Watch the 2022 BCHF conference!

We’re pleased to make this year’s sessions from the BCHF conference freely available on YouTube. You can scroll through them below for descriptions and links. Thanks to board member Elwin Xie for assembling them.

The BC Historical Federation at 100: Facing a Crossroads

On the centennial of the BC Historical Federation, Chad Reimer (pictured) recounts how the organization was founded and argues it must acknowledge its origin as a product of settler colonialism as it strives to remake itself for the present and the future.

BC History in Fragments: What Lies Beneath Our Feet

Even the smallest historic object, lost or actively discarded, decades or even centuries ago, has a story to tell. 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.

A New Perspective on the Uprooting of Japanese Canadians

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, Jordan Stanger-Ross and Michael Abe argue the traditional perspective fails to capture the injustice done.

Reflections on Government Support for Public History

Dr. Kelly Black has gained a unique perspective on the highs and lows of practicing public history in BC. He highlights some of his adventures over the last few years and describes the impact that waning government support is having on access, labour, and understanding about the past.

A Tale of Two Families: BC’s Intercultural Family Teachings

Dr. Tzu-I Chung looks at two families, one French Canadian and the other Chinese Canadian, with rare well-recorded generational continuities from the gold rush era to the present day. The Guichon and Louie-Seto families have persisted through historic periods of great adversity.

The Material Act of Remembering

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.

Victoria in 1922: A Re-creation

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

History as a Tool for Reconciliation

Keith Thor Carlson brings ethnohistorical methods and techniques to provide an assessment of settler colonial processes in BC. He concludes by outlining the pre-conditions, as he sees them, for building reconciliation between Indigenous people and non-Indigenous Canadian society today.

BC History: Objects, Collections, and Change

Objects have a life within a museum’s collection, which may be short or long. New objects enter collections and others leave collections as part of the professional process of curatorial stewardship. Dr. Lorne Hammond presents examples of how that process works.

The Second World War in BC History and Public Memory

Scott Sheffield’s investigations of the academic literature on the Second World War in BC revealed a surprising dearth of literature explicitly exploring the impact of that global conflict on the communities and residents of this province.

Accessing Residential School Records

A research team from Williams Lake First Nation spoke about how accessing residential school records helps to shape commemorations of school sites and the surrounding communities. The panelists were Genevieve Weber (Royal BC Museum), Charlene Belleau (Williams Lake First Nation), and Whitney Spearing (Williams Lake First Nation).

The Wake of History: On Foot and By Canoe

In this excerpt from British Columbia History magazine, you can follow along online as our explorer-in-residence Bert ter Hert walks and paddles across Canada.

The Future of the BC Archives: Survey results

With the BC Archives slated to move into a new collections and research building in 2025, the Friends of the BC Archives and the BC Historical Federation have solicited feedback from archive users about the project. Here is what we heard.

Time Travels: Nikkei National Museum and Cultural Centre

In this excerpt from British Columbia History magazine, Mark Forsythe visits the Nikkei National Museum in Burnaby, the largest repository of Japanese Canadian archival materials in Canada, and speaks with collections manager Lisa Uyeda (pictured).

MEMBER NEWS

The Wheels of Time: The Story of the Fort Langley CNR Station

Wheels of Time is a whimsical story that highlights Langley’s people and events between 1910 and 1969, with a focus on the heritage CNR Station (built in 1915). It was produced by the Langley Heritage Society and Creative Compass Society.

HISTORICAL NOTES

BC government backtracks on new Royal BC Museum plan

The provincial government is halting plans to rebuild the Royal British Columbia Museum. The museum will remain open to visitors while the museum leads a broad public engagement to consider all options for the future of the museum. Construction of the new collections and research building in Colwood will continue.

Parliamentary Players performing

This summer, brand new Travelling Plays by the Parliamentary Players are taking place in Victoria. These fun and family-friendly performances take visitors around the grounds of the Legislative Assembly and back through time. The free plays are 35 to 45 minutes and are offered Thursday through Monday each week.

Recovery funds for heritage organizations now open

Canadian Heritage announced details of the new Canada Arts and Culture Recovery Program which continues the department’s targeted support for organizations still facing significant financial challenges in the third year of the pandemic.

When history becomes a character

Join the BC and Yukon Book Prizes for Storied: Discussions on Books, Publishing, and the Creative Process. On Wednesday, July 27, Jordan Abel, author of NISHGA, Barry Gough, author of Possessing Meares Island (winner of the 2021 Lieutenant-Governor’s Medal for Historical Writing), and Susan McClelland, co-author of Boy from Buchenwald, will discuss writing when history becomes a character.

MHH wants to hear from heritage groups linked to languages

The MHH (Memory, Heritage, History) Network is conducting research to understand the needs of the organizations and groups targeting history, memory and heritage linked to the official language of minority communities. They are asking you to fill out their survey, which can be accessed by clicking below.

ADVERTISING

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.