Blog & News

From the Amelia Douglas Institute:

"In early 2025, 13 Métis artists participated in an MNBC Heritage Arts Mentorship with Cree-Métis artist Cynthia Boehm: this is the result.

Come to the ADI Showroom and see our exhibition of 13 new mini dog blankets created by amazing artists in our community. See photos of these blankets on some of the artists' own cats and dogs!

Métis dog blankets are a vibrant and meaningful part of Métis material culture. Originally used to decorate and protect dogs that pulled sleds and carried goods, these carefully crafted blankets tell stories of artistry, community, and connection to animals and the land.

Open April 22 to June 27, 2025. Book a visit online or drop in Tues-Thurs, 11-12."

On Saturday, May 3rd, celebrate the Grand Opening of the Lytton Chinese History Museum. Please RSVP if you plan on attending!

Beer historian and enthusiast Noëlle Phillips follows independent brewing from the City's inception in 1886 into the Prohibition years of the late 1910s, and talks about the consolidation and corporate concentration of brewing that dulled down the market until craft brewing, led by Granville Island Breweries, took off in the 1970s.

Watch the full video here.

The AGM of the British Columbia Historical Federation will be held on Friday, May 2nd at 2:15 pm at the Museum of the Cariboo-Chilcotin and the BC Cowboy Hall of Fame in Williams Lake. The AGM will also be live-streamed on Zoom for those who cannot attend in person.

• Register for the AGM here.
• View the AGM package here.
• Read the 2024-25 Annual Report here. 

The British Columbia Historical Federation is pleased to announce the finalists for the 2024 Historical Writing Awards. The awards will be announced during the awards gala taking place this year in Williams Lake on May 3 at 6:30pm.  

In alphabetical order, the list is as follows:  

• Linda Ambrose, Pentecostal Preacher Woman: The Faith and Feminism of Bernice Gerard, UBC Press. 
• Chris Arnett, Signs of the Time: Nłeʔkepmx Resistance through Rock Art, UBC Press.  
• Blair Mirau, The City of Rainbows: A Colourful History of Prince Rupert, Heritage House.  
• Noëlle Phillips, Brewmasters and Brewery Creek, Touchwood Editions.  
• Chad Soon and George Chiang, The Longest Shot: How Larry Kwong Changed the Face of Hockey, Orca Book Publishers.  
• Terri-Lynn Williams-Davidson and Robert Davidson, A Haida Wedding, Heritage House.  

The BC Lieutenant-Governor’s Medal for Historical Writing will be awarded together with $2,500 to the author whose book makes the most significant contribution to the historical literature of British Columbia. The second-place winner will receive $1,500 and third place, $500. One book will also be awarded the Community History Award, worth $500. Certificates of Honourable Mention may be awarded to other books as recommended by the judges.   

The 2024 competition received 24 publications, all of which add to the compendium of historical writing in British Columbia. 

Eminent rail-transit historian Henry Ewert describes a golden age of interurban train travel in the Vancouver area, focusing on the line that traversed Lulu Island's farms and racetracks and connected Steveston and its canneries with Marpole in South Vancouver, and from there into downtown Vancouver, from 1905 till the final closure in 1958.

Watch the full video here.

Ryan Hunt to Take the Helm of Vancouver’s Oldest Cultural Organization

The Vancouver Museum Society’s Board of Directors is happy to announce that Ryan Hunt has been selected as the new CEO of Vancouver’s oldest cultural institution, the Museum of Vancouver (MOV).

Following Mauro Vescera’s retirement at the end of 2024, the MOV underwent an extensive search to find a new CEO. Ryan Hunt was selected from a wide range of candidates. Ryan has worked in GLAM (Galleries, Libraries, Archives, and Museums) sector roles in Ontario, Korea, and his home province of BC, including at the London Arts/Heritage Council, Oil History Museum of Canada, the Local Government Management Association of BC, and as the Co-Founder of Canada’s first mobile makerspace, the MakerBus.

Since 2019 Ryan has worked as the Executive Director of the BC Museums Association (BCMA). Notable achievements include:

• supporting more than 50 First Nations communities access repatriation funding through the 2020 Repatriation Grant program; 
• partnering with the BC Heritage Emergency Response Network on emergency response training for museums and heritage sites across BC; 
• and contributing to having the BCMA named Charity Village’s Best Not-for-Profit Employer for Workplace Mental Health (Under 20 staff) in 2023.

“I am thrilled to have Ryan Hunt as our incoming CEO,” the MOV’s Board Chair, Bruce Granville Miller says. “He has a deep knowledge of the museum sector from his time as executive director of the BC Museums Association. Ryan is noted for his energetic and collaborative approach to management and has valuable experience with all levels of government and First Nations.”

Ryan steps in at an exciting time. After months of HVAC work forcing the feature exhibition wing to close, the MOV will be launching three exhibitions in June, including The Work of Repair: Redress & Repatriation at MOV. Plus, with plans for community consultations to renew the permanent galleries—and the first phase of the Sen̓áḵw development due to be complete at the end of 2025, the time is ripe for transformation and new beginnings.

“I’m eager to connect with the Museum’s partners and meet new ones,” incoming CEO Ryan Hunt says. “I look forward to supporting impactful collaborations with neighbouring arts and culture organizations to benefit our community.”

Ryan Hunt will officially commence his role as the Museum of Vancouver’s CEO on May 1, 2025. 

Taken more than 100 years ago, the Whalers Washing House is finally coming home.

Twenty-five members of the Mowachaht/Muchalaht First Nation (MMFN) are heading to New York on March 25 to repatriate what may be the largest treasure of a First Nation ever taken to the United States. The American Museum of Natural History is finally relinquishing the unique Whalers Washing House, consisting of four wooden whales, 88 carved figures, and 16 ancestral remains.

The shrine, originally located on an island on Jewett Lake at Yuquot (colonial, Friendly Cove), was where the families of whalers went to conduct purification rituals in preparation for the whale hunt.

Read the full article here.

The intriguing story of British Columbia’s most productive silver mining region and the vibrant communities that built up around it in the late 1800s.

Mining Camp Tales of the Silvery Slocan tells the often-overlooked story of British Columbia’s silver rush and its accompanying boom towns. In the 1890s, mining camps like Sandon, Three Forks, Whitewater and their neighbours, New Denver, Silverton, Slocan City, Kaslo and Nakusp, thrived. Prospectors and miners from Idaho, Montana, and other mining centres arrived in droves to reap the silver harvest. Capitalists flooded in from Spokane, Seattle, Vancouver, and from investment centres across North America and the world.

This silver rush ushered in a frenzy of activity, where cultures clashed, greed and racism prevailed, law and order was a matter of perspective, and yet, somehow, people still united in song, dance, and a spirit of community. Although the boom era was short-lived, the rush left a legacy that endures to this day. This book opens up a wealth of historical facts, anecdotes, and archival material on a chapter of mining history that has been largely forgotten until now.

PETER SMITH is a lifelong history buff, award-winning author, and retired civil servant. He holds a post-graduate degree in Folklife Studies from the University of Leeds (UK), and has published articles in British Columbia Magazine and the Silvery Slocan Historical Society newsletter. In 2020, he won the BC Historical Federation’s Community History Award for his extensively researched first book on BC’s silver rush. Peter lives in Ladysmith, BC.

You can purchase "Mining Camp Tales of the Silvery Slocan" from Heritage House Publishing.

The tumultuous rags-to-riches story of the famed O’Keefe ranching family by acclaimed historian and former Ranch Curator Ken Mather.

Founded in 1867, the Historic O’Keefe Ranch offers a fascinating glimpse into the life of an early farming community in the heart of the Okanagan Valley. The O’Keefes of O’Kanagan , a welcome resource for any visitor to the site, is an in-depth look into the multiple branches and generations of the family that gave the ranch its name.

When Michael O’Keefe arrived in Canada as a penniless Irish immigrant in 1819, he had no idea the impact his descendants would leave on the Canadian West. Michael’s son Cornelius arrived in British Columbia, also penniless, in 1862, and over the course of fifty years became a prosperous rancher, farmer, and developer, marrying three times (one of whom was a member of the Syilx People of the Okanagan Nation) and fathering seventeen children. Indeed, the story is as much the story of the strong women who lived and worked on the ranch, persevering through it all.

KEN MATHER has been researching western Canadian heritage for over four decades, working in curatorial, management, and research roles at Fort Edmonton Park, Barkerville, and the O’Keefe Ranch since the early 1970s. He is the editor of the Okanagan Historical Society Report and is the winner of the Joe Martin Memorial award (2015) for his contribution to BC Cowboy Heritage. He is the author of several books on pioneer and ranching history, including Stagecoach North, Trail North (a finalist for the British Columbia Lieutenant Governor’s Award for Historical Writing), Ranch Tales, and Frontier Cowboys and the Great Divide. Ken recently relocated to Chilliwack, BC.

A book launch will be held at the Vernon Branch of Okanagan regional Library on Tuesday, May 6th at 6:30 pm. For more information please visit the library's event page.

You can purchase "The O'Keefes of O'Kanagan" from Heritage Group.