Vancouver

September 16, 2024-June 27, 2025

Referencing works from the City's Permanent Art Collection, participants explore the progression of themes and techniques in contemporary Coast Salish art. Discussions on appropriation and use of copyrighted work will be discussed within this program. Students will finish the workshop by creating their own collagraph print.

Curriculum Tie-ins: Indigenous Art, Community, Art Education

The City Analyst has gone missing! It’s up to your team of detectives to solve the case. Looking at all the collected material, including crime scene, impressions and DNA evidence, piece together the connections between the suspects and the sequence of events leading up to our Analyst’s kidnapping. Can you save our City Analyst and uncover the suspect’s motive?

This program is ideal for classes studying the Canadian justice system, policing, and forensic methods. 

Duration: 1 hour Capacity: 20 Cost: $8.00/student

Combine a Kidnapping program with a Museum Discovery Tour – only $12.00/student!

In a Vancouver Mysteries game your students are the heroes of their own outdoor adventure — they’ll sharpen their deductive reasoning skills while they complete a series of challenges and collect clues to solve a mystery on the streets of downtown Vancouver.

Students are divided into teams of up to 6 players competing for first place in an Amazing Race style game. Points are earned by answering each challenge correctly, completing the game within a time limit, and by being one of the first teams back.

Game kits include a map, game book, worksheet, and any tools required to solve the mystery (examples: magnifying glass, measuring tape). Players use the map to navigate the streets of downtown Vancouver, cracking codes and solving puzzles along the way. Landmarks, sculptures, parks, and historic sites all play their part as the story unfolds.

Games are facilitated by Vancouver Mysteries’ Game Operators who arrive in character as detectives or secret agents to introduce the game and send the teams out on their adventure. At the end of the game, Game Operators meet the teams to calculate their scores and award team certificates.

Choose from any of our three games: Gastown murder mystery Crime in Downtown, downtown spy game Secret Mission and superhero adventure Heroes and Villains.

Need some lesson plan ideas? Check out our Field Trips page to download free lesson plans, access Kahoots! games, and pick our brains for more field trip ideas.

Bugs, mold, and bacteria are things we want to keep as far away from our farm as possible, right? Wrong! Join us to explore the (slightly gross) world of Decomposers, and discover why there’d be no farm without them.

Get a taste of what Fresh Roots is all about!  Activities will vary depending on age, size of group, and the needs of the farm, but you can expect to learn about how Fresh Roots came to be, learn about food and food systems through play, participate in farm work, and try some farm-grown food!

Come up to Squamish for a great day of fun adventures. Students will enjoy the morning working together in teams on challenges seen on the popular TV series. Then, after a delicious lunch, it’s time for a scenic river experience on our kid-friendly Cheakamus Splash river trip.
Have a really large group? In the morning while one half are doing Survivor, the other half will hop on the river. Then they’ll swap!

WHAT’S INCLUDED?

• 2-hour SURVIVOR event
• 1-hour LUNCH break
• 3-hour CHEAKAMUS river adventure
• PHOTOS of the day

This is a full-day event. Check-in time in Squamish is 9:30am for a 10am Survivor start time, lunch is at 12pm, and the Cheakamus river trip begins at 1pm. Finish and departure time from Squamish will be approximately 4:30pm.
*Please contact us if you need a customized itinerary!

On the Forbidden Vancouver Tour you’ll explore Gastown, our city’s oldest neighbourhood. In the late 1910s our Province experimented with prohibition, meaning the sale of alcohol was banned. Enterprising criminals began to make money “bootlegging,” making and selling liquor illegally to a thirsty population. Even some government officials couldn’t resist the temptation to make a quick buck trafficking liquor.

As illegal drinking dens started to pop up throughout the city, the VPD formed a “Dry Squad” to hunt down bootleggers. Eventually mob boss Joe Celona had risen to the top of the city’s underworld, with even the Chief of Police on his payroll. Fighting for prohibition were the temperance union, a patchwork social movement formed by religious leaders, suffragists who wanted the vote for women, business owners, and many in the general population worried about the huge extent of alcohol abuse in Canada in the years leading up to prohibition, and particularly in Vancouver.

Many people of colour and particularly indigenous communities were brutally targeted under prohibition law, which was used by authorities to exert control over marginalized people. While prohibition was eventually repealed, it sadly remained in place for decades in the case of indigenous people. 

Once prohibition came into force south of the border, enterprising sailors made a fortune smuggling liquor down the West Coast in a practice known as “rum-running.” Vancouver’s Reifel family ran the largest rum running operation and would end up one of the country’s richest families. The Canadian government was even in on the act, charging an “export duty” on every case of liquor that left the country.

Discover all this and more on the Forbidden Vancouver Tour! A unique field trip for students from Grade 7 – University.

• Duration – 2 hours
• Start point – Outside Monaco Cafe at 356 Water Street
• End point – Maple Tree Square, Gastown