Blog & News

The Princeton Museum began a full collection inventory and catalog process in 2020 after several prior attempts failed. This presentation by Todd Davidson to the BCHF conference last year provides some insights into what the museum has learned through this process.

Establishing a collections management system database from scratch is frightening. Todd talks about some fundamental questions that need to be answered before starting and how they affect the outcome. Todd discusses rapidly changing technology and how to posture for the future. Todd is the operations manager of the Princeton and District Museum and Archives Society.

Raymond Liens in a pride parade.

An excerpt from the Winter 2023-24 edition of British Columbia History.

By Eric Damer

Last summer, I chatted with Raymond Liens about his life work as an activist organizing workers to secure their rights, regardless of ethnicity, sexual orientation, or gender identity.

ED: Hello. Raymond! Thanks for agreeing to the interview.

RL: My pleasure, Eric.

ED: I understand that you have had quite an active career in community and union organizing. How did this all begin?

RL: Well, I was born in Vietnam, where our family had settled for many generations, but after the American withdrawal in 1975 we were persecuted because of our Chinese heritage and our bourgeois status. Everything was taken from us—home, business, properties. We fled for our lives as boat people. In 1979, after months in a Malaysian camp, Canada took us in as refugees. We arrived in Vancouver before transferring to Winnipeg to start a new life.

ED: Wow, I’m glad you made it here safely. So how did you move into community organizing?

RL: My parents soon found work sewing garments but managed to save enough money to open a small Southeast Asian grocery store. It became a hub for our tight-knit community. Everyone knew everything about each other.

While in high school, I saw how kids from our community had no structured programs during the summer break, so I applied for a federal job-creation grant to run a summer camp. Stanley Knowles, our MP, had me over to his home to help with the application. I was only 17, but I got the grant. This encounter shaped my identity as a new Canadian tremendously.

I also worked as an interpreter because I spoke English, Vietnamese, Mandarin, and Cantonese. I helped people with hospital visits, immigration appointments, the police, and even at the courts for minor crimes.

ED: And when did you begin working with unions?

RL: In 1988, United Food and Commercial Workers contacted me to help unionize a poultry processing plant that had many problems. The union had no one who could communicate with the workers, who distrusted unions because of their experience under the communist regime from which they escaped. We had to work fast, but eventually the majority signed up. This experience made me firmly committed to workers’ rights, and the potential of unions in securing those rights.

ED: This took place in Manitoba. How did you come to BC?

RL: It’s a bit of an accident, really. Someone who knew someone from UFCW [United Food and Commercial Workers] moved to BC in 1991, and learned that Glen Clark, then Minister of Finance, was hiring office staff. I was told about the opportunity, applied, and had an interview over the phone with him. Turns out Clark was looking for a constituency assistant, and he had the audacity to hire a kid from Winnipeg who had no real political experience. Of course, I accepted and spent five years working with him.

ED: Did this put an end to your union work?

RL: Of course not. After moving to Vancouver, I called my boyfriend in Quebec and invited him to join me in Vancouver. He wouldn’t come to Winnipeg, but Vancouver was fine. He arrived a few months later, but then I realized that I could not include him on my extended benefit plan. To me, the gender of one’s partner is totally irrelevant. I grew up in southern Vietnam, where the influence of Cambodian culture and Buddhism meant that sexual orientation and gender identity are not big issues at all. We don’t enforce strict gender roles or insist on particular sexual preferences.

ED: So how did you respond?

RL: Well, I petitioned my union, the BC General Employees’ Union (BCGEU), to recognize same-sex couples. I had so much push-back! I had only one ally at first, but I persisted. I lobbied pretty hard until 1994, when the union finally changed the collective agreement to recognize same-sex partnerships. At that time, very few collective agreements included these rights.

ED: I guess you helped reform the union!

RL: Absolutely. My work with Clark shifted when he assigned me to work with Jim Green and others to set up a crown corporation called Four Corners Community Savings that would bring banking services to Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside. Our board of directors included millionaires, business executives, people living on income assistance, and the street entrenched. Some were queer; everyone was treated equally and without any fanfare. This financial institution provided basic financial services for local residents until the provincial Liberals cancelled the project in 2004.

ED: And you were out of a job?
RL: Not really. By then I was working as the equity officer for the Hospital Employees Union—perhaps BC’s and maybe Canada’s first full-time union equity officer. I oversaw complaints investigations and conflict resolution in the workplace based on the BC Human Rights Code.

ED: I found a copy of your handbook, One Union, Many Colours.

RL: The HEU was in many ways ahead of its time, with everyone fully embracing diversity, including sexual and gender diversity. We also understood that Indigenous people’s struggles as First Peoples were distinct. One of our collective agreements in 1998 included language for gender-neutral washrooms, probably the first in Canada. Also, that year I helped organized HEU members and other Canadian Labour Congress unions to join Pride parades. Many unions hesitated, and not all queer union members wanted to come out. However, many did feel safer marching under their union banner. Finally, I assisted with the first “Pride and Solidarity” conference—the first queer activists’ convention of the Canadian Labour Congress. Hundreds of union and community activists met in Ottawa for the historic moment.

ED But you are not with the HEU now, are you?

RL: No, I left to work for a few years with UNITE HERE in New York City as organizing director. Compared to Canadian unions, American unions are much larger and more assertive. Organizers even jump barbed wire fences and sift through garbage to identify workers. The unions in the States believe that if undocumented workers pay taxes, they have the right to organize. One of my first victories was a workplace in California with mostly Hispanic and South Asian workers. There were so many problems that workers wouldn’t gather across cultural groups. But I persisted in meeting as one large group with translators. Within a week they recognized their common struggle and began to cooperate. After certification they bargained successfully for a collective agreement. At the celebration picnic, workers from both sides and their families shared food from their respective cultures. People discovered and enjoyed the taste of tortillas with curry, and naan with carne asada! I have always believed in the power of food to bring people together.

ED: But eventually you came back to Canada?

RL: Yes, and I’ve slowed down a little. I no longer work as a union organizer. Instead, I volunteer closer to home, where I sit on the board of the Massey Theatre, in New Westminster. We’re working to promote diversity in the arts and to support the theatre as a cultural hub with exhibitions, workshops, and creative activities. I also volunteer at the Chinatown Storytelling Centre and teach cooking classes online. I still believe in the power of food to bring people together!

ED: I have to agree! Raymond, thanks so much for sharing some of your remarkable work in the labour movement.
RL: You are very welcome! •

Eric Damer is a Burnaby-based historian with an interest in local social and educational history. His clients include Burnaby Village Museum, University of British Columbia, BC Labour Heritage Centre, and the provincial and federal governments.

SAVE THE DATE — On May 4, 2024 the BCHF will be hosting a one-day gathering at the University of the Fraser Valley's Chilliwack campus.

The event features the BCHF Annual General Meeting (AGM), a keynote presentation, a guided cultural bus tour of Stó:lō territory, and the annual awards evening. 

The one-day event takes the place of the usual multi-day conference format this year. To supplement the in-person spring event, an online presentation series is being planned for the fall.

2025 will see the return to a full in-person conference. If your organization is interested in hosting the conference, or if you would like to be considered as an online presenter for the 2024 fall series, please contact us: conference@bchistory.ca. 

Please refer to the conference page of our website for more information about the 2024 Spring Gathering. 

One hundred and 20 years after Bill Miner came to the Similkameen country, he is still probably Canada’s best known desperado. Miner was known as George Edwards around Princeton where he played the part of a soft-spoken cattleman and prospector —kind to children and generous to all. In fact, he made his living rustling cattle, smuggling Chinese immigrants and opium across the border, and robbing trains. When Indigenous trackers led police to his camp after a 1906 train holdup, his carefully crafted story started to fall apart, casting an unflattering light on gilded age British Columbia.

Greg Dickson, who presented this story to the BC Historical Federation conference in Princeton this year, is a former CBC Radio journalist and a co-author of three best-selling books on BC history with collaborator Mark Forsythe. In 2014, they received the Lieutenant Governor’s Medal for historical writing.

The Métis Nation BC has announced it has won the contract to operate Victoria's historic Point Ellice House. The Vancouver Island Local History Society stepped away from managing the site in March 2023, citing insufficient government funding. More details HERE

The board members of the BC Historical Federation would like to wish you and yours a happy holidays. 

Our volunteers will be taking some time off to enjoy the season with family and friends. 

Please note that our offices will be closed from December 15 to January 3. We look forward to seeing you in 2024!

Doug Boersema of the Telkwa Museum Society has died at 79. He's been involved with the museum for many years, including at least the last decade as president.

"He was incredibly passionate and knowledgeable about local history in Telkwa and the Bulkley Valley at large," says Bulkley Valley Museum curator Kira Westby.

Read his full obituary here.

For the fourth year running, a bakery in Smithers is making cookies using old recipe books from the Bulkley Valley Museum. This time the proceeds are going to the Telkwa Museum and Widzin Kwah Canyon House Museum.

Read more from the CBC.

Boxes of cookies inside the Bulkley Valley Museum. (Kira Westby photo)

The grisly murder of a nurse, fierce opposition to measles and smallpox vaccines, death on the wartime battlefield and in the workplace, a crippling 1917 strike, the deadly 1918 flu pandemic, and life on the home front —these are just some of the historic events chronicled in Ron Verzuh's Printer's Devils.

In his presentation to this year's BCHF conference in Princeton, Ron tells the story of a weekly newspaper. The Trail Creek News/Trail News influenced its readers as Trail grew into a small smelter city and prospered.

Printer's Devils is a social history that traces how Trailites responded in times of economic crisis, war and life-threatening disease from1895 to 1925.

Verzuh is a writer, historian and documentary filmmaker. His previous book was called Smelter Wars: A Rebellious Red Trade Union Fights for Its Life in Wartime Western Canada (University of Toronto Press, 2022). Verzuh's work has been published in journals, magazines, newspapers and on websites. He grew up in the West Kootenay where the events in this book took place. Printer's Devils is his fourth book.

Unveiling of commemorative plaque at the Kaatza Station Museum. Photo: Kaatza Historical Society

1 Labour hero
Darshan Singh Sangha was a union organizer and human rights activist who fought for equal pay, improved working conditions, and the right to vote. He arrived in BC in 1937 at age 19 and found a job at a sawmill where visible minorities were exploited and discriminated against. He went to the University of British Columbia, joined the Young Communist League and, eventually, the International Woodworkers of America (IWA). An idealist and excellent speaker, he campaigned in the 1940s to attract Indian, Japanese, and Chinese workers into the union.

The Kaatza Historical Society, the BC Labour Heritage Centre, and the Hari Sharma Foundation recently recognized Sangha’s contributions to the labour movement and to human rights. A commemorative plaque was unveiled at the Kaatza Station Museum in Lake Cowichan, also home to the IWA archives. The union’s Scott Lunny told those who gathered that “we continue to fight for workplace rights, migrant and immigrant rights, and to combat racism in our society. Thanks to Darshan Singh Sangha, we know what to do in the face of that injustice.”

Sangha advocated for Indian independence and returned home in 1948, where he was elected to the Punjab state legislature. Known as Darshan Singh Canadian, he was assassinated by extremists in 1986.

Victor Menzies diary. Photo: Pender Island Museum Society

2 Centennial Legacy Fund at work
Two-year-old Victor Menzies arrived on Pender Island with his family in 1893 aboard the side-wheeler Yosemite. The island had just two dozen residents and was without a school or church. Over his life Victor generated 33 handwritten booklets that are a first-hand account of pioneering island life between 1917 and 1971.

The British Columbia Historical Federation has awarded a $5,000 Centennial Legacy Fund grant to the Pender Island Museum to transcribe and preserve these diaries. Menzies kept meticulous daily records of his farming, community, and educational life—and his role as cemetery and school caretaker. An entry for April 16, 1923, describes the novel experience of listening to the radio. “Basil came up to help me and brought his radio, first we heard was fine & clear music … Basil repaired the disc harrow. I plowed.”

Centennial Legacy Fund grants were also awarded to the Boundary Historical Society to conduct ground penetrating radar research at the pioneer Phoenix cemetery, and to the Barriere and District Heritage Society for documenting the impact of the devastating McLure wildfire of 2003. Apply to the Centennial Legacy Fund here.

Lyle Wilson’s map painting. Image: Kitimat Museum and Archives

3 The soul of the traditional Haisla
A 2011 painting of a map by Haisla master carver and artist Lyle Wilson is now on display at the Kitimat Museum and Archives. The compelling map of traditional Haisla territory and sites was painted on a piece of cedar cut from a 700-year-old tree. It features about 150 place names and landmarks in the Haisla language, surrounded by animals. The artist says it highlights “history, politics, language, and tradition in its map form.”

As a youth, Wilson was fascinated by his grandfather’s marine map collection. His uncle later taught him the Haisla names of landmarks at a time when the language was disappearing. Wilson notes in his artist’s catalogue, “Since the time of first contact, European diseases have killed large numbers of Haisla people, making conditions favourable for the English language to become the dominant means of communication.… My generation blames the previous one for not teaching us, while our elders perceive us as being uninterested. Yet both generations agree, and lament, that the Haisla language is dying out.”

Wilson first created a map of place names and clan crests in 1995. His 2011 map honours language, tradition, and documentation. Now part of a permanent display at the Kitimat Museum and Archives, it’s on loan from the Haisla Nation Council and sponsored by the NorthPac Forestry Group.

Pictured (L-R) The Flying Seven: Jean Pike, Tosca Trasolini, Betsy Flaherty, Alma Gilbert, Elianne Roberge, Margaret Fane, and Rolie Moore. Photo: Township of Langley

4 “Come fly with me”
A giant mural dedicated to the famous Flying Seven now graces an exterior wall at the new Langley Regional Airport (YNJ). Adhering to the credo that a woman’s place was in the sky, each of the female pilots flew out of Langley at one time.

The aviators formed their own flying club in 1936 and soon staged a dawn-to-dusk flying patrol above Vancouver to promote the idea of women in aviation. They tried to enlist during the Second World War, were refused, and then took to the skies to drop pamphlets for a “Smash the Nazi” campaign that raised $10,000 for the war effort. This allowed purchase of eight aircraft for pilot training. The Flying Seven also set up a school to train women for aviation jobs.

The Township of Langley awarded the mural project to Randi Hamel, Taj Jamal, Kelly Mellings, and Allan Whincup of Pulp Studios and noted that, “led by Rosalie ‘Rolie’ Moore, the flying seven broke barriers and showed the world the can-do spirit of Langley!”

Royal BC Museum’s Old Town, New Approach. Photo: Greg Dickson

5 Old Town, New Approach
It has been two turbulent years at the Royal BC Museum that included allegations of a toxic workplace. Former premier John Horgan’s dream of a new $789 million facility was scrapped; CEO Alicia Dubois resigned after 16 months on the job—and the popular Old Town was closed for “decolonization.”

Public backlash to the closure was searing, so a scaled-down version of the pioneer Old Town reopened this summer. As tourism minister Lana Popham put it: “We have heard you.” Old Town, New Approach has added contextual panels with more diverse and inclusive interpretations of BC history and stories. The train station, hotel, saloon, printing shop, and Chinatown are back, along with a new exhibit about railway porters developed with the BC Black History Awareness Society.

HMCS Discovery, the gold mine, farm, and cannery are closed, and the First Peoples’ Gallery is being used for discussion and collaboration with Indigenous communities. Some of these exhibits may reopen in 2024 and the Royal BC Museum says Old Town will continue to evolve “as we work with communities to share their experiences and cultures.”

Edelweiss Village sign with chalets in the background, view from the CPR track, date unknown. Whyte Museum of the Canadian Rockies

6 Edelweiss Village
“The love of the mountains is a thing that is very hard to explain.” —Ed Feuz Jr. (1884–1981), Swiss mountain guide and resident of Edelweiss Village

A Swiss-themed village near Golden has new owners, and the BC-based foundation established to preserve its historic buildings is optimistic it can work with the new Alberta-based investor group. Ilona Shulman Spaar of the Swiss Edelweiss Village Foundation says the village’s six chalets will be staying; the new owners understand their significance and are reviewing options for building restoration.

Swiss mountain guides are legendary in BC’s mountaineering community. The Canadian Pacific Railway drew them into the Columbia Valley to develop mountain tourism at the turn of the last century; they led thousands of ascents in the Rockies without one fatality. By 1912, the railway had built six Swiss-style cabins on a hillside to accommodate the guides and their families. Descendants of Swiss mountain guide Walter Feuz, brother of Ed Feuz, listed the the village for sale in 2022, and gave the Swiss Edelweiss Village Foundation an important artifact collection and furniture. The foundation has a dream to create a museum on the site and continues to fundraise. Visit the fundraising site, Saving Swiss Edelweiss Village in Canada: https://www.gofundme.com/f/swissvillage

The University of Calgary’s Department of Art and History recently created an immersive virtual tour that can be viewed here: https://tinyurl.com/mr3tpwpd

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