Annual CONFERENCE & EVENTS | Quick Links |
Williams Lake // May 1-4, 2025
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Welcome to the Cariboo
The 2025 BCHF conference is sponsored by Johnson / BelAir Direct Insurance and hosted by the Museum of the Cariboo-Chilcotin and the BC Cowboy Hall of Fame Society with support from the City of Williams Lake and the Cariboo Regional District.
We gratefully acknowledge that the conference will be held on the unceded ancestral and traditional lands of the Secwépemc Peoples neighbouring the T'exelcemc (Williams Lake) and Xat'súll (Soda Creek) First Nations.
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Pricing & Registration |
| Concession Pricing is for:
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Included in full conference registration:
| Optional:
| Free, open to the public:
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Schedule at a GlanceNote: The schedule may be subject to change. |
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Program
Thursday May 1, 2025
Pre-conference workshop 1:00 - 4:00 pm | Storage Best Practices for Heritage Collections Join Anna Irwin, Collections Manager from the Royal BC Museum, as she shares preventative conservation tips and best practices for storing your artifacts, treasures, and inherited belongings. During the three-hour workshop, you'll learn what supplies ensure optimal preservation without breaking your budget and you will have a chance to make your own storage box out of coroplast, customized to your object’s unique needs and dimensions. Ask questions, network, and share best practices, tips, and tricks. |
Evening event 6:30 - 8:30 pm | Welcome Reception Receive a warm welcome from our hosts at the Museum of the Cariboo-Chilcotin and BC Cowboy Hall of Fame Society. Connect with other delegates and locals while visiting the museum, cowboy hall of fame, and visitor centre. Enjoy refreshments while the host committee will share their extensive knowledge of ranching life with an interactive branding demonstration. Pick up your delegate package at our registration table. |
Friday, May 2, 2025 |
Presentation 9:15 - 10:15 am | Francophone Ranching Histories In 2019, the Société historique francophone de la Colombia-Britannique received a grant from Digital Museums Canada (DMC) to launch onsite research in the Cariboo and the Okanagan on the history of Francophones who launched ranches in those regions in the 1860s-70s, to hold oral history interviews with the descendants of these families, and to create from the results a bilingual digital exhibition available on the website of DMC, in both official languages. Maurice Guibord, the Society’s Executive Director, will share findings from this research, which includes new and sometimes staggering facts that came to light where members of mixed ancestry triumphed over a succession of difficult paths. |
Presentation 10:30 - 11:30 am | The Importance of Repatriation This presentation will show the importance of museum repatriations to Indigenous communities, featuring the 2024 Museum of Vancouver repatriation to the Tŝilhqot’in Nation. As part of this presentation will be a screening of a 15-minute documentary. Shane Doddridge is the Cultural Heritage Coordinator for the Tŝilhqot’in National Government. His work at TNG has been focused on bringing a holistic approach to heritage management, emphasizing balance between protection, understanding, celebration, and practices of both tangible and intangible cultural heritage. |
Keynote Presentation 1:00 - 2:00 pm | Phyllis Webstad, Orange Shirt Society Description coming soon. |
Meeting 2:15 - 3:15 pm | Annual General Meeting of the BC Historical Federation This is the business meeting of the membership of the BC Historical Federation. The meeting will be live streamed for members around the province. |
Presentation 3:30 - 4:30 pm | The routes of the fur trade from New Caledonia to the Pacific, 1821 to 1864 The Hudson’s Bay Company developed a unique system of transportation from its northern BC fur trade posts in what became known as New Caledonia to its southern terminus, originally Fort Vancouver on the Columbia River, then later Fort Langley on the Fraser River. Ken Favrholdt will use historical maps to show the various routes this system used, while providing excerpts from the HBC fur trade journals describing the travel ways between 1821 and 1864, after which new routes such as the Cariboo Wagon Road, supplanted the fur trade system. He will touch on the use of both the Fraser River and what has come to be called the HBC Brigade Trail through the interior of British Columbia and will focus on the role of Fort Alexandria which served as a link between the river and trail parts of this fur trade system. Ken is the Archivist for Tk’emlúps te Secwépemc and has worked as a researcher for several First Nations with a focus on Indigenous trails. Ken has managed other museums including the Osoyoos and District Museum and the Claresholm and District Museum in Alberta, and he has held executive positions with the BC Museums Association and the Archives Association of BC. |
Evening event 6:30 pm | Conversations in Chinese Canadian History Description coming soon. |
Saturday, May 3, 2025 |
Presentation 9:00 - 10:00 am | Interim Report of Findings the St. Joseph’s Mission Indian Residential School and Onward Ranch Investigation Description coming soon. |
Presentation 10:30 - 11:30 am | Always on Call: Adventures in Nursing, Ranching and Rural Living Marion McKinnon Crook received her Bachelor of Science in Nursing from Seattle University and worked as a public health nurse in the Cariboo until 1986 and in the Fraser Valley until 1989. Those were the days of treacherous roads, severe and dangerous weather and wide-spread populations. Her original nursing district encompassed 3600 square miles. During her nursing career in the Cariboo, she wrote and published with trade publishers: ten novels for young adult and middle grade readers. She also researched, wrote and published non-fiction around teen problems such as suicide, eating disorders and adoption. Marion achieved a Masters degree in Liberal Studies from Simon Fraser University and a PhD in Education from UBC. She taught nursing at university for eleven years but is now back writing full time. Writing as Emma Dakin, her latest adult mystery with Camel Press Storms in the Cotswolds, the sixth in The British Book Tour Mysteries. Her memoirs Always on Call: Adventures in Nursing, Ranching and Rural living and Always Pack a Candle: A Nurse in the Cariboo-Chilcotin have proven to be a popular read. She is presently working on a biography, Bloomsbury to Barkerville: The Life of Miss Florence Wilson. |
Field Trip 1:00 - 4:00 pm | Sugar Cane Reserve and 153 Mile Store Description coming soon. If you do not wish to attend the bus trip, visit shops and restaurants of Williams Lake or take a self-guided walking tour of the city's murals. |
Evening Event 6:30 - 9:00 pm | Gala Awards Banquet The Gala Awards Banquet is a celebratory way to wrap up the conference. Over three hours you will network with colleagues and new friends while enjoying a buffet dinner and having an opportunity to place a bid on local history books in the Society’s silent auction. The awards presentation acknowledges recipients of BCHF prizes like the appreciation, recognition, and merit awards, scholarship winners, Centennial Legacy Fund grant recipients, and culminates with the announcement of the 2025 Lieutenant Governor's Medal for Historical Writing recipient. |
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Sunday, May 4, 2025 |
Film Screening 10:00 am | SUGARCANE A stunning tribute to the resilience of Indigenous people and their way of life –SUGARCANE, the debut feature documentary from Julian Brave NoiseCat and Emily Kassie – is an epic cinematic portrait of a community during a moment of international reckoning. Set amidst a ground-breaking investigation into abuse and death at an Indian residential school in Williams Lake, BC, the film empowers participants to break cycles of intergenerational trauma by bearing witness to painful, long-ignored truths – and the love that endures within their families despite the revelation of genocide. SUGARCANE premiered at the 2024 Sundance Film Festival where it won the Directing Award: U.S. Documentary and has since garnered over a dozen awards. It is currently nominated for an Academy Award. |
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Plan your Trip
AccommodationsSuper 8 Hotel Williams Lake is the host hotel.
Other nearby accommodations in Williams Lake:
RestaurantsWithin walking distance of the Museum: Other restaurants in town:
| TransportationThe Williams Lake Regional Airport is serviced by Pacific Coastal Air and Central Mountain Air. Car rental is available through Enterprise. Airport customers requiring a vehicle will need to book in advance of their arrival at the airport. Venues
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Frequently Asked QuestionsQ. Are there accommodations within walking distance of the main venues? A. The Super 8 and the Best Western are adjacent to the Museum of the Cariboo Chilcotin and the Cascades Signal Point. The Central Cariboo Arts Centre and the Paradise Cinemas are not within walking distance of the Museum and are located downtown. Q. Are the presentations live-streamed? A. The presentations are being recorded and will be published on the BCHF YouTube channel in the weeks following the conference. The AGM will be live-streamed so that members who cannot attend the conference may participate and vote virtually. Q. Will there be a book fair where I can sell books or products at the conference as in past years? A. Yes, we have limited space set aside for 6 tables where organizations and individuals can sell or promote their books or history-related products or services. You can reserve your table when you book, extra fees apply. $10 to share a table with another vendor, or $25 to reserve a whole table. Q. Can I attend for only part of the conference? A. The conference registration includes all presentations, keynote speaker, evening events, a field trip, one ticket to the awards banquet, and one ticket to the film screening. The pre-conference workshop is optional (12 participants max), and additional tickets to the banquet are available an additional fee. Due to demand, space limitations, and licensing requirements, only registered delegates and conference volunteers can attend the presentations, keynote, field trip, and film screening as tickets are not sold separately for these events. The AGM is free for anyone to attend. Anyone interested in only attending the workshop should contact Shannon: conference@bchistory.ca |
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