The Chung Collection room and King James Bible exhibition have re-opened. Our apologies for the inconvenience this closure may have caused.

The Chung Collection exhibition room will be closed on Tuesday Oct. 4 for repairs. Please note that this closure also affects the King James Bible exhibition.

We are sorry for the inconvenience. Please check back for updates.

Cross-posted with the Chung Collection News blog.

In our ongoing blog series about B.C. places used as room names in the Irving K. Barber Learning Centre, this week we are featuring the town of Oliver. Oliver describes itself as the “wine capital of Canada” and is located in the south end of the Okanagan Valley. Oliver is named after the 19th premier of B.C., John Oliver, who was premier from 1918 to 1927.

The Oliver region is the home of the Nk’Mip First Nation band, and from 1915 to the 1960’s was the home of the Inkameep Indian Day School. Under the tutelage of teacher Anthony Walsh in the 1930’s and 40’s, the First Nations children at this school were encouraged to use artwork to express their traditional culture and history. During this time the school, the teacher and the students gained a fair degree of fame, as the word spread about their highly creative and often technically proficient artwork. While Walsh’s approach was not necessarily understood or appreciated by his contemporaries (his successor at the school burned most of the students’ art) it has since been praised for its inclusiveness of First Nations culture and heritage.

The documents in Rare Books and Special Collections are part of our Vertical File collection. The term “vertical file” is used in a variety of manners in libraries and archives, usually referring to a file compiled on a specific subject. At RBSC we often use this designation for small groupings of archival material which are two small to be listed with our other archival collections. This vertical file, VF 113, consists of letters written to Anthony Walsh during his tenure at Inkameep. Writers include a number of well-known figures, such as Lawren Harris and the Walt Disney Company:

Lawren Harris letter page 1

Lawren Harris letter page 2

Walt Disney Company letter

Vertical files can be found by searching the library catalogue. They have call numbers that start with “VF,” and will also appear in searches limited to “Archival/mixed collections.”

An excellent virtual exhibition about the Inkameep Day School called “Drawing on Identity” is available online.

In the Barber Centre, the Oliver Room is room 361, and is used by the Gateway programs- Arts One, Science One, Coordinated Arts and Coordinated Science.

A reminder that all library branches including Rare Books and Special Collections, the Chung Collection and University Archives are closed on Monday September 5 for Labour Day.

Labor Day in Vancouver, BC-1600-6

The photograph above depicts a Labour Day parade in Vancouver, taken by  Philip Timms in the early 20^th century.  The photograph is undated, but is believed to have been taken at the corner of Hastings and Cambie.  RBSC has extensive holdings on the history of labour in British Columbia; try searching the library catalogue for the keyword “labour,” and limit your search to “Archival/mixed collections” (under “type”).

For more information on our historical photograph collections, please consult our Historical Photograph Research Guide, and for help with archival research, please consult our Archival Material Research Guide.

(Cross posted with Chung Collection News):

Summer is, believe it or not, coming to a close in 6 short weeks. Have you been to the beach yet?

For many in B.C., a trip to Tofino is synonymous with a trip to the beach. Located on the west coast of Vancouver Island, Tofino is the home of the world-famous Pacific Rim National Park and beautiful Long Beach. Major industries have traditionally included fishing and forestry, and in recent decades of course tourism, as visitors flock to the resorts and beaches in all seasons.

The photographs below are from the Chung Collection, held in Rare Books and Special Collections. The Chung Collection holds  8,000 historic photographs, many showing various locales in British Columbia. These photographs are both from an album of photographic negatives, taken during the 1930’s by an unknown photographer. While we do not know anything about the photographer or the origin of the photographs, it is a rich source of historic photographs. This album alone contains more than 1,400 photographs!  They can all be found in the Chung Collection by searching for the identifier CC-PH-09370.

Sea gull, Tofino - CC-PH-09370-31-030

Vicinity of Tofino, CC-PH-09370-34-041

In the Irving K. Barber Learning Centre, the Tofino Meeting Room is number 156.

In honour of the City of Vancouver’s 125^th birthday, an exhibition highlighting the voyages of George Vancouver and the publication of his voyage narrative is on display at Rare Books and Special Collections.  Featuring a number of late 18^th- and early 19^th-century editions of George Vancouver’s A Voyage of Discovery to the North Pacific Ocean, first published in May 1798, the exhibition describes Vancouver’s expedition to the Pacific Northwest on the ships The Discovery and The Chatham.  The exhibition also displays plates and maps from A Voyage of Discovery, including the dramatic “The Discovery on the rocks in Queen Charlotte’s Sound”, shown below.

"Discovery on the rocks"

This exhibition is the first to be displayed in our new exhibition cabinets, located on the back wall in the Chung Collection exhibition room. It is free and open to the general public during Rare Books and Special Collection’s opening hours of Monday to Friday, 9-5, until September 1 (please note that we are closed on Monday August 1 for BC Day).

New exhibition display cases

The exhibition was curated by School of Library, Archival and Information Studies (SLAIS) MAS/MLIS graduate Shamin Malmas, and was mounted by SLAIS MAS/MLIS student Sarah Hillier.

Our featured B.C. place for this week is the northern most place we have featured yet: Atlin. The town of Atlin and Atlin Lake are located along Highway 7, not too far south of the border with Yukon. Atlin likes to be called “Switzerland of the North” because of its wintertime beauty and activities. The name Atlin is derived from the Tlingit word atlah which means “big water.”  The town was founded in the late 19th century when gold was struck in the area, drawing thousands of settlers; today the population is around 450 people.

Our featured document is a photograph from our B.C. Historical Photograph Collection. It is an example of the importance of having access to the back (or verso) of some photographs, when they contain helpful inscriptions or stamps. The photograph was probably taken looking across Atlin Lake:

"Rift in the clouds", Atlin B.C.

The title, “Rift in the clouds,” was inscribed on the back of the photograph, possibly by the photographer. By looking at the back, we can see the stamp of the photographer:

Verso of the photograph

The photographer was L.C. Read, who, according to the Camera Workers of B.C., was active in the Atlin area up until around 1919.

If it were not for the photographer’s stamp on the back of the photograph,  we wouldn’t be able to say who the photographer was, and it would be unlikely that the location could be identified as Atlin.

To learn more about our historical photograph collections, consult our Photographs Research Guide. In the Irving K. Barber Learning Centre, the Atlin Meeting Room is number 191, on the first floor.

Or Dominion Day, as it was formerly known. In this photograph from RBSC’s BC Historical Photograph Collection, “Miss Canada” contestants are being driven through North Vancouver, on July 1 1918.

Miss Canada Contest, 1918

A reminder that all UBC Library branches (including RBSC, University Archives and the Chung Collection) are closed for Canada Day on July 1st.

For information on our historical photograph collections, check out our Research Guide for Historical Photos.

It seems appropriate in our blog series about places in British Columbia used as room names in the Irving K. Barber Learning Centre to address researching the origin of place names. There are a number of sources that are useful for researching place names, and one here at UBC is the Norman Ogg Place Name Collection (see the finding aid here).  In 1979-1980, Norman Ogg undertook a study of the origins of place names in Canada (excepting Quebec) and Washington State.  He received many letters from town and city clerks and archivists explaining the origin behind their city’s name, as well as a number of ephemeral items such as brochures.

The place we are examining this week is Keremeos.  Keremeos is located in the Southern Interior of British Columbia and is in the Similkameen Valley.  The aboriginal people of this area, the Sylix, are now part of the Okanagan Nation Alliance. Horticulture and agriculture are the main industries in Keremeos, and the area is also home to Cathedral Provincial Park.  As Norman Ogg learned from the clerk of the Village of Keremeos in 1980, there are two theories behind the name Keremeos: it was believed to be derived from the Aboriginal language of the area to mean either “wind channel in the mountains” or “cut in two by water,” referring to the Similkameen River.

Letter to Norman Ogg from clerk of Village of Keremeos

(Click on the image of the letter to see a larger version).

Other sources for place names in British Columbia include BC Geographical Names (a free online resource), The encyclopedia of raincoast place names by Andrew Scott and many other books available at UBC Library which can be browsed by subject in the catalogue.

The earliest source for B.C. place names was written by Captain John Walbran, captain of the S.S. Quadra. This photograph is from the Chung Collection, which also contains a copy of Walbran’s book British Columbia Coast Names, and one of his chief officer’s logs.

Captain John Walbran, from the Chung Collection

As described by the Dictionary of Canadian Biography, Walbran’s Coast Names is “an amazing grab-bag of history, biography, and anecdote,” and a “rich mass of anecdotes and digressions.”  It is a well-known and well-used source of British Columbia history.

In the Barber Centre, the Keremeos Lounge is on the second floor, adjacent to Ike’s Cafe on the south side of the building. A great place to have a cup of coffee and read up on B.C. place names!

Keremeos Lounge, adjacent to Ike's Cafe