Blog & News

Bill Reid's The Raven and the First Men (Nick Kwan/Unsplash)

Following an 18-month closure for a $40-million seismic upgrade, UBC's Museum of Anthropology has reopened. While it has nearly 50,000 works from around the world, but the museum is best known for its Indigenous northwest coast art collection.

Read more from the CBC.

A sight-seeing train in Port Alberni returns to the track this month for the first time since 2018. The train is powered by a locomotive once used by MacMillan Blodel and uses cabooses that once belonged to CN Rail. It's hoped it will lead to reinstating service between Port Alberni and the McLean Mill National Historic Site.

Read more in the Victoria Times Colonist.

Google Street View

The owners of the Dutch Bakery and Diner in Victoria, which the Schaddlee family has operated since 1956, have put their Fort Street building up for sale. But they are hoping the business will go on.

Read more in the Victoria Times Colonist.

The Nelson Museum Archives and Gallery has officially launching a new permanent installation called We Love a Parade!, based on a 2021 gallery exhibition that celebrated the history of the West Kootenay Gays and Lesbians Society, meticulously compiled by longtime archives volunteer Michael Wicks.

Read more in the Nelson Star.

Google Street View

Two dozen long-forgotten scrapbooks have been rediscovered after more than a century on the top floor of Wongs’ Benevolent Association on Pender Street in Vancouver’s Chinatown (seen above).

Read more in The Vancouver Sun.

1420 Broad Street in Victoria

Bell Media is selling its Francis Rattenbury-designed building in Victoria. The building, constructed around 1907, is on the Canadian Register of Historic Places.

Read more in the Victoria Times-Colonist.

It's June and that means it's time for the Great Canadian Giving Challenge once again!

The Great Canadian Giving Challenge is a national public contest to benefit Canadian charities. Every $1 donated to a registered charity in June via CanadaHelps, automatically enters the charity to win an additional $20,000 donation.

The $20,000 grand prize draw will take place on Canada Day July 1st where one lucky charity will win!

Through the Great Canadian Giving Challenge, we are raising money for the BCHF Centennial Legacy Fund, which supports community historians who are uncovering the diverse cultural, social, genealogical, and geological history of BC.

Donate now

The BCHF thanks all donors for their continued support. 

This presentation was delivered by Dr. Si:yémia Albert "Sonny" McHalsie and Dr. Keith Thor Carlson at the BC Historical Federation Conference on May 4, 2024 at the Gathering Place at the University of the Fraser Valley's Chilliwack Campus.

Si:yémiya is the Cultural Advisor / Sxweyxwiyam (Historian) at the Stó:lō Research and Resource Management Centre, Stó:lō Nation, in Chilliwack, B.C. He is also an instructor at the University of the Fraser Valley, and has taught in the past for the University of Victoria for the Ethnohistory Field School. Si:yémiya is an active researcher and publisher, having authored and co-authored various articles and books over the past twenty-five years. The guiding principle behind his research is the ancient Stó:lō tradition of “being of good mind.” His areas of expertise include Stó:lō place names, sxwōxwiyám (ancient narratives) and sqwélqwel (family histories), fishing, and oral history.

Professor Keith Thor Carlson holds the Canada Research Chair in Indigenous and Community-Engaged History at the University of the Fraser Valley, where he has additionally been appointed Director of the Peace and Reconciliation Centre. Keith has been partnering with Coast Salish communities, especially the Stó:lō, to help document and interpret history and cultural traditions since 1992. His research is designed and executed collaboratively with Indigenous communities to meet community-identified priorities.

Si:yémiya takes you to places within S'ólh Téméxw, sharing Hal'qeméylem place names, and telling some of the sxwōxwiyám (ancient stories) and sqwélqwel (personal and family histories) that give shape to Stó:lō culture, history and people.

Dr. Carlson explains how place-naming is an integral component of the settler colonial process, and suggests ways in how we can take action to move towards decolonizing, re-Indigenizing, and re-naming places that are known to have original Indigenous names.

Si:yémiya provided examples of place names that guided Indigenous communities while travelling that reflected their knowledge of sites with bountiful food resources; that commemorated historical events and occurrences; and that documented stories of origin and transformation.

Carlson spoke to the process by which colonialists asserted a degree of control by naming spaces and associating new memories that reflected settler heritages. He suggests empowering Indigenous communities to create policies and processes that lead to re-naming on Indigenous terms.

Filming and editing by Elwin Xie, BC Historical Federation.

View of upper ranch and river bench, Wallachin. (Image D-08188 courtesy Royal BC Museum and Archives)

Since 2016, an annual event called Walhaschindig has drawn people to Wallhachin, a community built in the 1910s between Cache Creek and Kamloops that was supposed to be an orchard's paradise. The museum in the community's historic Soldiers Memorial Hall will be open five days a week through the end of September.

Nearly 100 objects, many likely thousands of years old, have been returned to the Snuneymuxw First Nation by the Royal BC Museum, including carved stone bowls, spindle whorls, and food processing utensils. 

Read more in the Victoria News.