Royal BC Museum

Today we are in Victoria, British Columbia, having travelled here yesterday from Colorado.
Luckily we left the two large bags at the airport before taking the puddle jumper here yesterday. Our flight contained the body of a dead service man or woman-we watched the honour guard lift the coffin on board before departure. The air steward asked us kindly to stay seated after landing to enable the family member accompanying the body and the sergeant with him to "deplane" before the rest of the passengers on the flight. A sad day for some poor family...

Today we enjoyed lunch at the Legislature in Victoria with our host Sheila and then spent a wonderful couple of hours at the museum in town.

This mask is one of many worn by the "First Nation" peoples from here-the museum was splendid in its storytelling and level of detail in explaining not only the story of the native people but also the effect that the European settlers had on life as they knew it.
Powerful stuff-especially when you read that in some tribes, 80%  of people died from Smallpox, Influenza and the like.