Blog & News

Objects have a life within a museum’s collection. That life may be short or long. New objects enter collections and others leave collections as part of the professional process of curatorial stewardship. Today as a society we are re-evaluating our many histories. In this recent talk to the BCHF annual conference, Dr. Lorne Hammond presents examples of how that process works with a museum collection and in exhibits, and show how an object’s meaning can completely change over the centuries, as our interpretations of BC history evolve.

Hammond is a curator in the history department at the Royal British Columbia Museum and Archives.

Today Indigenous people are struggling to negotiate treaties with the BC and Canadian governments and in other ways to re-assume meaningful say over their ancestral lands and resources. Likewise, they are seeking to re-establish forms of self-governance that will be recognized and respected within Canada’s federal constitutional traditions.

Indigenous people and non-Indigenous Canadians alike are rightly asking why this process is proving so difficult, and likewise why respectful reconciliatory relations were not established much earlier? The answer to these and related questions require careful historical analysis.

In this recent presentation to the BCHF annual conference Keith Thor Carlson brings ethnohistorical methods and techniques to provide an assessment of settler colonial processes in Canada’s Pacific province. He concludes by outlining the pre-conditions, as he sees them, for building reconciliation between Indigenous people and non-Indigenous Canadian society today.

Thor Carlson is a Tier 1 Canada Research Chair in Indigenous and Community-engaged History at the University of the Fraser Valley. He is also the director of the university’s Peace and Reconciliation Centre.

Victoria became John Adams’ adopted city in 1960. As a new kid who was interested in history, he tried to make up for lost time by exploring far and wide and by talking to neighbours and the parents of his friends. His studies and work eventually took him in numerous other directions but when he returned to Victoria in 1979 to work at the Royal BC Museum, he quickly picked up where he had left off and has never stopped searching for hidden corners and arcane information about BC’s capital city.

What was happening in Victoria 100 years ago when the BC Historical Federation’s predecessor held its inaugural meeting here? John has chosen several disparate themes and have woven them together as a series of vignettes in the locations where they took place. This video was presented at the recent BCHF conference.

John Adams is the owner of Discover the Past, a history company in Victoria. He is a researcher, author, speaker and tour leader. He is a former president of the Victoria Historical Society and the Old Cemeteries Society of Victoria. His latest book Chinese Victoria will be released around the time of the conference.

Nowhere is remembrance more evident than in Victorian funerary rituals, where a range of memento mori and markers of death served to maintain the deceased in the minds of the living. As an educator, Nicole Kilburn has found that tangible learning experiences serve a similar purpose in memory-making.

This presentation to the recent BCHF conference explores the intersection of teaching historical content in tangible, material ways to heighten the act of remembrance and presents a recent example of a partnership with the Royal BC Museum. It also highlights how remembering the past, particularly in the context of death, is a powerful tool when contemplating the same concepts in the present.

Kilburn teaches anthropology at Camosun College in Victoria, British Columbia. She has a background in archaeology, but teaches a wide range of courses, increasingly with a focus on applied learning for student success. Her most recent new course, the Anthropology of Death, considers many topics, including memory making and the creation of ancestors across time and space. She has enjoyed learning from, and partnering with the RBCM to create memorable learning opportunities for students while sharing these important concepts with the public.

Due to historical exclusion and colonial record-keeping practices, not many non-Indigenous families from minority groups can trace their family histories back to the gold rush period that began in 1858 in the land we know as British Columbia today.

Two families, one French Canadian and the other Chinese Canadian, however, continue to prosper with rare well-recorded generational continuities from the gold rush era to the present day. The Guichon and the Louie-Seto families have persisted through historic periods of great adversity, including the Great Depression and the Chinese exclusion era, and have built lasting legacies in BC In juxtaposition, their experiences reveal patterns that informed their resilience. Specifically, the families through generations have emphasized education, intercultural community building, and family values of kindness, resonating with our needs during the unsettling time of global pandemic crisis.

This recent presentation to the BCHF conference takes a closer look at the family lessons from these two BC families that sustained them through challenges in BC history. Their demonstrated strength is at the core of shared values for BC’s intercultural community lives.

Dr. Tzu-I Chung is a cultural and social historian, specializing in the study of transnational migration within the context of historical, cultural and economic interactions between North America and Asia-Pacific. As a curator of history at the Royal BC Museum and Archives, she has developed, facilitated, and led cross-sectoral community heritage and legacy projects. Her research has informed numerous exhibitions, curriculum development, and public and academic publications on the topics of anti-racism, cross-cultural community histories, and critical heritage studies. She is currently a member of the Canadian Cultural Property Export Review Board, and a peer reviewer for academic journals and a juror for public history prizes and grants.

As the director of a non-profit museum, president of the Friends of the BC Archives, and an adjunct professor of BC history, Kelly Black has gained a unique perspective on the highs and lows of practicing public history in British Columbia. In his presentation to the recent BCHF conference, Dr. Black highlights some of his adventures in public history work over the last few years and describe the impact that waning government support is having on access, labour, and understanding about the past.

Black is the executive director at Point Ellice House Museum and Gardens in Victoria. Kelly has more than a decade of experience in heritage, museums, and non-profit management and he received his PhD in Canadian Studies from Carleton University in 2018. Kelly is also an adjunct professor in the Department of History at Vancouver Island University and current president of the Friends of the BC Archives. He lives with his wife and son in the Cowichan Valley.

The mistreatment of Japanese Canadians during the 1940s has traditionally been understood in terms of a temporary, wartime internment. Drawing upon the conclusions of a major, national research project, UVIC Professor Jordan Stanger-Ross and Michael Abe argue in this presentation to the recent BCHF conference that the traditional perspective fails to capture the injustice done.

Instead, we should see this history as involving the deliberate and permanent destruction of home and community over the course of a decade. His talk will try to change how you think about the origins, unfolding, and legacies of Canada’s internment era, replacing a story of regrettable political action at a time of war with a history of deliberate harm and widespread accountability.

Stanger-Ross is a professor and the University of Victoria Provost’s Engaged Scholar, 2020-25. He is the director of Landscapes of Injustice, a seven-year multi-sector and community-engaged project to research and tell the history of the forced sale of Japanese-Canadian-owned property during the 1940s.

Michael Abe is a third generation (sansei) Japanese Canadian (Nikkei) and past president of the Victoria Nikkei Cultural Society. He was the project manager on Landscapes of Injustice.

Collections manager Lisa Uyeda holds a lunchbox that belonged to Donald Masayuki who used it while attending school in Revelstoke where his family was reunited. He later became a dentist in Coquitlam. Photo: Mark Forsythe

By Mark Forsythe

Lisa Uyeda has the archivist’s touch. The Collections Manager at the Nikkei National Museum and Cultural Centre is wearing white gloves as she gently places a drawing of a POW camp on a table. The scene includes a barracks, a guard holding a rifle, and a Japanese Canadian prisoner with a large circle on his back.

Drawn and coloured onto a piece of birch bark 80 years ago, it’s now showing its age. The bark has ruptured into two pieces, and scotch tape covers small cracks. Why birch bark? “It was very difficult to have access to paper. It wasn’t until much later in the war that the YMCA started donating paper, pencils and musical instruments,” says Uyeda. The artist is unknown, but the search continues.

The POW camp is thought to be at Angler, located on the northern shore of Lake Superior. It’s also where Uyeda’s great-grandfather, Kamezo Okashimo, was incarcerated in 1942. While Kamezo was behind barbed wire, his wife, Hisayo, and children were interned at the Lemon Creek camp in BC’s Slocan Valley, living in a small, rudimentary shack. They had been rounded up from their Powell Street neighbourhood along with 21,000 other Japanese Canadians living on the coast, then stripped of their rights, goods, and property.

Instructions for pow camp on the left, and names of prisoners at Angler, Ont. including Lisa Uyeda’s great-grandfather, Kamezo Okashimo. Photo: Mark Forsythe

The triptych of camp images drawn on birch bark is thought to have been created at Angler POW camp in Ontario. Nikkei Museum still hopes to learn who drew these compelling images. Photo: Mark Forsythe

Uyeda says this about life in the camp: “Even though they made a lot of friends, they really felt the oppression that they were living under, and the loss. And we kind of still feel that, generations later.” Kamezo Okashimo would not reunite with Hisayo and their children until late The family never returned to BC.

Uyeda is fourth-generation Japanese Canadian and seventh-generation English/Irish; it wasn’t until her late teens and early 20s that she heard stories about the internment of her father’s family. Determined to uncover more about this part of her heritage, she pursued archival studies, completed a UBC master’s degree, and for seven years has worked at the Nikkei National Museum, the largest repository of Japanese Canadian archival materials in Canada.

“Being able to work here and use my archival degree for the benefit of Japanese Canadian history has been rewarding beyond words. I found my grandmother’s school photo in Lemon Creek. I had never seen her at that age before, let alone in an internment camp. Finding my great-grandfather’s name on the POW list—I had no idea. It was life changing.”

Nikkei National Museum and Cultural Centre celebrated its 20th anniversary in 2020. The facility is elegant and welcoming, with an emphasis on wood, light, curves, and open space. It is a busy cultural hub, with dozens of community program offerings, exhibit space, a language school, and a summer Nikkei Garden Farmers’ Market.

The breadth of archival holdings is impressive: 43,000 photos and negatives (remarkable, since Japanese Canadians were not allowed to own cameras during the Second World War), films (including Tomojiro Inouye’s home movies that chronicle life before, during and after the Second World War), a reference library, documents, correspondence, and newspaper clippings. (Most material is available digitally online at https://centre.nikkeiplace.org.)

Uyeda reaches for a critical part of the collection—a large fishing boat ledger kept by Kishizo Kimura. He was one of four people on the Japanese Fishing Boat Disposal Committee which illegally sold more than 1,000 Japanese Canadian fishing vessels confiscated by the Canadian Navy.

“We have the original ledger that documents every single boat that was sold and whether or not it was a forced sale, or whether Kimura was able to help proceed with the sale and get consent from the owner,” says Uyeda.

Example from the fishing boat ledger of a forced sale. Valued at $400, it was sold to BC Packers for just $150. Photo: Mark Forsythe

His son offered up a great story: “If his parents were going out for dinner or a friend’s house, and if the kids were going to be home alone with the records, he would actually take them and leave them in trust with his neighbour because Kishizo Kimura knew how important they were.” Today they are invaluable. “Thousands and thousands of people were affected by the forced sale of these vessels. Being able to preserve these records and have them available for family history research or Canadian history research, it’s just a remarkable thing.”

We sometimes forget that Japanese Canadians from BC served Canada with honour during the First World War, and then were later forced into internment camps during the Second World War. By 1945 the British were putting pressure on Canada to enlist able-bodied Japanese Canadians.

Thomas Kunito Shoyama of Kamloops, editor of The New Canadian newspaper, served with the Canadian Army’s S-20 Intelligence Corps. He later distinguished himself as a champion of human rights, helped usher in Medicare in Saskatchewan, served on the Economic Council of Canada, was a federal deputy minister, and eventually helped raise funds to build the Nikkei National Museum. He died in Victoria in 2006. This “enemy alien” would most certainly be proud of what the Nikkei National Museum has achieved: sharing this compelling and essential collection with all Canadians.

Writing Wrongs: Japanese Canadian Protest Letters of the 1940s

Though our journey is a unique one, you might recognize its echoes in today’s headlines. It resonates with continuing stories of dislocation, migration, and struggles to build from fragments an idea of home…Follow the stories of the Japanese Canadian community from Japanese emigration to building communities in Canada, forcible removal from their homes to internment sites, and the legacy of standing up for justice that continues to this day. Japanese Canadians’ letters of protest speak powerfully from the archives about the meaning of citizenship, justice, and equal rights.” — Writing Wrongs website


Writing Wrongs: Japanese Canadian Protest Letters of the 1940s (https://writingwrongs-parolesperdues.ca) is a Nikkei National Museum and Cultural Centre online exhibit. It was inspired by a file of approximately 300 letters of protest stored at Library and Archives Canada. These letters were written to the Canadian government by dispossessed citizens of Japanese heritage.

Director and curator Sherri Kajiwara notes that she and her team “worked directly with descendants of the letter writers for much of the video content on the site (at https://bit.ly/3hV33Ia). Researching, contacting, and building relationships with them was an important step in our responsibility to our community and for authenticity of narration.”

While the site is narrative for most of the chapters, the final section, which includes the original letters of protest, is accessible to all viewers as primary source material.

This online project was developed with the support of the Digital Museums Canada investment program. Digital Museums Canada is managed by the Canadian Museum of History, with the financial support of the Government of Canada. Creative visual content and videography was developed by Tabata Productions. NGX Interactive was essential in developing the digital exhibit and provided web hosting support.

Mark Forsythe travels through BC and back in time, exploring the unique work of British Columbia Historical Federation members.

The Steveston Tennis Club poses with agricultural tools circa 1922. Photo: Nikkei National Museum, Nishihata Family collection, 2010.80.2.10

Even the smallest historic object, lost or actively discarded, decades or even centuries ago, has a story to tell. In this presentation to the recent BC Historical Federation conference, Tom Bown gives a brief introduction to the types of historic artifacts that find their way to the historic archaeology collection of the Royal BC Museum. When the written word does not exist, what role do these objects have in telling the history of marginalized populations in BC?

Also, this talk considers some of the challenges of historic archaeology collections, as well as considering how this resource is currently being managed in British Columbia.

Bown is a volunteer research associate in archaeology at the Royal British Columbia Museum. After finishing a BSc at the University of Victoria, he worked several years for the RBCM archaeology section prior to a career with Natural Resources Canada.

He has been involved with numerous archaeological projects over the past 40 years with a specialty of identifying historic archaeological artifacts. Bown is a past president of the Archaeological Society of BC, a member of the Society for Historic Archaeology and an on-call staff member of Millennia Research Ltd.

Bill Wilson of Nanaimo was the recipient of a BCHF Certificate of Merit at the federation’s annual gala on June 5.

Wilson is the author of numerous works about soda manufacturers and brewers of British Columbia, including the recent Soda Kings of BC & the Yukon volumes. Actively sharing and inspiring others to take up interest in unknown and unearthed bottles, Bill has carried out “tireless continued research that takes numerous small facts from many sources to weave into coherent stories of early British Columbians.”

His work, the product of almost four decades of diligent digging, has been instrumental in helping heritage-minded citizens and researchers understand their collections.