Vancouver Island Military Museum’s future will be secure under a co-management agreement with the city.
As the museum’s staff are getting on in age, they’ve long known there will come a time when they have to pass on the baton to the next generation to ensure the continuance of a tourist attraction and safekeeper of Vancouver Island’s role in military history.
The museum started operations in Nanaimo North Town Centre, formerly Rutherford Mall, in 1986, before moving to its current location in Nanaimo Museum’s former site on Cameron Road in 2010.
The museum has always been dependent on donations, fundraising initiatives and entrance fees to finance its operations and is staffed by volunteers, most of whom are veterans of military service.
Roger Bird, VIMM president, and Brian McFadden, vice-president, discussed the museum and the city entering into a co-management agreement during a report to city council this past spring.
McFadden joined VIMM as a volunteer in 1998 and became vice-president in 2010. Bird started volunteering in 1995 and became president in 2002.
“Our main concern … is what happens when we move on, because we will, that’s just a fact of life,” McFadden said at the meeting. “A lot of people have spent a lot of time to build this organization. We have a lot of … artifacts, but these were entrusted to us and it’s our duty to look after them and maintain them, because once they’re gone, they’re gone. You don’t get them back.”
McFadden said the museum has been working with Richard Harding, general manager of community services, to prepare for the transition to co-management with the city in January 2025.
“We’ve been talking to them for some time about this succession. What happens? How do we ensure that the military museum goes on after we’re gone because we’ve always had the idea, for a long time, that the only way to do that is to make the museum an integral part of tourism for downtown, so that it’s valuable to the city,” McFadden said.
At a finance meeting in September, when the committee recommend the museum be brought into the same operating model as other cultural facilities co-managed by the city, Coun. Ian Thorpe noted that the museum was identified by Tourism Nanaimo “as a major tourist attraction for our downtown.”
At the same meeting, Harding noted VIMM has been paying rent to the city for the Cameron Road building since 2010.
“It’s just an amazing group to work with,” he said. “They’ve been paying us rent and, as far as I can tell … they’ve never asked us for a grant or operating assistance in those 14 years.”
On Oct. 7, city council directed staff to end its requirement for VIMM to pay rent for its 100 Cameron Rd. location starting in 2025, help its board of directors establish a general manager position and start working to establish a city/VIMM co-management agreement.
McFadden said last week that the co-management begins in January, and between now and then, the military museum will work with the city’s parks, recreation and culture department to establish what that looks like. Volunteers will continue to run the day-to-day operations.
“We want to leave it in good hands,” said McFadden. “By going with this type of arrangement, we feel very confident it will be in good hands.”
