Directors of a beloved whale museum in Telegraph Cove are looking to the future and hoping to rebuild after losing their extensive collection of whale skeletons in a New Year’s Eve fire.
An early morning fire in the village destroyed the Whale Interpretive Centre, which housed the largest hanging collection of marine mammal skeletons in Western Canada, as well as about a third of a historic pier, the Old Saltery Pub, Killer Whale Cafe, Wastell Manor heritage house and the Prince of Whales whale-watching office and staff housing.
The museum housed skeletons of a resident killer whale, Bigg’s killer whale, humpback whale, minke whale, grey whale, a 20-metre fin whale and an extremely rare Cuvier’s beaked whale, which lives in deep B.C. waters, said Mary Borrowman, director, treasurer and manager of the centre. It also featured skeletons of stellar sea lions, sea otters, river otters and many skulls, jaw bones and teeth. The interpretive centre began in 2002 with two skeletons and grew over 22 years.
Support for the centre after the fire has been pouring in from across Canada and the world, Borrowman said.
“The Whale Interpretive Center, Telegraph Cove is a world destination. It is a gem hidden here on Vancouver Island, and people, Europeans love the cove,” said Borrowman who previously ran Stubbs Island Whale Watching in Telegraph Cove with her husband. The company’s main customers were from Europe in its early years, she said.
Two of the centre’s skeletons — a Risso’s dolphin and a pygmy sperm whale — are currently on Salt Spring Island and therefore were spared from the fire.
“We can start again. We started with two in 2002. We can start with two again,” Borrowman said.
She’s not sure what rebuilding will look like, but it will require major fundraising, because articulating a whale skeleton can cost around $50,000, she said.
The owners of Telegraph Cove Resort, which includes the Old Saltery Pub, Killer Whale Cafe and Wastell Manor heritage house all destroyed by the fire, provided the centre’s building rent-free for 22 years, because they believed in the interpretive centre “with all their heart,” Borrowman said.
“Today’s a new day, and all we can do is be encouraged that we can rebuild and that Telegraph Cove can rebuild and carry on, because it’s a very important part of the northern Vancouver Island. It’s essential to everybody here,” she said.
The fire was reported around 5:30 a.m. to Port McNeill Fire Rescue, which immediately requested help from Port Hardy, Alert Bay and Hyde Creek.
It took about 20 minutes for the first crews from Port McNeill to arrive, said Port Hardy Fire Chief Brent Borg.
“So it was going really good when we got here. There’s nobody here. The whole place is shut down. So I don’t know how long it took before somebody noticed it to call it in,” Borg said.
When he arrived with crews from Port Hardy, he saw several buildings fully engulfed in 30-metre flames.
Crews had to pull fire hoses about 150 metres from a parking lot to the pier, while firefighters on a boat from Alert Bay fought flames at the end of the pier, Borg said.
Brandon Wettig, who was visiting Telegraph Cove with his girlfriend’s family, woke up to the sound of a car honking around 5:45 a.m. A neighbour yelled, “Telegraph Cove is on fire,” and everyone quickly got dressed and jumped in their vehicles, worried the one road out of the village could be blocked by fire, he said.
After driving to a campground, Wettig said, they could see “huge flames” coming from the pier.
It looked like the fire started near a restaurant and spread down the pier, toward the ocean, leaving the road out unaffected, he said.
“It was still dark out, so you could see just like this big halo of orange,” Wettig said.
A former milling and cannery village, Telegraph Cove has few year-round inhabitants and draws seasonal workers and visitors in the spring and summer as a jumping-off point for kayak tours and whale watching due to its location on Johnstone Strait and its proximity to Robson Bight Ecological Reserve.
Many North Islanders have strong ties to Telegraph Cove, said Port McNeill Mayor James Furney.
“It was kind of a regional location. So people from Alert Bay and Sointula and Port Hardy, Port Alice, particularly, all have connections going back many generations,” said Furney, whose parents were close friends with the original sawmill owners and who spent a lot of time in Telegraph Cove in the 1970s.
At the Port McNeill town office, many people were in disbelief, Furney said.
“There’s just a sombre nature around the town,” he said.
Furney hopes there will be efforts to rebuild the “Vancouver Island icon,” likening its loss to the 2019 fire that destroyed Notre-Dame Cathedral in Paris.
“It is a cathedral of the North Island,” Furney said.
The success of Telegraph Cove Resort, which includes a restaurant, pub, general store, small hotel, sewage treatment plant, campground and marina, put the North Island on the map for tourism and education, he said.
From a telegraph station in its early days to a fishing and forestry community to a small town, Telegraph Cove has seen many incarnations, he said, and has most recently been a world-class tourism destination, thanks in part to the collection of marine mammal skeletons at the Whale Interpretive Centre.
Furney helped clean the last humpback whale skeleton that was installed in the centre a few years ago, spending a day on the beach “with knives in hand in rain gear, cleaning the whale.” The juvenile whale had been tangled in fishing line and starved to death on a beach in White Rock, according to a short documentary by Borrowman’s son that followed the five-day process of removing the flesh, blubber and organs to recover the skeleton.
The centre will have to look for new whale carcasses washing up to rebuild their collection, he said.
“It was a lot of work, and it’s the smelliest job on the planet. It’s tough to think we might have to do it again one of these days, but we’re willing here,” he said.
No guests were on site at Telegraph Cove Resort, which has been closed for the off- season since the end of October, the resort said in an update on its website.
While the financial loss of the resort is substantial, the emotional toll is “immeasurable,” owners Gordie and Marilyn Graham said.
“This resort isn’t just a business to us — it is our home, our history, and our legacy,” said Gordie Graham.
“My wife and I are nearing retirement. We are devastated to witness our life’s work, which I milled and built with my own hands, go up in flames. While we are grateful that no one was harmed in the fire, we are experiencing one of our worst nightmares.”
