In the early 70s , a friend encouraged me to learn how to Scuba Dive. Shortly thereafter, I travelled to Victoria to take my first plunge in the ?Salish Sea?. From my very first dive, I was hooked. I progressed to teaching diving and taught instructor training for a number of years. In 1983, the opportunity to move to Victoria was presented to me. After hundreds of hours of diving, I felt for the first time in my life that I was ?one? with my environment. So , when I heard that the Shaw Ocean Discovery Centre was being built in Sidney, I put the opening date in my calendar. I was fortunate to receive an invitation to the grand opening.
Saturday morning, I pick up Lisa, my assistant and friend, and we travel out to beautiful Sidney BC , anticipation mounting. We arrive early, find a parking lot, and walk two blocks to the new Centre. A crowd is gathering near the outdoor tide pool that connects the building to the shoreline.
The new Centre is in the Sidney Pier Hotel & Spa complex. This modern steel and glass structure shares very few clues of what we are about to experience. There are some banners in the windows and I see a whale skeleton hanging from the ceiling, but that is it! Our imaginations are all that we have to go on.