The walls are up, the lights are in, the displays are ready, and the long-expected Geo Interpretive Centre is ready to go.
It’s been at least eight years in the making, and has changed form a few times, from the original open air concept that was shown during the first round of public consultations back in 2019 to what currently exists across the street from the Visitor Information Centre (VIC)
Indeed, one of the things that has changed is the name. No longer is it being referred to as a Geo Interpretive Centre, it is now the Geo Centre. According to Tumbler Ridge Global Geopark General Manager Manda Maggs, the former name was just too long.
Maggs says that the process to build the centre began in 2018, when there was a groundbreaking ceremony as part of the UNESCO revalidation process. That was before she was hired. “It was the first project the board gave me when I took on this role,” says Maggs. “Originally, the project was meant to be sort of an outdoor space with three smaller buildings with two glass hallway-like displays along the side. They were going to have these glass tunnels that you would walk through that had displays in them, but they’d be open to the elements. In one of the small building, there would have been public washrooms. In another, there would have been a coffee shop or a concession.”
But that presented a series of projects around plumbing and heating, so Maggs proposed putting everything into one space. “As part of our commitment to UNESCO, we are always supposed to have a geoscientist position. But there’s only two offices in the VIC, so it was an opportunity to get an additional office space for us.”
While the official groundbreaking ceremony was in 2018, construction on the space began in 2021. “First we had to do all the fundraising,” says Maggs. “Because we’d changed the concept plan for the building, we needed to update what it was going to cost, re-budget, get quotes. We started fundraising in 2020, which was a very interesting year for everybody. Nobody really knew what was going to happen with the pandemic.”
But that proved to be a blessing in disguise, as they were able to take advantage of the Covid Economic Recovery Infrastructure program. “That funded the bulk of that project,” says Maggs. “It came with stipulations about using local services whenever possible…we had to use BC lumber, for instance, because the whole point of that grant was to provide support to industries that were experiencing problems during Covid.”
That also changed how the building would be built, but by July of that year, the shell of the building had been built.
Over the next few years, the displays were built and the final details have been put into place, from the wheelchair accessible sidewalks on both sides of the streets to landscaping the area around the space.
Inside, says Magg, visitors will find a display called “Down to Earth” which tells the story of the earth, from its own perspective. “Earth is introduced right at the front as a character, and she narrates her version of how she came to be through a cultural lens, as well as through a scientific lens. She talks about how she’s super ancient and how you can tell that by looking at folds and faults and layers and sediments and all the different things that we see on the surface of the earth, and can be seen here in the Geopark. She coaches visitors how to interpret that, so when you see something like the rock folding at Kinuseo Falls, what happened there? She references different geological formations like hoodoos and karst caves and other features, and then the exhibit will tell visitors where in the Geopark they can go to see these things.
“So if you want to see a resurgent spring, go to Hole in the Wall. If you want to see hoodoos, go to Meikle Canyon…things like that. So it’s promoting different sites around the Geopark, from the geological context. It’s very different from a geological textbook, because a geological textbook is very generic. It tells you about geology of everywhere. This is very specific to what’s happening around Tumbler Ridge.”
She says it also talks about how people in Tumbler Ridge have a relationship with the Earth, from working at the mines or even just eating food, and how food quality relates to earth and water and geodiversity and biodiversity and how all these concepts come together.”
She says the exhibits are very hands on. “We’ve got an earthquake table where kids can make a tower out of blocks and test it’s structural integrity with different levels of seismic activity. There’s a machine that melts wax into speleothems, like stalactites and stalagmites.”
And, she says, the exhibits were designed with the Canadian Museum of Human Rights standards of Access and Inclusivity. “Something you’ll notice right away is there’s all these little Braille buttons everywhere. When you press the buttons, it will read you the panel in Mother Earth’s voice. So if someone is too little to read or if a visitor has visual problems, they can still experience the exhibit.”
She says visitors should think of it’s more like a science centre than a museum. “We have an excellent museum here. We didn’t need to recreate what they do. So when you come into the Geo Centre, you won’t see fossils in the exhibits, but you’ll see things that are related. We do talk about fossils, of course, but it’s definitely not the main focus. It’s more of more of a general science centre. That’s where our geoscientist has his office. He’s got geological samples at his fingertips that he can show people through a microscope or people can bring him rocks and have him identify them. So you can access him as well, which is great.”
Are you intrigued by the idea of the Geo Centre? Want to go check it out? Well you can’t. At least, not as of the time the paper was sent off to print. “We had a walkthrough last night with our board and town council. But the building inspector is missing some paperwork right now from our engineer and our architect. So until he gets those, we do not have a license of occupation. We’re just waiting on that.”
And as soon as that comes through (which could be before the paper gets printed), the centre will be open. Maggs says the plan is to get the doors open as soon as possible, then do a grand opening later in the summer once everything is in place. “I wanted to be open for July 1, but obviously, that didn’t happen. I’m really excited to finally be able to show it to people, because we’ve had so many questions.”
Questions like “what is that over there?” Maggs says when they first started pouring the foundations, some people thought it was going to be an outdoor swimming pool. “And then people thought we were building a new visitor centre, and they got mad because we have a great visitor centre, why would we build a new one?”
One of the most important functions the building will fill is as a public washroom facility. “People keep asking why the bathrooms are only accessible from the outside. During our public consultation process, it was suggested that there weren’t enough public washroom available downtown. Now, if the District is having an event, we don’t have to have the main building open for someone to use those washrooms.”
The plan is to have the building open every day over summer, but that will depend on summer student availability. And during the off season? “We’re probably going to be open some hours during the week, and then by appointment.”
Finally says Maggs, people should be aware that much of the centre is targeted towards older kids and adults. “ We do lots of stuff for kids already. I think there’s a lot of potential there for adult connectivity.”
And what’s next for Maggs, whose hands-on approach to getting the project finished has meant spending many hours in the space, painting and getting everything ready? “I’m going to have a vacation,” she says. “Literally, this has taken up all of my thought process for the past few years. All the CPU, all the tabs that are open have been dealing with this space, so I can finally clear that, which is great.”
And after that? “I do have a few projects that I’d like to work on. It’s nothing infrastructure. This is all the infrastructure we’re ever going to need. One is a new website. I started on that almost two years ago, and it’s just been on the back burner. The other thing is I’d like to work on a small business sustainability pledge kind of project. It’s partially conceptualized, but now I actually have time to dedicate to the look at how that’s going to play out and what I need to actually do it.”
Trent is the publisher of Tumbler RidgeLines.
