Page 140 - WINE DINE AND TRAVEL FALL 2020 South Africa

hour or two, I decided there was no better way to and human history. With some 7 million objects in
spend time so I headed right back into the park. its collections, it is a vast, fascinating, in-depth sur-
Woodland trails wind around ponds and land- vey of its landscapes and cultures past and
scaped gardens as they make way into forests of present.
oak, fir, and cedar trees and take on a wilder feel- From paintings by Emily Carr — a beloved local
ing. I sought its 127-foot-high totem pole, carved artist whose family home is also a cultural attrac-
by Mungo Martin, a Kwakwaka’wakw craftsman, in tion for touring whose landscapes and totem
1956, then the tallest and now the fourth-tallest paintings are simply wonderful — to actual totem
totem pole in the world. poles and other carvings by native peoples, to
Also right next door to those Parliament build- videos and photographs of long-ago events like ar-
ings is the Royal BC Museum, one of Canada’s rivals of war canoes and the 1860s gold rush, this
greatest cultural treasures founded in 1886. This museum offers a truly cavernous collection of nat-
museum collects and preserves artifacts, docu- ural and human history. You could spend days here.
ments and specimens of British Columbia’s natural And on the north side of The Empress is Minia-

140 WINE DINE & TRAVEL MAGAZINE 2020