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The CEO of the Royal B.C. Museum stepped down after nearly a year-and-a-half on the job.
The Victoria-based provincial museum’s board announced CEO Alicia Dubois’s resignation on Friday afternoon.
The change comes a year after the B.C. NDP government scrapped a proposed $800-million renovation and modernization of the facility last June, after coming under fire for weeks from the Opposition.
Board chair Leslie Brown told CBC News the decision to resign was Dubois’s, and that the board maintained confidence in her work.
“She was not pushed out in any way, it was her decision to leave,” Brown said in an interview Saturday.
“She was given a mandate after the museum project — the rebuild — was cancelled to go out and engage with the public, to find out what they wanted, and to do a cultural transformation … within the museum staff.
“She has achieved those things … For the next stage of the museum, she didn’t think she was the right leader.”
Brown said of her board and the museum staff: “Absolutely we are very, very sad … but understood her decision.”
CBC News was unable to reach Dubois for comment on Saturday.
Dubois is a lawyer and co-chair of the Canadian Council for Aboriginal Business, which describes her as “a proud Indigenous professional.” She previously served as a trustee for the Royal Ontario Museum.
The Nuxalk Nation is welcoming back a carved pole that was taken from the area more than 100 years ago. A ceremony is being held in a school gymnasium to welcome the pole back to the community. The totem pole was repatriated from the Royal B.C. Museum in Victoria. It will spend 12 months on display at the entrance to the school before it’s placed in a permanent location on traditional territory.
The Royal B.C. Museum is currently undergoing a public engagement process about its redevelopment. Dubois toured the province reaching out to different communities to seek their input on the museum’s future.
That consultation work, and efforts to increase the institution’s “transparency” to the public, Brown said, will continue as the board seeks a new interim CEO to replace Dubois.
That search will get underway this week, Brown said, and she hopes a replacement will be hired by the end of summer, however more details on the hiring process will be decided in coming weeks.
A year ago, when then-premier John Horgan cancelled the costly rebuild plans, he admitted the proposal was out of touch with British Columbians’ affordability and health-care concerns.
“I made the wrong call,” he said last June 22. “I made a call when British Columbians were thinking about other concerns.”
A poll at the time by the Angus Reid Institute found that 69 per cent of British Columbians opposed the museum modernization plan.
The Old Town exhibit in the Royal B.C. museum details the 19th-century history of European settlers. It closed in late 2021 as part of an effort to decolonize the space. But as Yasmine Ghania reports, the exhibit will reopen, with some adjustments.
Proponents of the rebuilding argued a massive investment was needed to ensure the museum’s ability to securely house historic artifacts, protect it in the event of an earthquake, host new large-scale exhibitions, and make it accessible to all visitors.
The government ordered the museum to instead consult with B.C. residents on their vision for the public institution.
At the time of its cancellation, Opposition leader Kevin Falcon, with the since-renamed B.C. United party, accused the B.C. NDP government of simply postponing the unpopular expenditure until later when there was less scrutiny.
“This sounds a lot to me like ‘let’s kick this down the road until the temperature goes down,'” Falcon said last June, “‘and then we can proceed as we plan to do with building this $1-billion-plus museum that nobody called for and nobody asked for.'”
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