At the beginning of February the Archives, Museum of Vancouver, HR MacMillian Space Centre, Vancouver Maritime Museum, Vancouver Academy of Music, and Bard on the Beach hosted the 8th annual Winter Wander. For those who haven’t yet been, it is a fun day filled with activities, performances, and a chance to visit the cultural sites that call Vanier Park home.
Winter Wander gives the Archives an opportunity to show off a selection of our favourite records to visitors who might not otherwise walk through our doors during regular operating hours to conduct research. This year, in addition to our ever-popular first Council minute book, contract for a Chinese opera singer, and prisoners’ record book, we displayed a handful of posters from the recently donated BC Gay and Lesbian Archives fonds, the illustrated panoramic view of the City of Vancouver originally published as a supplement in the Daily World newspaper in 1898, and drawings of unbuilt Vancouver, including that of a stadium that had it been built in the 1930s would be sitting where the Archives is currently located.
Also on offer to visitors were a selection of our digitized moving images playing on a screen, copy prints, and an instant photo portrait area. Thank you to Beau Photo for another generous loan of a camera and backdrop for taking the instant photos.
Two Langara College students from the Professional Photography program joined us welcoming visitors, talking with visitors about their current show, Merging Time, that is displayed in the Archives’ gallery.
Helping host the day at the Archives were also members of the Friends of the Vancouver City Archives. With the help of all our volunteers, we welcomed about 650 people to the Archives at this edition of Winter Wander – more than double the number that came last year!
