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Featured place: Bamfield

This post is part of our series on resources featuring the names of B.C. places used as room names in the Irving K. Barber Learning Centre. The place we would like to feature for this post is Bamfield, a community on the coast of Barkley Sound on Vancouver Island, and well known for the Bamfield […]

Call for submissions: Chinese Canadians in Canada photo exhibition

The Chinese Cultural Centre in Vancouver is organizing a photo exhibition to document Chinese Canadians from 1952 to 2012, to celebrate Queen Elizabeth II’s Diamond Jubilee. They are looking for photographs that document the sucess stories, life or work of any Chinese Canadian during this time period. The deadline for submissions is July 18th at 5 pm, and the exhibition will be held from August 4 through August 19th.

Get in touch with the Chinese Cultural Centre through their contact page for more information and a registration form!

Canada Day closure

A reminder that like all UBC Library branches, Rare Books and Special Collections, University Archives and the Chung Collection will be closed in lieu of Canada Day on Monday July 2. We will resume normal hours on Tuesday July 3. The photograph above is attributed to Phillip Timms and probably was taken near the turn […]

Featured photograph: Summer!

It is finally starting to feel a little like summer in Vancouver- we hope you have been enjoying yourselves! Our featured photograph this month is a lovely summer scene:

This young bather is enjoying the lake near Silver Island, Ontario in July of 1921. The photo is from an album of photographs taken by a traveller on the Canadian Pacific Railway and steamships. We would guess that Helen Pearson, as captioned in the album, was a family member or neighbour of the photographer who seems to have had a summer home on Silver Island (south of Sudbury).

“Curious” at the Wing Sang building

Do you plan on visiting “Curious,” the Royal B.C. Museum exhibition at the Wing Sang gallery this summer? It looks like a fascinating and beautiful exhibtion!

Possibly the most anticipated part of this exhibition is “Intimate Glimpses” which features paintings, documents and artifacts from the life of Emily Carr. The rest of the exhibition looks fascinating too though- “Bottled Beauty” features items from their wet collection (literally- pickled specimens!) and you can play a game of “Artifact/Artifiction-” the curators have provided true or false statements about the artifacts, and you get to guess!

I’m excited to see the “Magic Lantern” section of the exhibition. We have a number of magic lantern slides in the Chung Collection as well, primarily examples that were used by the CPR to promote tourism along their railway and ship lines. The examples from the RBCM look beautiful, and all depict scenes throughout British Columbia.

When I last reported about the Wing Sang gallery at the Rennie building, tours were free but required pre-regisistration. For this summer, you can visit any time during opening hours (daily from 10 am – 6 pm) but there is an admittance fee of $11 (or $33 per family, children under 5 free, free for RBCM members). Find all the visitor information you need here. The exhibition opened on June 14, and is there until Sept. 3.

Featured place: Yukon

I am headed off this week to the Association of Canadian Archivists conference in Whitehorse, so it seemed appropriate to feature the Yukon Room in our ongoing blog series on places used as room names in the Irving K. Barber Learning Centre. The theme of the conference is “In Search for Archival Gold,” and archivists […]

Featured photo: Spring cleaning

Have you been spring cleaning your home this weekend? How would you like to try spring cleaning an Empress steamship?

This month’s featured photograph depicts the second Empress of Britain being tugged for her “spring cleaning” in Southampton, England. This photograph was taken in May of 1932. According to the photographer, this cleaning was an annual affair, so this is probably only the first or second cleaning- she was launched in July 1930.

For more photographs of the Empress of Britain, search the Chung Collection database for “Empress of Britain” and select photographic material as the media type- or, click here for the search results.

Featured place: Ucluelet

This post is part of a series which uses the room names in the Irving K. Barber Learning Centre to explore places in B.C. and the collections at Rare Books and Special Collections. Our featured place for this post is Ucluelet, located on the west coast of Vancouver Island.  Ucluelet is located on the edge […]

psssst… We’re open this Saturday!

The Chung Collection exhibition space will be open this Saturday, May 26 from noon to 4 pm, specifically for Alumni Weekend, but anyone would be welcome to drop in to see the exhibition. Please see our contact page for information if you have never been here before.

If you are a UBC alumni and are interested in joining this or other alumni weekend events, Alumni Affairs will have a registration table in the SUB on Saturday. Otherwise, feel free to drop in here to see the collection! Alumni Weekend details can be found here.

National Archival Development Program cut this week

We were shocked and saddened this week to learn of the cancellation of the National Archival Development Program. This is in addition to a major round of cuts at Library and Archives Canada, which was the funding source of the program. The funding is used by the Archives Association of British Columbia, as it is […]