Samson V Heritage Museum (New Westminster)

As you may have heard, The Network Hub (where my consulting studio has a home) is expanding to serve the needs of entrepreneurs, solopreneurs and professionals in the New Westminster/Delta/Surrey/White Rock/Burnaby/Coquitlam/Tri-Cities area. We are in discussions right now with River Market in New Westminster for our location (very, very advanced conversations). You should expect some great things. When we went to meet with the folks at River Market, Jay Catalan, John Van and Minna Van (the three co-founders of The Network Hub) and I went for a walk along the seawall. Not only do I sit on the executive board of The Network Hub, we are also all very good friends so it was fantastic to take some time to just relax and hang out.

We are getting to know New Westminster slowly, and one of the things we were fascinated by was the Samson V Heritage Museum. Getting to know New Westminster means also knowing its historic museums, and the Samson V is one of those fun ones.

The Samson V, launched in 1937, is the last surviving wooden steam-powered sternwheeler built for the federal Department of Public Works for use as a snag-boat on the Fraser River. At 418 gross tons and 115’ on deck, she was the fifth in a series of similar vessels dating back to 1884 that cleared debris, maintained aids to navigation and government docks, performed surveys and served other functions as needed.

The Samson V was the last steam-powered sternwheeler to operate in Canada and representative of a long-standing federal government involvement in maintaining the waterways of western Canada. The Historic Sites and Monuments Board of Canada has declared the operation of sternwheeler snag-boats by the Department of Public works on the rivers of British Columbia an event of national historic significance and in the future intends to commemorate this by means of a plaque installed on or near the Samson V, “the last representative example” of these vessels.

The Samson V was retired in 1980 and sold to the City of New Westminster for one dollar on the understanding that the vessel would be preserved as a museum and that it occupy a unique place in the Province’s and City’s maritime heritage. The Samson V remains the only completely intact and floating wooden sternwheeler in North America.

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