Behind-the-Scenes Collections Tour: The Royal Tour

About this experience

Have you ever wondered what’s behind those Staff Only doors at your favourite museums? Now’s your chance to find out. Join us at the Maritime Museum of BC for a look behind the scenes. Each month, one of our Collections Tour Guides will lead a small group through a particular aspect of our collection.  This month’s guide is Murray Armstrong, with the highlights of what was shown to Princess Anne during her visit to our collection

Participants should meet in the lobby of 4000 Seymour Place at 1 pm on Friday, Oct. 25^th. The tour will take place from 1:00 pm to 2:30 pm. 

Tours are limited to six participants and must be booked at least 24 hours in advance.  

About Your Guide:

Murray John Armstrong was born in Victoria BC, the eldest son of parents who were also born in Victoria - a somewhat unusual occurrence. His great-grandfather, Frederick Jeune, was a sailor and sail maker who arrived in Victoria from Jersey in the 1880’s and later established Jeune Brothers, the long-standing Victoria business. Perhaps this may explain Murray’s fascination with ships and the sea? Murray was educated in Victoria and while a student spent a summer crewing aboard the Canadian Coast Guard vessel Alexander MacKenzie. Soon after, Murray was transferred to Vancouver with his banking career. Some years later, he fulfilled a life-long desire to work in the airline industry which subsequently morphed to the computer side of the business where he worked for nearly 25 years.

Following a downturn in business after the events of 2001, Murray pivoted to academia where he worked in administration at UBC for 10 years before officially retiring in 2013. Murray has always felt very passionate about transportation systems including air, rail and marine and also the performing arts. He has had a lifelong love of music and since childhood has sung with numerous choirs and, on stage, as a singing actor. To fulfill his interests in the former, he was a long-standing member of the Titanic Historical Society, a student of the Lusitania disaster and an amateur BC Coast historian with particular focus on the CPR’s BC Coast Steamship Service. With respect to the later, Murray was involved in many community theatre organizations in Greater Vancouver in which he served both administratively and as a performing actor. On a part-time basis he also worked as an usher for the Arts Club Theatre Company in Vancouver for 13 years and continues to do so locally with the Royal and McPherson Theatres Society.

Since retirement he has volunteered with Thrifty Foods for the Sendial program, as a docent at Craigdarroch Castle and, most recently, since 2021, as an Interpreter and Front Desk attendant at the Maritime Museum of BC. Since volunteering at the Museum, he has had the opportunity to record several Maritime Minutes talks and to meet and recount maritime history with HRH Princess Anne during her visit to the Museum’s collections in May 2024.