It’s our last sleep-in day of vacation. Tomorrow we have brunch planned with family, and Sunday we fly back. Each requires us to set the alarm, granted, not before 9:30 but still. We did our best to make the most of our last luxurious moment and stayed in bed as long as possible. We managed to keep in just shy of noon—a decent performance.
Our day's activity was the Museum of Anthropology at UBC. We skipped the thankfully small section on pots and other ceramics. We had our fill at the Museo Archeologico Regionale Paolo Orsi in Sicily and still don’t remotely feel the need to look at pottery from any time period. The exhibition mainly focused on the Indigenous people of BC. The relatively small museum does a great job of getting us in awe of its giant sculptures and rich heritage. Still, at the same time, it is a sobering reminder of how the Canadian Government treated Indigenous People terribly and thought of them as the “Indian Problem”. It made us reflect on how destructive it is when a group both believes it owns the truth and has more power/technology. If I had to compare it to a museum we’ve visited, it would be surprisingly similar to the wing on the Maori people of New Zealand at the Te Papa Tongarewa in Wellington. Sadly, unless you’ve been to New Zealand, you’ll have to take our word for it.
During our visit, we also learned, more by accident than anything else, that the museum was built on a World War Two fort. We walked the ground a little while waiting for our Uber and found the ammunition depot next to one of the gun emplacements. There was probably an exhibit about it a while ago, and the signage never got taken down. It was worth the very short walk.
We ended the day by enjoying our room’s balcony, something we will not have once we’re back home, before enjoying dinner at à Chinese-Corsican restaurant. Surprising fusion but excellent cuisine.
