EDITORIAL – Tearing down, rebuilding the B.C. Museum is a really bad idea
(Image: Royal BC Museum)
An editorial by Mel Rothenburger.
WHEN KAMLOOPS CITY COUNCIL approved funds for detailed design plans for an addition to the RCMP detachment building on Battle Street, I admit it caught my attention.
I wondered how it’s possible to spend $4.75 million just for blue prints, then another $50 million to $80 million for the addition itself.
There’s no doubt more space and an upgrade are necessary, but those are staggering numbers. They pale by comparison, however, to the provincial government’s plans to tear down the Royal B.C. Museum in Victoria and replace it with a totally new building. That cost — with no detailed plans and not even conceptual drawings — is somehow estimated at an unbelievable $789 million.
Add in a plan to take the provincial archives out of the museum building and move them to a new building of their own, and the NDP’s grandiose intentions will cost taxpayers a billion dollars.
Mel Rothenburger is a former mayor of Kamloops and a retired newspaper editor. He is a regular contributor to CFJC Today, publishes the ArmchairMayor.ca opinion website, and is a director on the Thompson-Nicola Regional District board. He can be reached at mrothenburger@armchairmayor.ca.
ArmchairMayor.ca 
Well,I guess it,s definately time to change to proportional representation. This latest decision by John Horgan and crew borders on the unbelievable in every way. The cost and the period of uncertainy in which we all live plus the many examples we all see every day that need improvement. I have visited the BC Museum in Victoria when it was in the basement and the present one.They were both very well done and covered the advent of Western civilization as it slowly engulfed the aboriginal and a good history of the culture of aboriginal society as it existed before the incursion of a new foreign society.Whether the two will ever meld successfully is a good question.
How can we stop this,turn it around, and have that money directed to the care for our Medical System that is so needed now! Waiting so long for an operation that you become totally disabled and too old to have that operation and now just live in a bed is not right this Has-to stop 🛑 look after the people give us proper medical care first so we can go and visit the existing museum and all can enjoy 😊 A perfectly beautiful museum that doesn’t need replacements !
Ridiculous for sure and it will bring the NDP chances at reigning with a modicum of reason for another term to an end. I just can’t believe this is happening with all the issues we have to deal with in this province!
What about a long term investment for the good of our health care system? The training of nurses and doctors; taking the necessary steps to ensure qualified people from other countries, wanting to come to Canada, can have their “upgrading” fast tracked and financed. A billion dollars would go a long way to fill the vacancies of doctors and nurses.