B.C. museum was warned origin of 'Indigenous' artifact was in doubt before announcing finding, documents show

Seventeen months after a mysterious stone carving was discovered at low tide on a Victoria beach, researchers at the Royal B.C. Museum and Archives are no closer to solving the question of its origin.

Emails obtained by CTV News show the museum initially rushed to declare the stone a historic Indigenous artifact even as credible questions about the carving's authenticity were raised.

The partially redacted documents, obtained under British Columbia's access-to-information law, show the museum was warned in the days after the discovery that the large stone pillar might actually be a modern creation and not an Indigenous artifact.

But the warnings went unheeded for months as the museum pushed ahead with plans to display the stone as a relic of ancient Indigenous culture on southern Vancouver Island.

One of the first warnings came just three days after the 100-kilogram sandstone carving was recovered – and more than six months before the museum made its discovery public.

In an email sent to museum curators on July 20, 2020, someone sent a link to a news report about a Victoria artist who makes stone carvings on the beach where the just-recovered artifact was found. The email writer's identity is redacted in the documents provided to CTV News.

Rather than contact the artist, the museum pressed ahead with its ancient-origin theory of the stone for the next six months. On Jan. 27, 2021, the museum made its determination official and publicly declared the carving a "very special ritual stone pillar" of the Lekwungen people.

But the finding confounded local carver Ray Boudreau, who spoke with CTV News two days after the announcement. Boudreau, who does not identify as Indigenous, maintains to this day that he made the carving in 2017.

The artist provided CTV News with iPhone photos of his carving, which vanished from the beach before he could finish it. The photos are dated Jan. 23, 2017, and show a stylized stone face that bears a striking resemblance to the one now housed in the museum.