The Chung Collection exhibition room will be closed on Monday January 23. We apologize for the inconvenience. This closure also effects the “75 Years of Controversy: Canada’s Governor General’s Literary Awards” exhibition. Both exhibitions will re-open on Tuesday Jan. 24. Cross-posted with the Chung Collection News blog.
The Chung Collection exhibition room will be closed on Monday January 23. We apologize for the inconvenience. This closure also effects the “75 Years of Controversy: Canada’s Governor General’s Literary Awards” exhibition. Both exhibitions will re-open on Tuesday Jan. 24.
Cross-posted with the RBSC What’s New blog.
Vancouver has lost a vibrant member of its business, philanthropic and Chinese-Canadian communities. Milton Wong passed away on New Years Eve after a battle with pancreatic cancer. Like Dr. Chung, Wong was the son of an immigrant Chinese tailor, who ran the family business out of a historic building in Vancouver’s Chinatown at Carrell and Pender. Their shop, Modernize Tailors, opened in 1913. Wong later purchased the building to restore it and convert the upper level to housing for seniors.
Wong was an alumnus of UBC and was active with both UBC and with Simon Fraser University. UBC has written up a tribute here, and Todd Wong has written some nice personal reminiscences and a round up of news articles here.
As previously mentioned in our blog posts on British Columbia place names, many rooms in the Irving K Barber Learning Centre are named after rivers in British Columbia. This week, we are exploring the history of the Nicola River, after which room 322, a group study room, is named after. According to BC Geographical Names […]
Where are you spending the holidays this year? Would you spend them on a cruise ship? This is exactly what passengers of the C.P.R. steamship Empress of Australia did in 1929:
The photograph above shows Christmas party decorations on board the Empress of Australia, and the wait staff all dressed very smartly, ready to serve Christmas dinner. We also have in the collection the menu for Christmas dinner on that cruise. They served:
-Melon Supreme
– Caviar on toast
– Eggs Strasbourgeoise
-Mixed olives
-Celery
-Salted nuts
-Turtle au Medere
– Cream of chicken Marie Louise
– Fried silver smelts, sauce Figaro
-Supreme of Turbot Yvonne
-Breast of Chicken aux truffles
-Coeur d’artichauds
-Baron of Scotch beef a l’anglaise
-Potatoes persillee chateau
-Cauliflower sauce creme
-Punch Romaine
-Roast turkey, cranberry sauce
-Wafer chips
-Heart of lettuce
-Thousand Island dressing
-Xmas pudding
-Yule log
-Bombe Dame Blanche
Sounds… elaborate! May you have a wonderful holiday season and an easier to prepare menu than this one.
To search for photographs and ephemera related to the CPR cruise ships, try searching for keywords such as “tour” or “cruise” in conjunction with “Empress,” or the name of a specific ship. Happy searching and happy holidays!
A reminder that the Chung Collection and Rare Books and Special Collections is closed over the holidays- from Dec. 24 to January 2 inclusive. We re-open at 9 am on January 3.
Most UBC Library branches, including Rare Books and Special Collections, University Archives and the Chung Collection will be closed from Dec. 24 to Jan. 2 for the holiday season. For full details on holiday hours, please click here. The painting above is from the Olive Allen Biller fonds, and is captioned by the first two […]
You have just under two weeks left to come to Rare Books and Special Collections for our exhibition Betwixt and Between: the art and influences of Charles Van Sandwyk. We’re happy to share with you some thoughts on creating the exhibition by student curator Heather Gring: “Since the 1980’s, RBSC had been collecting the work […]
You have just under two weeks left to come to Rare Books and Special Collections for our exhibition Betwixt and Between: the art and influences of Charles Van Sandwyck. We’re happy to share with you some thoughts on creating the exhibition by student curator Heather Gring: “Since the 1980’s, RBSC had been collecting the work […]
In this installation of our blog series exploring B.C. places from the Irving K. Barber Learning Centre rooms, we will explore the village of McBride, or in this case, its namesake. McBride is located in the Cariboo, between Prince George and Valmount, very close to the Albertan border. Settled during the construction of the Grand […]
Have you noticed more moustaches around than usual this month? It’s “Movember,” which is a fundraising and awareness campaign for prostate cancer research. And so our monthly featured photograph shows some moustached men in the Chung Collection:
There are a couple of very fine moustaches in this photograph! This photograph is from a handwritten travel journal by A. E. Blake and H. A. Jamieson across Canada and to the United States of America, via the Canadian Pacific Railway and other railway routes, in the year 1900. Blake was British, and in a letter enclosed in the journal, he explains that he wrote up the journal of his adventure and also published several columns in The Field, a British leisure magazine which is still in print. Some clipped articles that he wrote about this journey in the The Field are also enclosed in the journal. The photographs from the journal, all digitized and available online, show the men hunting, fishing, camping and travelling by horse and wagon.
This photograph is captioned in the journal, “5 scouts : Harry, Kelly and Dick.” The photo obviously depicts 8 men, and in the journal Blake describes meeting another party, including a lady who was a “good sport” and “had done her fair share of the work.” Perhaps it was the lady who took the photograph of the men.