery, from the construction of the “unsinkable” liner, the largest ship built before 1912, to the authentic cabins dressed for immediate occupation, to astonishingly fresh-looking, personal effects of those who perished with her. From a pair of pants so preserved their only hint of disaster is that they looked as if they missed one trip to the laundry, to the jewelry of those several decks higher on the social scale, to the china they all shared. This is real history just a pane of glass of away. Almost as amazing as the relics themselves is the recovery process and conservation of each item on display.  RMS Titanic Inc, the only company in the world authorized to recover artifacts from the Titanic wreck site, has conducted seven research and recovery expeditions. Again and again submersibles took over two and a half hours to reach the Titanic wreck site, with another two hours to reach the surface again. Every artifact took hours to conserve - careful processes to remove rust, fungus and salt deposits - and even more careful processes to maintain the artifacts in an environment of controlled temperature and humidity - and no sunlight. The deep blue light steeping the galleries is no accident of an artist’s staging whim. To date, RMS Titanic Inc, has recovered over 5,500 objects from the wreck site, from delicate porcelain dishes, on display in the the exhibition, to a 17-ton section of the hull. But this is an exhibition about more than the technical aspects of the recovery and display of history nearly 100 years old. It is about the telling of a tragedy that enthralls even the youngest visitors. A huge wall of ice, lit as if it had just swept in on the North Atlantic Ocean is there at tiny, fingertip height - close enough to feel the cold, certainly the closest most of us will ever get to an actual iceberg. The actual iceberg that collided with the Titanic in 1912 was more than six storeys tall above the water line, plunging almost fifty storeys beneath the sea. There is even a recreation of a wall of the hull, rusted red and imposing in the gloom of the deep sea lighting. Staffed by trained interpreters who use props, reproductions and hands-on demonstrations - with accents to boot - “gallery animation stations” offer perfumes of the day, and even the somewhat macabre feel of donning a replica lifejacket. The recreated rooms, including first- and third-class cabins and outdoor café give a very real glimpse not only of the lifestyles of the rich and famous and those who served them at the time of the Titanic. And finally, it is the display of hindsight, a catalogue of human error and inappropriate materials that ultimately led to the sinking of the “unsinkable” that makes the array of artifacts so mesmerizing and is enough to keep you from rushing to the last room to see if you were one of the survivors. The last gallery, complete with a memorial wall, lists those who survived and those who did not. Sadly, and somewhat inevitably, because the majority of those who drowned where 3rd class passengers, I, Mr Ernst Gilbert Danbom travelling 3rd class with my wife Anna, my son, and friends, was not on the list of survivors. Nor was my wife, nor myson. It was a sobering end to an astonishing exhibition. On a good note, a friend of the family, Anna Nysten, did survive. She later married a Mr Gustafsson and died in Des Moines, Iowa on 28th March, 1977. Even a tribute to one of the world’s greatest disasters can offer something of a happy ending. If the interactive exhibition is not enough for Titanic-hungry enthusiasts, “Titanica”, an IMAX feature at the National Geographic Theatre, running in partnership with the Royal BC Museum brings the tragic tale to life with spectacular images of the wreck on the ocean floor, and in one survivor’s poignant story of the Titanic’s ill fated maiden voyage. The Royal BC Museum, of course, is about much more than “Titanic: The Artifact Exhibition”. A place of discovery, the Museum showcases the human and natural history of British Columbia in highly realistic settings and recreated sets, giving visitors the experience of another time and place. Permanent Galleries include the “First Peoples Gallery”, giving visitors dramatic glimpses of First Nations cultures before and after the arrival of Europeans, and the “Modern History Gallery” complete with a replica of the stern section of Captain George Vancouver's ship HMS Discovery. Also part of the gallery, a woodblock paved street with turn-of-the-century stores, is so real you can almost feel the history coming alive. The Natural History Gallery takes visitors on a journey across time and through dramatically changing environments. Located in downtown Victoria, close to the parliament buildings, the Royal BC Museum is open every day except Christmas Day and New Year’s Day. For exact hours visit the web site at http://www.royalbcmuseum.bc.ca. Photos courtesy of RMS Titanic Inc |
HOTEL GRAND PACIFIC Ideally located on Victoria’s beautiful Inner Harbour, adjacent to the Parliament Buildings and within strolling distance of the boutiques, museums, galleries and cafés of historic Old Town and Antique Row, The Hotel Grand Pacific is a Canada Select 5 Star, 4 Diamond, Preferred Hotels and Resorts‚ property. And it shows from the minute you step into the elegant and spacious wood paneled lobby - designed to incorporate the fundamental principles of Feng Shui, an ancient Chinese system of arranging our environment so that we can live in harmony with our surroundings. With views of Victoria’s Inner Harbour, Old Town or the Olympic Mountains of Washington State, each of the 304 rooms and suites with balconies are as impressive as the main rooms. All rooms feature free high-speed internet access, air conditioning, cable and pay movies, video games, video check-out, iron with full-sized board, hair dryer, coffee and tea service, voice messaging and computerized security system. And dining at the Hotel Grand Pacific is no less grand than the accommodation, particularly at the intimate and elegant, 28 seat The Mark, where Executive Chef Rick Choy and Restaurant Chef Michael Minshull present West Coast Fusion cuisine, with an ever-changing selection of innovative dishes, featuring the finest fresh, local ingredients. At street level, The Courtyard Café offers snacks and light meals in a casual delicatessen atmosphere with both indoor and outdoor seating. And the elegant, but informal Pacific Restaurant and Terrace is perfect for family and all-day dining All guests receive complimentary access top the Grand Pacific Athletic Club and its 25 meter ozone treated lap pool, children’s pool, hot tub, sauna, squash and racquetball courts, steam room, weight room and exercise facilities. Other amenities include The Spa at the Grand, the Hotel Grand Pacific Business Centre and extensive meeting facilities. For more information visit the web site at: http://www.hotelgrandpacific.com/  BOOK FOR The Hotel Grand Pacific here |
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