Maritime Museum of BC wants your West Coast Trail tales

If you’ve had a harrowing – or exhilarating – experience hiking the West Coast Trail, the Maritime Museum of BC wants to hear about it.

The museum is hosting an exhibit about the trail from April 11 to Oct. 26 called No Walk in the Woods: The History of the West Coast Trail, and is looking for personal stories to help trace the history.

Stories can be told in a variety of formats, including written pieces of fewer than 500 words, photographs with captions for context, collections of short quotes, or even object-based stories using personal gear used on the trail. Submissions can also combine any of these story-telling methods.

Ideally this will allow the museum to present an array of experiences from different eras, so the stories need not be new, nor do they need to come from people who have completed the entire trail.

The West Coast Trail stretches along a 75-kilometre strip of coastline following that old rescue route from Bamfield to Port Renfrew, and is now located within Pacific Rim National Park Reserve.

The museum aims to tell the history of the trail from the early 20th century when it was used as a rescue route to access an area known as the “Graveyard of the Pacific,” to its modern usage as a popular hiking destination.

Due to space constraints, the museum notes that it may not be able to display every submission.

Stories can be sent to museum exhibits manager Heather Feeney at archives@mmbc.bc.ca and will be accepted until Feb. 29.