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6. The North Shore Moves: Transportation and You

The North Shore Moves: Transportation and You

The West Vancouver Museum & Archives (WVMA) is an educational institution that works with the community to foster awareness and understanding of community heritage, and to facilitate access to, and preservation of, West Vancouver human and natural history, from earliest times to the present.

What are they doing?

"The North Shore Moves: Transportation and You" is an educational program for grade 5-7 students in West and North Vancouver. It will be delivered over three 2½-hour visits to participating classes by the Museum's Education Coordinator and volunteer lecturers. The program provides an historic overview of transportation in the region, beginning with the canoes of the Squamish people, and continuing through the eras of sail, horse, steam, internal combustion, and human power. The program will stress emerging transportation technologies that may help shape future trends, especially fuel cell vehicles, electric bikes and scooters, and gas/electric automobiles. Special focus will be given to more sustainable forms of transportation, including bicycles and other forms of human-powered transportation, public transit, and alternative fuel vehicles (e.g. fuel cell, electric battery, bio-fuels). In addition, the program will deal with various forms of recreational transportation and their impact on recreational land and aquatic environs. At every point, students will be asked to examine all modes of transportation in the context of their resource costs, environmental impact and effects on communities, and will be encouraged to seek ways of getting around that minimize ecological damage.

Program units will be short modules (seven or eight units of 20-30 minutes) and longer-term projects (two or three projects assigned in visit 1, followed up in subsequent visits). Short module subjects include: canoes of the Squamish people, sail and oar, working horses of the pioneers, steam power: ship and train, the internal combustion engine, bikes, skateboards and in-line skates, and fuel-cell and hybrid vehicles. Longer-term subjects include: trip-planning for public transit, transportation challenges of the 2010 Vancouver Olympics, railway heritage, and planning for a bike friendly community (teachers will select from these options).

The Museum is planning to utilize sustainable transportation technology for the delivery of this program. For the first of the three visits, the Education Coordinator and three docents will travel to and from the client school in a hybrid-drive Toyota Prius. For the second and third visits, the Education Coordinator will use an electric-assist bicycle and/or regular commuter bike (with cargo trailer) to visit the schools. These vehicles will all be integrated into the program itself, with descriptions and demonstrations of their workings, operation and applications. The hybrid car and electric bicycle will be purchased for the program specifically, but will be available to Museum staff for some general use.

Follow-up to this program will consist of a menu of classroom visit and field trip opportunities arranged through the WVMA.

Where can you find more information?

West Vancouver Museum and Archives

Date modified:

2010-07-22

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