...the Maritime Museum of BC will be in direct competition with the Vancouver Maritime Museum for any Provincial and Federal funding...

This is just what you have to expect when you're the redheaded stepchild of public funding.

This was a ridiculous idea to begin with ... a museum connected to a 1200 seat theatre, neither of the two having a penny to rub between them.

This was the plan for the "arts centre" in Langford going down the tubes, and the next one to go down the drain will be the same basic concept recently announced in Colwood.

Doing a nice painting up of an "arts centre", and hoping some level of government is going to just give any of the Western Communities 40 to 80m million dollars to build it is a pipe dream ... it's a very common pipe dream, but it's a pipe dream nonetheless.

Arts Centres are conceived and built by professionals in the arts community, people who actually know what they're doing, have funding sources lined up prior to announcing anything, and (most importantly) have a 20-30 year business plan that describes in detail how this Arts Centre is going to sustain itself without becoming a massive burden on the taxpayer.

The Langford proposal had no acceptable business plan in place ... and the reason the Colwood Arts Centre is next for the chopping block is because they too have failed to demonstrate anything even close to a workable business plan.

Wikipedia's definition of a cargo cult is a fairly decent match for the Maritime Museum's approach to finding a new space:

A cargo cult is a millenarian belief system in which adherents perform rituals which they believe will cause a more technologically advanced society to deliver goods.

When they got kicked out of the courthouse, I recall they were talking about some agreement from the seventies that required either the province or the city or somebody to provide them with a new space. No one could find it though, so that went nowhere. Then they were going to move into the ground floor of the Steamship Terminal, and it sounded like almost a done deal until it wasn't. Then years of nothing, and then a proposal to move to Langford that was so bizarre it reminded everyone of a different Simpsons episode. Mine was the one where Flanders' neighbours get together to build him a house, and the proportions turned out all weird.

It's a shame, because they really do have a good collection.

Here's a suggestion - get a huge tent and move to Beacon Hill. I hear the Wax Museum has already set up not far from the petting zoo. Ok, they've run into a few problems with their people melting a bit after 'cooking’ accidents. On the bright side reports indicate their John A MacDonald has yet been beheaded, although he has given up the whiskey in favour of crystal meth. No doubt haunted by his memory of a trip to London:

”And while there is, of course, no detailed record of just how much Sir John A. had been drinking that night, it seems very likely that alcohol helped lure him into an early sleep.

He woke to the smell of his own burning flesh. He’d passed out while reading the paper and the candle tipped over, setting the room ablaze. The curtains, the sheets and blankets, even the pillow beneath his head and the nightshirt he was wearing were all in flames. Just months before he became the first Prime Minister of Canada, Sir John A. Macdonald was on fire.”

http://spacing.ca/toronto/2015/01/06/sir-john-macdonald-drunk-flames/