Killer whale exhibit to spend summer at Royal Alberta Museum

Bill Reid's sculpture of an orca skeleton, made out of driftwood, is on display in the "Orcas: Our Shared Future" exhibit at the Royal Alberta Museum on May 16, 2025. (Bruce Wiggins / CTV News Edmonton)

A life-sized replica of one of the ocean’s most feared predators will be on display in Edmonton this summer.

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The Royal Alberta Museum on Friday opened its newest exhibit: “Orcas: Our Shared Future.”

Officials say the exhibit is an opportunity for Albertans to explore another area of Canadian biology, natural history, and cultural representation.

“There’s lots of amazing cultural and artistic representations here from along mostly the northwest coast, talking about orcas as biological organisms, as cultural organisms, and then as cultural reflections on humanity,” said one of the museum’s curators, Nicholas Cairns.

“For example, in the Pacific Northwest, there’s multiple ecotypes of orcas that specialize on different prey items, they specialize in different regions, and they all have their own culture, including language differences that they pass on – not genetically, but culturally.”

In addition to the replica, the exhibit consists of lessons on the orca’s biology and evolution, their significance to Indigenous peoples, and role in the ecosystem, plus a driftwood sculpture of a whale skeleton by Bill Reid.

“There’s some pop culture memorabilia in here too, so if you like Free Willy or the Vancouver Canucks, you can find some of that stuff as well,” added executive director Meaghan Patterson.

The museum is also a partner in some related programming: a free outdoor screening of Free Willy at Churchill Square on Saturday and a lecture by University of British Columbia Marine Mammal Research Unit researcher Josh McInnes on May 29.

The exhibit runs until Oct. 19.

With files from CTV News Edmonton’s Bruce Wiggins