The seeds of an idea that was once planned to become a Nuu-chah-nulth cultural centre have been returned to the tribal council, two and a half years after the passing of the project’s famous designer.
In June the daughters of Jean Jaques Andre, Yvette Andre and Bianca Message, delivered their late father’s plans to the Nuu-chah-nulth Tribal Council’s main office in Port Alberni. During the visit NTC Executive Director Florence Wylie unrolled the documents with Yvette and Bianca, which detail a proposed facility featuring a 12,500 square-foot exhibit area, plus a restaurant, gift shop, theatre, library, elders’ lounge and children’s area. The cultural centre plans are the product of Andre’s meetings with Nuu-chah-nulth elders and communities in the early 1980s. Applications were underway for federal funding, but the project was never realized as an agreement couldn’t be reached on where the facility would be.
Jean Jaques Andre died Dec. 22, 2022, leaving behind a legacy of designing dozens of museum exhibits across North America. He was the chief designer behind the Royal B.C. Museum’s Natural History, First Peoples and Becoming BC galleries. Becoming BC includes the Old Town exhibit, a recreation of early urban settlement in the province. In December 2021 the museum closed down Old Town, citing plans to “decolonize” its exhibits. But as the museum space sat inaccessible to the public, outcry led to the reopening of Old Town in July 2023, with sections of the exhibit set aside for future modern-day updates.
During their meeting with Wylie, Yvette and Bianca expressed their desire for the cultural centre plans to be preserved as an important historical record of ideas that were being explored over 40 years ago.
