Inside Langley's new salishan Place by the River

Next month. That is when members of the public could finally get a chance to go inside Langley’s long-awaited salishan Place by the River.

The museum was supposed to open nearly two years ago, but has been delayed by construction “deficiencies” longer than expected.

The Fort Langley Library, which moved out of its community hall space in February of last year, is set to reopen inside salishan in the coming months, according to Langley Township staff. When it does, an open house will finally allow the public to get inside the new building.

And unlike earlier opening timelines this one seems likely to stick. Langley Heritage Society vice-president Mark Forsythe toured the space early last week, and told The Current the new library space is already being filled with books.

“They've already got their shelving in there,” Forsythe said. “They're now bringing the books in and they should be open, I think, in February.”

The rest of the museum remains empty. But, it is nearly ready to welcome the more than 27,000 artifacts waiting at the old Centennial Museum across the street. And Langley staff say salishan Place will be fully operational by the summer—two years after it was originally scheduled to open.

Inside the building

The interior of salishan Place by the River is impressive, Forsythe said. And although the spaces are empty, they are filled with potential.

Last Tuesday, Forsythe, heritage society president Fred Pepin, and several Langley museum volunteers were given a private tour of the nearly-finished space. The museum, first announced in 2018, is a collaboration between the Township of Langley and the Kwantlen, Katzie, Matsqui, and Semiahmoo first nations. Construction was expected to cost an estimated $20 million back in 2021, although it’s not clear how much the total is now. Funding came from sponsors, federal and provincial grants, and the township.

“It was great to see the potential,” Forsythe said. “It's surprisingly large inside. It's three floors, and … it's 36,000 square feet. So it's quite impressive when you come in the main foyer at street level.”

The tour took Forsythe and the others on a journey through the space, starting in the main foyer where the Fort Langley Library will be, along with a classroom, and a permanent exhibit hall.

(The Langley Heritage Society, although not officially affiliated with the new museum, had donated $60,000 towards the classroom space on the main level. Forsythe said it was “exciting to see that space” during his tour.)

Upstairs, the building features a gallery for travelling exhibits, visual art workshops, and the museum’s main storage space for its collections. The collection storage, Forsythe said, is “impressive” both for its size, use of rolling storage to maximize space, and connection to the museum’s public spaces.

“It's going to be really important that anybody can walk in and sit beside the collection and working with the staff to gain access to that collection,” he said. “Hopefully it's going to encourage a lot more research and just a more public connection between us and what's stored away there.”

On the top floor, the building has a banquet hall, commercial kitchen, large multi-purpose space, outdoor patio, and 177-seat theatre. The public will be able to rent the space.

Aside from the physical rooms, Forsythe said the building contained a number of small details that enhanced the space, including a rain gutter that waters the living roof and an Indigenous drum motif embedded in the floors. (Other elements, like four copper house posts being created by the partner nations, have yet to be installed.)

Although the Township of Langley has not fully explained the reasons for the delays, Forsythe suggested that some of the design elements may have contributed to the long wait for the museum to finally open.

The building has a number of windows, which Forsythe said bring a lot of light into the space. But windows let in UV rays, which can be extremely harmful to delicate artifacts.

“They've had to do some work on putting special barriers on the glass to make sure that harmful rays aren't coming in,” Forsythe said. “They have to do some work in the collections area as well around that … There have been delays because of some deficiencies like that that needed to be addressed.

“It's been frustrating for a lot of people waiting, but I think we're happy that it's finally almost here, because it's such an important institution for the community.”

The long wait

The Current contacted the Township of Langley to ask what caused the multi-year delay in getting salishan Place by the River open to the public. The township did not provide specific information on the issues that caused the building to be more than two years behind schedule.

The township first announced plans for the museum site in 2018, noting that the Langley Centennial Museum would be 60 years old that year. Construction began in 2021.

When The Current talked to then-manager of arts and culture Peter Tulomello, he hoped the building would be move-in ready sometime in 2022. The Langley Advance Times reported in early 2022 that the deadline had been pushed, and staff expected the museum building would be finished by the end of the year.

The end of the year came and went. In June of last year, the township told The Current it aimed to have the museum fully open by February of 2025, with a gradual opening beginning in October 2024. In anticipation of that event, the Fort Langley Library moved out of its original home in the Fort Langley Community Hall in February of 2024. By October of 2024, the gradual opening still hadn’t happened, but township staff said the library would be able to open “independently” of salishan Place, potentially the following month. Again, staff were too optimistic.

Forsythe said the missed deadlines created tension in Langley’s historical community, which has been without a museum and direct access to its artifacts since 2022.

“It's been a bit like being in limbo, right? The connection between us, sort of the heritage community, and the museum … was basically put on pause,” Forsythe said. “I guess the saving grace is that they do have a good digital collection. So in my volunteer work with the Heritage Society, I often visit that collection for information or for photographs.

“But I'm really hoping that things are going to come together now and gel.”

The big move

The first steps towards reopening a Langley museum are finally in motion. As Forsythe saw, books are being put on the shelves in the new library space.

According to the township, staff are currently “fine tuning the building operating systems” and beginning walk-throughs and planning with stakeholders, like the Langley Heritage Society.

Importantly, museum staff are also in the midst of preparing to move the collection over to the new space. That will be no small feat. In November of last year, staff began boxing up items for the move. They packed more than 800 boxes, and documented the condition of more than 16,300 artifacts in advance of the move.

All those artifacts will need to be physically moved across the street, and then organized and labelled in the new archival space. Curators will need to establish the permanent exhibits and work with the First Nation partners on developing Indigenous-led stories.

When that is complete “incremental public access will follow,” according to the township. It’s not clear exactly what that will look like, although staff said there will be programs, services, and exhibits added before a full opening this summer.

Forsythe, for one, is excited for that moment, which will turn part of Fort Langley into a heritage corridor with the national historic site, the heritage society’s CN station, the BC Farm Museum, and salishan Place. With those sites working together, he hopes that more people will begin to engage with Langley’s history—not just its settler history, but also the Indigenous heritage as well.

“I'm most excited about seeing people in there and engaging with the museum,” Forsythe said. “Hopefully it’s going to be a very public, engaging experience, and you want to go through the doors and discover something new each time that you go in there.”