A few hours before dawn on December 31, 2024, Mary Borrowman and her husband, Jim, were startled awake by their dog’s relentless barking. Borrowman tried to ignore it.
Then the phone began to ring. “I got up and went down to one of the guest rooms that faces the cove,” she recalls. Pulling back the curtain, she saw an orange glow flickering at the north end of the village’s heritage boardwalk. “I knew something was very wrong.”
After quickly dressing, the couple headed outside to join the other residents who live in the northern Vancouver Island community, a former milling and cannery village that’s become a popular centre for eco-tourism. Down by the water, the Killer Whale Cafe and Old Saltery Pub were engulfed in flames. “We watched the fire progress to Tide Rip Grizzly Tours, then jump across the boardwalk to the Prince of Whales office.” Overwhelmed, Borrowman said she had to stop watching and returned home.
Meanwhile, firefighters began arriving. Crews from Sointula and Alert Bay came by boat, dousing flames under the boardwalk, while teams from Port McNeill, Port Hardy, and Hyde Creek battled the fire from shore. Despite their efforts, when the Borrowmans returned to their vantage point just 20 minutes later, the Whale Interpretive Centre (WIC)—the museum and education facility run by the Johnstone Strait Killer Whale Interpretive Centre Society that they had co-founded—was in flames.
An immature Fin Whale, struck by a cruise ship in 1999, a wedding gift from the Whale Interpretive Centre’s Mary Borrowman to her husband, Jim.
Although the WIC opened its doors in 2002, its origins stretch back to the 1960s, when little was known about the marine mammals the Kwakwaka’wakw call max’inuxw. Seen as dangerous predators and greedy competitors for salmon, killer whales, also called orcas, were often shot by fishermen. The Federal Department of Fisheries and Oceans even stationed a .50-calibre machine gun near Campbell River to deter them. At the same time, with their population believed to be in the thousands, dozens of west coast killer whales were being captured for display in aquariums—at least 12 died in the process.
By 1970, attitudes began to shift. Scientists and the public started questioning the impact of these ever-increasing captures on a species we knew so little about. That year, marine biologist Michael Bigg was hired by DFO to conduct the first-ever killer whale census. His groundbreaking study led to a crucial discovery: each killer whale has a uniquely shaped dorsal fin and saddle patch, making individuals more easily identifiable. This breakthrough led to photo-identification, a key method for understanding killer whale populations—their size, social structures, birth and death rates, feeding habits, and migration patterns.
This new means of tracking the animals led to the biggest revelation of all: the killer whale population was far smaller—and much more vulnerable—than anyone had realized.
The 1970s marked a turning point for whale research off northern Vancouver Island, with scientists and conservationists flocking to the region. Among those drawn into the growing movement to protect the killer whales was Jim Borrowman, who’d arrived in Telegraph Cove in 1975 to work at the sawmill.
Concerned about threats to the whales’ habitat, Borrowman joined the Robson Bight Preservation Committee, a small group working to raise public awareness about the whales. The group spoke to school groups, community organizations, and the media about the risks posed by a proposed clearcut in the lower Tsitika Valley, which included plans to use Robson Bight—a critical habitat for orcas—as a log-sorting area.
To strengthen their message, he began taking people out by boat to see the whales first-hand. By 1980, he formalized these trips by partnering with Bill McKay and establishing Stubbs Island Whale Watching, B.C.’s first whale-watching company. Their advocacy efforts paid off: in 1982, Robson Bight/Michael Bigg Ecological Reserve was designated the world’s first ecological reserve dedicated to orcas.
The Whale Interpretive Centre’s Cuvier’s Beaked Whale, found by Peter Curtis on the West coast of Vancouver Island in 2013.
As the Robson Bight Preservation Committee continued advocating for killer whales, its focus expanded to include responsible whale-watching guidelines, habitat protection, and public education. With this shift came a name change—first to the Johnstone Strait Killer Whale Committee, and later, as the need for education became even clearer, the Johnstone Strait Killer Whale Interpretive Centre Society in 1993.
It took nearly a decade for the new society to gain traction. “The federal government had a habitat stewardship program, and we got a very small grant,” Mary Borrowman recalls. With those funds and other matching contributions, the society was able to hire two students. Meanwhile, the Telegraph Cove Resort owners, Gordie and Marilyn Graham, offered the rent-free use of a small empty freight shed on the northern end of the boardwalk. “Jim had been collecting marine mammal skeletons for 40 years, intending to use them for education,” Borrowman says. The centre’s first exhibit featured a juvenile killer whale named Stubby, a Pacific white-sided dolphin called Slippy, and stories and displays from over four decades of whale conservation and research. In 2002, the Whale Interpretive Centre officially opened its modest doors.
The centre was an immediate success. Seeing its potential, Gordie Graham expanded the building for WIC’s second season to allow for growth. Then came Finny. The fin whale had been struck and killed by a cruise ship near Port Hardy and carried all the way to Vancouver on the ship’s bulbous bow. After securing permission from Fisheries and Oceans Canada, Mary Borrowman arranged for the Coast Guard to tow the 60-tonne whale back north. After an extensive cleaning and articulation process, Finny’s skeleton became the centre’s showpiece. “Gordie tore down the old portion of the building and rebuilt the new portion larger so that we could accommodate this big whale,” she says.
Over the years, WIC continued to grow—piece by piece—eventually becoming home to the largest public collection of marine mammal skeletons in B.C. Many had names: a Bigg’s killer whale nicknamed Eileen, Stella the sea lion, a grey whale named Arnie, and dozens of others. As the collection expanded, so did the centre’s reputation. What had once been a secondary stop for visitors drawn to whale-watching and grizzly tours became the main reason some people came to Telegraph Cove. Borrowman says “2024 was one of the best summers we’ve had. We had over 12,000 visitors.”
During the off-season, centre staff were deep into planning new exhibits, updating displays, and looking ahead when the fire struck. “Jim was working on a new exhibit about deep-diving marine mammals—pygmy sperm whales, sperm whales, Cuvier’s beaked whales, and Risso’s dolphins—for next season,” Borrowman says. Growth had always been a careful process. While grants were rare, the Grahams never charged rent, but still, each large skeleton cost around $50,000 to clean and articulate and could take years to finish.
Stella, one of the approximately 12 Steller Sea Lions that were part of the centre’s collection, found floating in Blackfish Sound in 2005.
After the fire was out, one of the first things the Borrowmans looked for was Finny. “The whale skull is on timbers that are all burnt, and there are some vertebrae. Our fear is that it’s burnt so badly that if you touch it, it will just crumble.” But even as they mourned their losses, Mary Borrowman says, they were buoyed by a worldwide outpouring of encouragement and hope.
Some things had survived: financial records remained intact, newly built cabinets protecting the centre’s whale ivory hadn’t been installed yet, and an archive of whale films and photos was safe. Most importantly, a dedicated group of volunteers was already rallying behind them. Borrowman is confident WIC can be rebuilt. “We don’t want to change that feeling people get when they walk in,” she says—the warm atmosphere, the awe of looking up at one of the ocean’s largest creatures. “But maybe we can make it better.”
When the museum first opened, it had only two skeletons. Now, it has been reduced to two once again: specimens of a Risso’s dolphin and a pygmy sperm whale, stored on Salt Spring Island and waiting to be rearticulated. But this time, the society is not starting from scratch—they’ve already built the museum once, and they know they can do it again. And a fundraising campaign is underway with the hope of raising $1 million. More importantly, they have a new incentive: ensuring that the story of how a few determined people changed the future for whales is never lost, Mary Borrowman says. “The youth of the future deserve to have this come alive again.”
Read our story about Mike deRoos, the Whale Interpretive Centre’s first employee.
