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COURTESY OCEANOGRAFIC DECEMBER/JANUARY 2017 BCBUSINESS 39 necessarily well understood. Nightingale grumbles that peo- ple often assume the aquarium is supported by government. ("Quite the opposite," he says. "We give the city about a million dollars a year in parking fees.") The aqua r iu m is, how- ever, under the purview of the Vancouver Park Board as it sits on city-owned property in Stan- ley Park (adding a challenging political dynamic—see sidebar "Hot Waters"). It opened in June 1956 as the Vancouver Public Aquarium in an 830-square- metre facility, and Nightingale says it had an "unusual birth" for a cultural institution in that it had a clear vision from the start. The original founders— insurance salesman Carl Lietz, the school superintendent, a tourism of"icial, some UBC professors, timber baron H.R. MacMillan and businessman George Cunningham—had the following goals: provide education; attract tourists; conduct original research; and operate šnancially independent of government. In the 1960s a šfth mandate was added: promote conservation of our natural world. Leading up to the aquarium's 60th anniversary, Nightingale and the board decided they needed to revisit that mis- sion. The world has changed dramatically since the founders articulated their vision, and given that the current threats—over- šshing, the impacts of coastal develop- ment, growing amounts of pollutants and contaminants and the eœects of climate change— were bigger than Vancouver, a new mission had to režect that. Nightingale describes it like this: "We are moving from being an aquarium that does conser- vation to being a global conservation orga- nization that has an aquarium." The Vancouver Aquarium's work with Oceanogrà"ic in Valencia—what Nightingale hopes will be the šrst of many partnerships, including one currently under discussion with an aquarium in Beijing—is a concrete example of this shift. Opened in 2003 and built for the equivalent of about $340 million, Ocean- ogràšc is part of an ambitious project called the City of Arts and Sciences, conceived and built by the city and the region of Valencia. It also includes an opera house, a cinesphere, a science museum and a large multi-use facility, located together in a former river bed. All of them were built to be architec- tural spectacles—Oceanogràšc, designed by Spanish-Mexican architect Felix Can- dela, features a stunning series of arcing concrete shells in the shape of a lily. At 1.2 million square feet, it is šve times the size of the Vancouver Aquarium. Ocean- ogràšc was šrst managed by a Spanish theme-park šrm. It was proštable, mak- ing the equivalent of $33 million in its W hile lauded for much of its work, the Vancouver Aquarium also gener- ates criticism for its practice of keeping and breeding whales and other cetaceans. Most recently, the issue was raised by two Vision Van- couver Park Board commis sioners in March 2014. Intense media coverage of meetings and protests followed for six months, during which time the board considered enacting a bylaw banning breeding of cetaceans at the aquarium. The issue was ultimately resolved in that year's civic election, in which a majority of board seats went to the Non Partisan Association. To John Nightingale, the public debate was an expensive distrac- tion. He thinks the protests were led by emotion, not science: "The activists would say something out- landish and stupid, and we would have to explain why that wasn't true or correct, and then they would do it again." He argues the mammals are used in multiple scientic studies and given professional care, and is irked by the anthropomorphic argu- ments against keeping cetaceans in captivity. "People say, 'The whale isn't happy,' because they wouldn't be happy living in a tank. Well, guess what. You wouldn't be happy living in the ocean either."–M.G. Hot Waters WATER LILY The aquarium in Valencia was designed by archi- tect Felix Candela and built for $340 million