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 Marine Sciences Centre.

Suppose you want to find references in historical newspapers to Bamfield. If you search the library catalogue for serial publications and the keyword “Bamfield,” you will find that the furthest back any of our newspaper holdings published in Bamfield go are only to the 1970’s and 80’s. Besides, there could have been articles written in other B.C. towns and cities about Bamfield.

There is a great resource provided by the UBC Library Digital Initiatives department that can help! BC Historical Newspapers is an online database for a number of digitized newspapers. You can browse by title of newspaper, date, or even better for this situation, full text search the newspapers. Here is a screenshot of what a search for “Bamfield” looks like:

Searching BC Historical Newspapers for Bamfield

Searching BC Historical Newspapers for Bamfield

As you can see, the database highlights your keywords and also gives you the name of the newspaper and the date the article is from. Click on the result to read the actual digitized article- the database will zoom in to where the highlighted word is located. For example, if you replicate this search and click on the article from the Cumberland News on October 8, 1902, you will read that the laying of the trans-Pacific cable line off the ship Colonia was about to begin from Bamfield. This marked the establishment of the Pacific Cable Board Cable Station, which would later become the site of the above-mentioned Bamfield Marine Sciences Centre. Give searching the BC Historical Newspapers a try with another British Columbia town!

In the Barber Centre, the Bamfield Meeting Room is number 157, located on the first floor of the building.

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.

Dominion Day Parade

Dominion Day Parade, BC 1600-1

The photograph above is attributed to Phillip Timms and probably was taken near the turn of the 20th century. According to the inscription, this photograph was taken at the Dominion Day Parade at the corner of Georgia and Burrard.  The parade float is likely a reference to the famous Vancouver City Hall tent, erected and photographed after the great fire of 1886 (see it at the City of Vancouver Archives here).

This photograph is from our B.C. Historical Photograph Collection. For more information on searching and using photographs, please see our Historical Photographs Research Guide. When searching for historic Canada Day celebrations, remember to also search for “Dominion Day-” the name of the holiday was not changed until 1982- see Canada Day Background from Canadian Heritage.

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 from across the country will be there to discuss how to acquire, appraise, preserve and provide access to the “gold” in our collections. Aside from rooms named after people or events, the Yukon room is the only room in the Barber Centre that is not named after a B.C. place. Coincidentally, although Rare Books and Special Collections focuses primarily on the history of British Columbia, to a certain extent our collections policy does include the Yukon and the Arctic (you can read our full collection policy online here).

The item we would like to feature from our collections about the Yukon is a photograph of a steamship named the Flora, shown loading wood on the Yukon River:

Flora loading wood on Yukon River, BC-869

Flora loading wood on Yukon River, BC-869

The photographer’s inscription reads, “B.L. and K.N. Co.’s str. “Flora” loading wood on Yukon River, June 7, 1900,” meaning “Bennett Lake and Klondike Navigation Company Steamer.” The photographer, H.J. Goetzman, according to Camera Workers of B.C. was active in the Dawson area from ca. 1897, and then moved on to San Fransisco in 1904, putting him in the Yukon for the Klondike Gold Rush. Goeztman was obviously a frequent passenger on the Flora– as you can see in the photo, the lifeboat is declared as “Reserved as a stateroom for Goeztman, Dawson Photographer”!

Supposing you wanted to do some research about the Flora– if you search online, you will find that Wikipedia lists it in an article about Steamships of the Yukon River. But since the information about the Flora is not cited specifically, it is difficult to know whether you can trust that information. To research ships, we often point researchers to either the Vancouver Maritime Museum Library and Archives, where they have access to Lloyd’s Register of Ships. You could use the information in the Wikipedia article as your starting point, but confirm it (and maybe dig a little deeper) using primary sources.

This photograph is part of our general B.C. Historical Photograph Collection (kind of a misnomer since this photo isn’t from B.C.!); you can read more about our photo collections in our Historical Photographs Research Guide.

In the Barber Centre, the Yukon Room is number 181, a classroom on the first floor.

 

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 of Barkley Sound and is known for being at the southern end of beautiful Long Beach, which is in between there and Tofino. The Ucluelet area is home to the Yuułuʔiłʔatḥ First Nation.

The resource from our collections we would like to feature from Ucluelet is a pamphlet describing land available for preemption in 1914:

Land for pre-emption on Ucluelet Peninsula, 1914

Land for pre-emption on Ucluelet Peninsula, 1914

This pamphlet was issued by the B.C. Minister of Lands (William R. Ross) and describes the geography, climate and settlers of the Ucluelet Peninsula. It explains that 40-acre lots would become available for preemption on June 15, 1914 and also provides a map of the lots available:

Sketch plan, Ucluelet lands

Sketch plan, Ucluelet lands

As explained by the B.C. Archives, the preemption of lands was allowed so that individuals and corporations could acquire crown land, with the idea that they would cultivate it or otherwise “improve” it. This was in practice from 1859 until 1970 in B.C.  The B.C. Archives link above describes how to search for a preemption record; they are now often used as genealogical sources. You can search an online database by name, district, date and other parameters. For example, you could search for lands granted in the Clayoquot District (which would include the lots described in this pamphlet in Ucluelet) from June 15 1914 till the end of that year to get a sense of how many of these lots were preempted, and to whom.

This pamphlet is part of our SPAM (Special Collections Pamphlet collection) and can be found by searching in the Library Catalogue. For information on this collection and other ephemera in our collections, check out our Ephemera Research Guide.

In the Barber Centre, the Ucluelet Room is room 158, a classroom on the first floor.

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 in other provinces and territories by their respective archival organizations, to maintain our provincial database of archival holdings, MemoryBC,  and to employ a professional archivist and a professional conservator to provide advice to archival institutions and archivists when needed.  It also provides professional development opportunities for archivists, so that we can continue to learn to serve our patrons and our collections better. UBC Rare Books and Special Collections has very frequently taken advantage of these opportunities; for example, this program was used to help develop a preservation plan for the Chung Collection, a declared national treasure and one of our most frequently used collections.

This same pot of funds was used to maintain the national archival database, Archives Canada. This database brings together archival descriptions from institutions across Canada. There is no other “one stop shop” for searching archives across the country, making this and provincial/territorial equivalents like MemoryBC absolutely crucial research tools for everybody who uses archives.   In our reference and teaching activities here at RBSC, we are constantly referring researchers to these resources.

Images of Jack Shadbolt mural, preserved and catalogued using NADP funds

Images of Jack Shadbolt mural, preserved and catalogued using NADP funds

The other arm of this funding was used to provide matching grants to archival institutions to preserve, catalogue and disseminate our archival collections. In recent years, this funding was used by Rare Books and Special Collections to catalogue and make available the Mike Apsey fonds, the Council of Forest Industries fonds, and the  Red Cedar Shingle and Handsplit Shake Bureau fonds (all in our recently created Forest History research guide); the Jack and Doris Shadbolt fonds (featured in our British Columbian Art and Artists research guide); and the Rosemary Brown fonds (the archives of the first black female member of a Canadian parliamentary body). Just from these examples, it is easy to see that this funding is crucial in helping the Canadian public gain access to records ranging from industry, to politics, to the environment, to the arts.

Advertisement from the Red Cedar and Handsplit Shake Bureau fonds, preserved and catalogued using NADP funds

Advertisement from the Red Cedar and Handsplit Shake Bureau fonds, preserved and catalogued using NADP funds

The National Archival Development Program was administered by the Canadian Council of Archives.  If you would like to learn more, there is a Call to Action on their website.

In 2002, Queen Elizabeth II became the second-longest reigning monarch in British history, celebrating 50 years on the British throne. Despite the deaths of her sister, Princess Margaret and her mother, Queen Elizabeth, the Queen Mother, in February and March of 2002 respectively, Queen Elizabeth II and her husband, Prince Phillip, undertook an international tour in which she “express[ed] her thanks to people, both personally and officially, for their support and loyalty over her reign.

Image of Queen Elizabeth II greeting UBC students in 2002, featured on the commemoration wall in the Golden Jubilee Room


For more information on Queen Elizabeth II and Prince Phillip’s tour, please refer to the official website of the British Monarchy, where the details of the 2002 tour are discussed.

As part of that tour, Queen Elizabeth and Prince Phillip visited the University of British Columbia in October, 2002. They had visited Canada the campus three times before, in 1951, 1959 and 1983. To view digitized photographs of their previous visits, please take a look at the University Archives virtual display, Royal Visits to the UBC Campus

During her 2002 visit to UBC, the Queen unveiled a plaque commemorating her visit and celebrating the naming of a room on the fourth floor of the Irving K Barber Learning Centre, the Golden Jubilee Room.

Plaque commemorating Queen Elizabeth II's visit to UBc


This room is a very popular study space, with mountain and ocean views.

Golden Jubilee Room, Irving K Barber Learning Centre

A reminder that Rare Books and Special Collections, University Archives and the Chung Collection will be closed on Good Friday (April 6) and Easter Monday (April 9). We are however open on Saturday April 7 from 12-5 as usual. For full details on RBSC hours, click here.

Kitamaat Mission Easter Sunday broadside

Kitamaat Mission Easter Sunday broadside

The broadside above is from a collection of 55 broadsides from the Kitamaat Mission from 1894-1902, recently added to the Chung Collection. These sheets were used for teaching purposes at Sunday morning services at the mission, and are printed in both the English and Haisla languages. Material published from mission presses are important resources for understanding the interactions between Christian missionaries and First Nations people, and also are used as a source for historical transliterations of First Nations languages.  For more resources similar to this one, try searching the library catalogue for “mission press,” or for the name of a specific mission.

Our next featured B.C. place based on the room names in the Irving K. Barber Learning Centre is Qualicum Beach, sometimes called Qualicum for short.  Qualicum Beach is located outside of Nanaimo, on Vancouver Island. The town’s primary industry is tourism, and is also a popular retirement town. As of the 2011 census, it had a population of just over 8,600.

The resource we are featuring is the Noel Money fonds, an archival collection of three scrapbooks belonging to Noel Money who was the proprietor of the Qualicum Beach Hotel in ca. late 1910’s-40’s. Prior to arriving in B.C., Money served in the Boer War and the First World War. While living in the Qualicum area, Money pursued his hobbies of fishing and hunting, which is primarily what the scrapbooks document- in fact, the books are made of pre-printed pages designed for logging the number of fish, birds and deer hunted or caught day by day (this collection is not for the faint of heart- the logs show that Money was a very successful hunter and fisherman!)

Fish caught on Big Qualicum River, July 5 1926

Fish caught on Big Qualicum River, July 5 1926

Fish caught on Big Qualicum River, July 5 1926

Fish caught on Big Qualicum River, July 5 1926

Interspersed with the hunting and fishing logs are photographs from his wilderness trips, often documenting visitors and special occasions.

For those more interested in the operation of the Qualicum Beach Hotel, there are inserted in the books some photographs and pieces of ephemera related to the hotel, such as this photograph of the hotel’s golf course:

Qualicum Beach Hotel golf course

Qualicum Beach Hotel golf course

The Noel Money scrapbooks can be requested for use in Rare Books and Special Collections- the catalogue record is here.

In the Barber Centre, the Qualicum Reading Room is room 305, the large, open study space at the top of the main stairs on the third floor, just outside the Chapman Learning Commons. This is a very popular space for studying and is also where the Chapman Learning Commons-AMS tutoring takes place.

Qualicum Room, Irving K Barber Learning Centre

In our ongoing series of places in B.C. used as room names in the Irving K. Barber Learning Centre, we will look at Stikine. This featured place and featured Rare Books and Special Collections resource is truly an ode to map cataloguers!

The Stikine River is in northwestern B.C., emptying into the ocean in southeastern Alaska. The river and its surroundings are considered to be an important piece of B.C. wilderness to preserve.  If you search the library catalogue for the keyword Stikine, you will find a number of publications related to the preservation of this area.

Like many names of rivers and places, there have been variations of spelling in the name “Stikine” over time, including Shikene, Stachine, Stachin, Stah-Keena, Stahkin, Stakeen, Stickeen, Stickienes, Stikeen, Stikin, and Sucheen! (See the entry in BC Geographical Names). However, also like many place names, it was also known under completely different names- in the map from Rare Books and Special Collections below, it is identified as the Frances River. B.C. Geographical Names confirms that the Stikine was known by other names at different times- they cite St. Francis River, as well as Pelly’s River.

British Columbia, Vancouver Island, and the Valley of the Saskatchewan, SPAM 926B

British Columbia, Vancouver Island, and the Valley of the Saskatchewan, SPAM 926B

 

Detail showing "Frances" River

Detail showing "Frances" River

If the map cataloguer had not noted this detail in the catalogue record, this map would not have appeared in a search for “Stikine” in the library catalogue! There are many other helpful details in the catalogue record as well, such as names of forts and noting that the borders of B.C., the United States and Rupert’s Land are clearly visible (the map dates from the 1860’s). To see the catalogue record for this map, click here.

In the Barber Centre, the Stikine Room is room 260, a large classroom on the second floor of the building.

One of our collection’s areas of strength is the history of the forestry industry in B.C. We’re therefore happy to present a new research guide on Forestry History and Archives. Here you will find links to archival collections at Rare Books and Special Collections and University Archives about foresters and the forestry industry, information on photographic collections, theses and dissertations, and historical associations.

Felling of a BC Fir Tree, from the Capilano Timber photo collection

Felling of a BC Fir Tree, from the Capilano Timber photo collection

We are very happy to have this subject guide linked from both Rare Books and Special Collections list of guides as well as from our colleagues in the Life Sciences libraries.  Thank you to RBSC student assistant Laura Hébert for her great work on this guide!

 

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