Dinosaurs and Secret Artists Havens in Canada's British Columbia
Published 05/22/2010
(Vancouver, British Columbia) – If you’re looking for major art festivals, the “Sunshine Coast,” or places where artists congregate and create their own unique vibe, British Columbia is becoming known for these. All this just as dinosaurs take over the town of Tumbler Ridge.
The exhibit may be new, but the subject matter traces its origins way, way back. Some 350 million years, to be exact.
Newly opened within one of the town’s former schools, the Tumbler Ridge Dinosaur Discovery Gallery holds the unique distinction of being the largest exhibit of dinosaur footprints in Canada. No small feat for the draw, which features recreated dinosaur trackways, interactive displays and skeletons of the great beasts responsible for the prints.
Dino enthusiasts will dig the 20-seat, touch-screen theatre, complete with views of paleontological finds; fossil fish, marine reptiles and prehistoric bones from the region, dating back 75 to 350 million years, are also decked out for viewing.
Efforts to extract even more of these giants continue: the Tumbler Ridge team is currently heading an excavation to retrieve the remains of a duck-billed Hadrosaur, the province’s first fully intact, articulated dinosaur. This project will take them well into 2011, just in time for excavation to begin on the world’s largest marine vertebrate fossil: the Shonisaurus spans 23 metres (75 feet) in length. (Post dig, and prior to display, the team will contemplate their finds at the town’s Peace Reach Palaeontology Research Centre.)
It would seem, in Tumbler Ridge, a paleontologist‘s work is never done. www.visittumblerridge.ca; www.trmf.ca
To read more story ideas from the Northern British Columbia region, visit www.hellobc.com/northernbcmedia.
A stone’s throw from Vancouver, BC’s Sunshine Coast is a 180-kilometre (110-mile) stretch of beach-dotted, mountain-backed, fjord-cut shoreline along British Columbia’s southwest coast.
A decidedly laid-back locale – so named because it attracts more solar action than many other parts of the lower mainland – the Sunshine Coast is a haven for artists, and the festivals that celebrate them. Indeed, more artists per capita carve, sculpt and set up their canvases here than any other region in Canada.
Need proof? Keep an eye out for the flutter of purple banners, stretching from Langdale to Lund – a high flying invitation to visit an artist in their studio, workshop or gallery.
Beyond the banners, this is a coastline big on festivities, with gatherings that run the gamut from thought-provoking (Sunshine Coast Festival of the Written Arts, the country’s longest running summer gathering of Canadian writers, readers and literary stars, August 12 – 15) to tasty (Powell River’s Blackberry Festival, August 14 – 20). There’s even an opportunity to embrace textural arts and crafts (Gibsons Landing Fibre Arts Festival, August 19 – 21), or take in the smooth sounds of international talents (the ever-popular Pender Harbour Jazz Festival, September 17 – 19). Can’t choose just one art form? Check out artists of all disciplines during the Sunshine Coast’s 1st Annual Sunshine Coast Art Crawl, October 23 - 24. www.sunshinecoastcanada.com
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