Category: History

Outstanding BC Studies conference

So happy to have spent this past weekend at my old stomping grounds of UBC for the wonderful BC Studies conference. Highlights included: a night at the Museum of Anthropology (MOA) with a guided tour by Dr. Susan Rowley; chairing a remarkable session on tensions of multiculturalism in BC’s history; and, visiting Main Library to remember my first library boss, the lovely Susanne Dodson. What an outstanding gathering–heartfelt gratitude to Paige, Laura, Leanne, and the many, talented volunteers who made this event so successful. Superb sessions, excellent organization, and splendid to connect and reconnect with like-minded colleagues. We are so fortunate to study what we do and where we do it.

Rethinking history education by rereading history books

Pleased to share an update on the BCHT collection in the latest issue of The Ampersand. Written alongside my colleagues, Graham McDonough, Chaa’winisaks, and Lyndzy Harvey, this short piece outlines recent approaches to teaching with these remarkable sources in credit courses offered through UVic’s Department of History and the Faculty of Education. It is always a joy to get our students into the reading room and classrooms of Special Collections and University Archives (SCUA). The assignments our students complete, continue to inspire the values of the BCHT collection and our accompanying research project.

New blog post for INEHC: “Animals, The North, and settler-colonialism in historical educational media: A comparison of Dutch and Canadian sources in the early 1900s.”

Pleased to write another blog post for European colleagues at the International Network for Education History Collections (INEHC). And, this time my friend and colleague, Chaa’winisaks at Royal Roads University, worked alongside me with developing this piece which is titled, “Animals, The North, and settler-colonialism in historical educational media: A comparison of Dutch and Canadian sources in the early 1900s.” Our recent post is inspired by my INEHC colleague from the Nationaal Onderwijsmuseum [National Museum of Education] in the Netherlands Jacques Dane, who wrote an excellent blog post in November 2024, titled ‘Animal love in the classroom.’ Our recent post considers conceptions of ‘The North’ through a comparison of a Dutch wall chart from 1911 and a British Columbia geography textbook used in schools between 1899 and 1910. If you are interested in blog posts about BCHT, here’s another one I wrote last fall for colleagues at University College London when I was a Liberating the Collections Fellow at the Institute of Education’s Research Institute for Collections. So many compelling similarities and differences. This one’s a long one, so get comfy!

New map in library foyer: ‘Treaty Relations in the Salish Sea’

Next time you are in McPherson Library/Mearns Centre for Learning, be sure to check out the newly installed wall map of treaty relations in the Salish Sea. Developed by the library’s Decolonizing Working Group including Ry Moran, Associate University Librarian for Reconciliation. This map is also informed, by excellent sources such as the ‘History & Territory‘ pages of the W̱SÁNEĆ Leadership Council’s website, as well as Professor Brian Thom’s extensive Coast Salish bibliography. If you are looking for a highlight from this bibliography, Duff’s BC Studies piece endures.

Duff, Wilson. “The Fort Victoria Treaties.” BC Studies 3 (1969): 3-58.
https://bcstudies.com/issue-single/bc-studies-no-3-autumn-1969/

Victoria Historical Society winter 2025 newsletter

Interested in the history of the Victoria Historical Society (VHS)? Look no further than the most recent issue of the VHS Newsletter where Professor John Lutz and I continue a writing theme started by Jack Bryden’s article published in the fall of 2024. John Lutz and I consulted with numerous previous board members and wrote up an overview of the last three decades of activities by the VHS, “Driven by People with a Passion: VHS Moves into the Twenty-first Century.”

Front cover of the Winter 2025 VHS Newsletter.

When researched and written well, corporate histories can be fascinating. I acquired a small taste for the genre during the 2022 STO:LO Ethnohistory Field School when I wrote ‘Sqwélqwel: A Preliminary Corporate History of the Stó:lō Archives and Library, 1994-2022.’ Still lots to learn, but when I am done my dissertation, I imagine a handful of worthy corporate history writing projects such as a revised inclusive and exhaustive history of the HBC and an update to the Bannerman’s 1985 illustrated history of the BC Ferries. So little time, so much to write…