Applications open for Centennial Legacy Fund

Do you want to research and publish an article? Mark an historical site or object? Access archives to do research? If yes, the BCHF’s Centennial Legacy Fund may be for you! Application deadline for grants up to $5,000 is March 1. 

Introducing the BCHF’s new treasurer

We are pleased to report Barbara Kearney-Copan has agreed to take the reins as BCHF treasurer. She has lived in North Burnaby for 34 years and has been a bookkeeper for a small family business. She has been a member of the Vancouver Historical Society and BCHF off and on for a decade. Her in-laws were founding members of what is now the Burnaby Village Museum.

MEMBER NEWS

Mammoth exhibit for Bulkley Valley Museum

The Canadian Museum of Nature’s femur and the Bulkley Valley Museum’s rib are on display. (Courtesy Bulkley Valley Museum)

The Bulkley Valley Museum has received some mammoth bones from the Canadian Museum of Nature in Ottawa on loan. The mammoth was excavated in 1971 from the Noranda Bell copper mine at Babine Lake.

Call for applications issued for Indigenous Research Fund

The Friends of the BC Archives are now accepting applications for the 2023 Indigenous Research Fund. Funded with support from the Royal BC Museum, it provides up to $1,000 to support Indigenous peoples’ access to the BC Archives. The application deadline is Jan. 31.

A Brief History of Brewing in BC

This early 20th century label from the Union Brewery in Trail reassuringly promised “the beer without drugs or poison.” 

The Victoria Historical Society’s talk this month is with Joe Wiebe, entitled “A Brief History of Brewing in British Columbia.” It’s on Thursday, Jan. 26, 7:30 p.m. at James Bay New Horizons, 234 Menzies St. Doors opens at 7:15 p.m. for refreshments and socializing. The event is free for members, $5 for guests. 

HISTORICAL NOTES

4 BC finalists in National Trust’s Next Great Save

Four heritage sites from across BC are among the 10 finalists in the National Trust’s Next Great Save competition: Duncan Train Station, Historic Hope Station, Rossland Drill Hall, and Abbotsford’s Turner House. A public online vote will be held from Jan. 20 to Feb. 22. The site with the most votes wins the $50,000 prize to be used to help save and revitalize the heritage place.

Royal BC Museum starts new engagement plan

A community engagement plan is being rolled to allow the public a say in the future of the Royal BC Museum after the government scrapped plans for a $789-million rebuild. 

Heritage Vancouver releases Top 10 watch list

Heritage Vancouver has released its annual watch list. They write: “We hope this year’s Top 10 Watch List prompts you to think of and appreciate heritage in different ways and to learn more about the significant changes to how heritage is being approached and why these changes are happening.”

Tickets available for No Smoke Without Fire

Join Laura Ishiguro on Jan. 31 from 7 to 9 p.m. for her online presentation, No Smoke Without Fire: Reimagining Women in Colonial Barkerville. In 1868, of Barkerville burned to the ground. Weaving together archival records, rumours, and silences, this talk offers a new history of the fire, and the colonial society that sparked it.

Cache of buried Hotel Vancouver silverware unearthed

A banquet at the Hotel Vancouver in 1948. (Don Williams/Don Coltman, City of Vancouver Archives AM1545-S3 CVA 586-16091)

One hundred and 21 intact pieces of silverware from the Hotel Vancouver have been discovered buried near UBC by a couple of treasure hunters. What the forks, knives, spoons, and ladles were doing there, however, is a mystery.

‘A most remarkable photograph’

The Whelan family in front of their Ellison district log home in 1886.

Robert M. Hayes studies an intriguing photo taken north of present-day Kelowna, discovered over 50 years ago in a trunk in the attic of his mother’s childhood home.

The story of Wrestling Day

Image MSC130-4388-01 courtesy of the British Columbia Postcards Collection, a digital initiative of Simon Fraser University Library.

If the day after Christmas is Boxing Day, why don’t we call the day after New Year’s Wrestling Day? That is exactly what some Williams Lake residents did in the early 1940s, in a tradition that continues until today.

58 years after the Hope Slide

On Jan. 9, 1965, half an unnamed mountain plunged down the Hope-Princeton highway bringing with it 46 million cubic metres of rock, earth, snow and trees. When it was finished, four people were dead, a valley and a lake were wiped out, and three kilometres of highway was destroyed. Blogger Eve Lazarus has written about it at the link below.

IN MEMORIAM

Maureen Pepin (1934-2022)

Langley Heritage Society member Maureen Pepin passed away Dec. 24. Maureen had a strong dedication to volunteerism and community service, serving as a docent at the Langley Centennial Museum for 24 years and contributing to many local histories.

Rudy Johnson (1922-2022)

Rudy Johnson was a Cariboo businessman and rancher, perhaps best known for building the Rudy Johnson Bridge in the late 1960s after his wife Helen almost drowned while crossing the Fraser River on the Soda Creek ferry.

ADVERTISING

Will you be in southern England in 2023?

A BC author seeks some help with an archival research project related to his next book. He is looking for someone who plans to be in southern England in 2023, able and willing to spend 2-3 hours taking digital photos of pages from a book. 

The subject matter will be of interest to those interested in local and maritime history and Indigenous culture. A modest honorarium/per diem plus direct travel costs will be paid. Due acknowledgement will be made in the book and a signed copy will also be provided.

Interested? For more details of the project and to discuss technicalities and timing, please contact: Michael@michaellayland.com

The BCHF offers a number of advertising opportunities in our e-newsletter, which is distributed to our entire membership monthly. Advertisements are jpeg images sized to 600 px wide for electronic distribution. To submit an ad, contact Greg Nesteroff: greg@bchistory.ca

Members enjoy discounted advertising rates. Choose 12 months for the best deal:

1-3 months = $100 each ($100-$300 annually)
4 months = $90 each ($360 annually)
6 months = $80 each ($480 annually)
8 months = $70 each ($560 annually)
12 months = $50 each ($600 annually)

Rates for non-members are as follows:

1-3 months = $150 each ($150-$450 annually)
4 months = $140 each ($560 annually)
6 months = $130 each ($780 annually)
8 months = $120 each ($960 annually)
12 months = $100 each ($1,200 annually)

British Columbia Historical Federation

Box 448, Fort Langley, BC, V1M 247 • info@bchistory.ca

The BCHF Secretariat is located on the unceded traditional territory of the Coast Salish speaking Peoples. The BCHF is on Facebook. Join the conversation.