The Whale Interpretive Centre in Telegraph Cove, BC, housing the largest collection of marine mammal skeletons in the province, was tragically destroyed by a fire on New Year's Eve. Co-founder Jim Borrowman recounts the years of effort dedicated to preserving and displaying the skeletons, including the meticulous four-year process of preparing Finny, a 20-meter fin whale.
The Whale Interpretive Centre at Telegraph Cove, B.C., once housed the largest collection of marine mammal specimens in the province and welcomed about 10,000 visitors each year, but was destroyed by a fire on December 31, 2024. Just ask Jim Borrowman, co-founder of the Whale Interpretive Centre museum that housed numerous whale skeletons on the boardwalk of Telegraph Cove on Vancouver Island.
When we find a dead whale somewhere, especially a larger one, it’s a massive job to take that animal from a whole, complete dead whale, to get it to its point where all the bones are cleaned and re-articulated and then hung up,” said Borrowman. In the case of Finny, a 20-meter fin whale that died in a 1999 ship strike, the body had to be towed by tugboat from Vancouver hundreds of kilometres away to a beach near Telegraph Cove. The huge body was dragged ashore and defleshed, painstakingly cleaned and the bones then sunk in clean waters, degreased of their oils, then dried, in a process that took four years. Finally came the two-year project of rearticulating, or reconnecting, the skeleton and hanging it to loom over the heads of museum guests, who came from around the world. But all that work was gone in just a few hours, when a fire demolished the boardwalk, businesses, and the museum, on New Year’s Eve.The Whale Interpretive Centre, founded in 2002, housed the largest collection of marine mammal skeletons in British Columbia and welcomed about 10,000 visitors each year.They had spent more than 40 years collecting marine mammal skeletons. Jim Borrowman said the fire caused him “total panic” when he realized the museum had been reduced to ash. He said he valued the collection at more than $2 million, but putting a value on the effort to create the collection is difficult. Volunteers were involved in every step, he sai
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