Open House and Salmon Barbecue
Sunday June 23, 2024
12pm – 3pm
free admission to event and exhibits
food menu and prices below
This is your annual opportunity to get a behind the scenes glimpse into what goes on at your community museum AND enjoy barbecued salmon.
Everyone is welcome to this event held each year on the 4th Sunday in June. This is an opportunity for old friends and newcomers to come together, see what’s happening at the museum, check out new exhibits, and feast on barbecued salmon.
New this year
Tour the Lighthouse, recently refurbished inside and outside with new interpretive story signs and a bright coat of paint.
Check out hidden areas not normally open to the public
Join a guided tour beneath the museum. You’ll be amazed at the extent of our archives and artifact storage areas.
Visit exhibits, indoors and outside
Tour Moss Cottage and the recently opened Servants Quarters exhibit on the history of East Sooke and the Chinese population.
Inside the main museum building, tour our permanent exhibits and visit the summer exhibit Visibility/Invisibility: Gendered (Re)Orderings in the upstairs gallery, which explores how gender can become visible or hidden through objects and stories.
Browse the grounds and enjoy the self-guided Forestry Path and Lord Western exhibits.
Eat!
Wild spring salmon is prepared in an open-pit barbecue over an alder-wood fire, a long-time Sooke tradition! Salmon is served as a meal with all the fixings. Burgers (meat and veggie) and hotdogs will also be available, with strawberry shortcake for dessert. Food tickets will be available for purchase onsite. (Full menu and prices below).
We look forward to seeing you there!
For more information or to volunteer email info@sookeregionmuseum.com, or call 250-642-6351.
Winter Market and Moss Cottage Christmas
Saturday December 7, 2024 11am-4pm
The hugely popular Winter Market and Moss Cottage Christmas returns on December 7, 2024. Aunt Tilly will lead tours of Moss Cottage, decorated for the season in 1902 style. The Winter Market features local Sooke artisans. All products sold at the Winter Market are made, baked, raised, caught, and wild harvested or 100% grown by the vendor. Vendors include the return of some familiar faces from the Summer Night Market as well as new vendors. To support and foster creativity and entrepreneurship in the next generation, one area of the market is dedicated to local young artisans selling their handmade goods.
New this year is the opening of the Triangle Island Light House for tours. The light house has been closed to the public while it has been getting fixed up. Stop by to see the new exhibit panels and hear stories from one who helped bring the light house to the museum grounds.
Family Day Event
Free tours of Moss Cottage and Triangle Island Lighthouse
Saturday Feb 15, 2025: 11am-3pm
Tours begin approximately every 20 minutes
Built in 1869, Moss Cottage is the oldest standing pioneer home west of Victoria. In 1977, the owner donated the historic cottage to the Sooke Region Historical Society, who relocated the building to our museum grounds. For Family Day Weekend, visitors to the cottage will be welcomed inside by our interpretive guide in the character of Matilda “Aunt Tilly” Gordon who is raising her two children on her own, in 1902. Household tasks of the turn of the century are demonstrated by Aunt Tilly as she chats with visitors.
The lighthouse was built on Triangle Island in 1910. Lightkeepers and their families lived at this remote outpost under the most dreadful conditions. Historian Lanny Seaton will welcome visitors on Family Day Weekend to share his stories of life at the lighthouses of Vancouver Island as well as the saga of the journey of this lighthouse from Triangle Island (off Cape Scott, on the northern tip of Vancouver Island) to the Sooke Region Museum.
