While doing sports and culture for this part of the program, and yes it all going to be mostly cultural stuff because I don’t know sports, I have the roughest of ideas but no idea the rules when I was on-air doing sport and trying to say the names of the athletes, I was hopelessly baffled. So, it has forced me to really look at Vancouver and the surrounding areas around the Fraser Valley, and I can’t help but be amazed all the museums that help to shed light on the place we call home, to the universe we live in. The ability to expand our knowledge in so many different facets whatever your passions are.

Which leads me to UBC’s Beaty Biodiversity Museum in Vancouver at UBC. It features a collection of animals, plant, insect specimens and fossils. Home to around 2 million specimens, the Beaty Biodiversity Herbarium holds more than 650,000 specimens, some dating back as far as 1804, and is the largest herbarium in Canada, west of Ottawa, so unless you are going to drive all that way to Ottawa it’s so much simpler to take a trip to UBC’s Beaty Biodiversity Museum in Vancouver. No matter your interest or of that of your child there is absolutely something for everyone to get lost in the amazing details that make up our world.

Vancouver’s Beaty Biodiversity Museum at UBC was the first biodiversity museum in Canada to publicly display its scientific findings. Next to the museum is the Biodiversity Research Centre. Scientists conduct biological diversity research that’s crucial to thwarting the degradation of biodiversity due to the perils of climate change. A visit can open your eyes to simple changes you can make, that will make long term impactful differences.

Perhaps the creatures that call night their domain, pique your interest? Even in the animal kingdom there is a graveyard shift so perhaps you can bond over that? The museum hosts its Beaty Nocturnal event on the third Thursday of each month. These are special evening hours from 5:00 pm until 8:30 pm and admission is by donation during these times.

Permanent exhibits displayed at the museum include the largest blue whale skeleton in Canada at approximately 86 feet long the story of how it got to UBC, and everything that went into preserving the blue whale is worth the visit.

Or is the dino hunter in you wanting to see casts of dinosaur footprints that were discovered in British Columbia! A visit to the museum can take you back millions of years to a time when your favorite creature roamed a much different earth.

Earth is at the age when it doesn’t want to talk about it, tells you it’s a young 2 billion years and is secretly having volcanos spew out lava as a filler to get rid of some of those wrinkles. But we know the truth Earth’s 4.54-billion-year history is represented as a horizontal line over 30 metres long with each step taking you 100 million years backwards in time which depicts when various organisms lived and then went extinct over time.

The museum has many temporary exhibits that often change too. It’s also possible to access online exhibits without having to go to the building itself.

Do yourself a favor and learn what make makes the world/universe so awesome as you learn where we fit into natures design.

Brian Smith

Bsmith288@my.bcit.ca