The Royal BC Museum apologizes for the 2017 carving, which was declared an ancient indigenous artifact

The Royal British Columbia Museum issued an apology on Tuesday, admitting for the first time that one of its artifacts is not in fact a centuries-old Indigenous stone monument, as museum curators had claimed.

Rather, the stone was carved five years ago by a Victorian hobbyist with no connection to local Indigenous culture, despite the museum’s grand claims about the stone’s historical significance to Vancouver Island’s First Nations.

The museum held on to this ancient origin story until Tuesday, when staff met with the local carver in the museum’s underground loading dock and forked the stone onto the back of his car, eventually taking it home.

In a letter of apology, the museum’s executive director, Alicia Dubois, said she was “relieved and delighted” that the artwork was returned to its rightful owner.

“I want to thank you for your patience while we navigated this uncharted territory and sincerely apologize for the mistakes made during the process,” Dubois wrote.

“I assure you that as a team we have learned from this experience and are taking concrete action to ensure similar mistakes are not made in the future.”

ORIGINS OF CARVING

It was raining in Victoria in January 2017 when Ray Boudreau, a night watchman for a security firm, headed to the beach with a carpenter’s hammer and chisel he kept in the trunk of his car.

He had worked leather Bibles before, but never solid stone. Nonetheless, he found a piece of sandstone – weighing more than 100 kilograms – at the base of the cliff and began carving the human face that would fool researchers at BC’s most important repository of natural and human history.

When Boudreau returned to the beach days later to finish his carving, the rock was gone. He assumed someone had taken it, but more likely it was carried out to sea by a surging winter tide.

It was recovered there three years later by Grant Keddie, then curator of the Royal BC Museum’s Indigenous Collections and Repatriation Department, after receiving a tip about a strange carving discovered in the surf at low tide.

‘VERY SPECIAL RITUAL STONE ARROWS’

Internal communications from CTV News show that Keddie and his team quietly went about restoring the carvings and preparing a permanent gallery display for the “ritual stone pillar.”

The proposed installation would feature the carving upright in a display case to “show the figure as it would have been seen centuries ago, partially in the ground,” Keddie wrote in an email to a colleague.

The partially redacted documents, obtained through the BC Access to Information Act, proved that the museum has ignored warnings about the carving’s authenticity and is moving forward with plans to showcase the stone as a turning point for Indigenous culture in the province.

The stone carving shortly after being recovered in July 2020, at the Royal BC Museum. (RBCM)

Six months later, the museum issued a press release and published a lengthy article announcing the discovery of a “very special ritual stone pillar” carved centuries ago by the indigenous people of southern Vancouver Island.

The announcement made national headlines and stirred up excitement in the archaeological community.

But within 48 hours of the announcement, Boudreau the carver showed CTV News photos of his carving, which bore a striking resemblance to the carving the museum believed was used to “change the weather” during centuries ago seasonal ceremonies.

When CTV News published Boudreau’s account of the carving later that day, the museum immediately deleted all mention of the discovery — including its press release, photos, and a lengthy essay by Keddie, the curator — from its website without explanation.

In fact, in the months that followed, all of Keddie’s research was deleted from the museum website, along with his staff profile and contact information.

Keddie, who served as the museum’s senior curator for decades, was also removed from the BC government’s personnel directory, which lists contact information for current provincial employees.

The carving will be lifted into the back of a vehicle at the Royal BC Museum on Tuesday 13 September 2022. (CTV News)

Museum spokesmen declined to comment on Keddie’s departure on Tuesday, saying only that it was a personnel matter.

At no time during the two years that the carving sat in a box in the museum’s basement has anyone at the institution attempted to contact Boudreau about his claim.

‘A LONG TIME IS COMING’

Keddie’s departure was just the latest in a series of high-profile departures among museum staff. These departures include the ouster of President and CEO Jack Lohman amid a third-party investigation into racism and workplace mismanagement, and the voluntary departure of two curators of Indigenous collections.

Janet Hanuse, the museum’s vice president of engagement and implementation of the Indigenous Peoples’ Rights Act, declined to say exactly what mistakes were made in the curatorial process or how the final determination of the artifact’s provenance was achieved.

“It went through some sort of investigation, but then it stopped,” Hanuse told CTV News. “A lot of attention has been paid to it and personally I don’t like it when things are left unfinished so I’m pleased with the completion.”

Ray Boudreau is taking his carving home from the Royal BC Museum for the first time since it was created in 2017. (CTV News)

Boudreau left the museum with his carving on Tuesday, saying he had “mixed feelings” when he finally got the artwork back all those years later, but he vowed to finish the carving the way he intended.

“It took a long time,” Boudreau said. “But it would have been cool to visit it here in the museum and say, ‘I did that.'”