Category Archives: General

Camping at the Seaside: The “fashionable” thing to do in summer

Posted on July 11, 2013 by | Leave a comment

From about 1894 to 1908, summer camping on the beach was considered a fashionable holiday tradition, enjoyed by many of Vancouver’s early well-to-do families.

The most popular spot was Greer’s (now Kits) Beach, where “tent town” comprised two long rows of tents on either side of an irregular “street” of beach sand. Greer’s Beach was reached by boat down False Creek from Carrall Street; on foot across the CPR trestle bridge or via a sinuous trail through the cleared area; or by buggy over a former wagon track used by loggers with their oxen.

English Bay Beach was another popular camping site, where, in 1898, “about two score tents extended to the West” and “many were commodious and richly furnished.”

These are the camping beaches shown in the images below.

Beach camping was discontinued after 1908, due to improper sanitation conditions and increased development. Continue reading →

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History Of The Archives

Posted on June 6, 2013 by | 2 comments

This post was written by Marek Bula.

The Archives has a long history. Here’s a look at how we grew.

J.S. Matthews’ home, where the archives were kept before being moved to the Holden Building in 1931. Reference code AM54-S4-: Str P90.01

In 1931, Major J.S. Matthews’ extensive personal collection of photos and documents relating to Vancouver was moved to the Holden Building, Vancouver’s temporary City Hall at 16 East Hastings. This included thousands of documents and photographs—such as interviews with early pioneers and aboriginal people—relating to the history and development of the City of Vancouver.  Continue reading →

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Spotlight on volunteers – Kaitlin Haley

Posted on April 4, 2013 by | 2 comments

Kaitlin Haley began volunteering at the Archives in the summer of 2012. After completing a Bachelor of Arts degree at UBC in history and political science in 2010, she worked as a flight attendant, taking a break from school and deciding on a graduate studies program. An interest in archives and libraries lead her to us. Like many of our other volunteers, Kaitlin has given of her time generously elsewhere including lifeguarding for the World Police and Firefighter Games, running activities at the Musqueam Reading Club and facilitating and helping to organize events for the Beauty Night Society.

Kaitlin at UBC holding her B.A.

Kaitlin at UBC holding her B.A.

After being accepted to several archival and library schools across Canada, Kaitlin chose the program farthest from this coast, Halifax. She will be earning a Master of Library and Information Studies at Dalhousie starting in 2014. Her choice to defer for a year will allow her to continue working for the UN as a flight attendant. Between stints in Africa, which she is currently visiting, we hope Kaitlin will find some down time to visit us before she goes jetting off again! Continue reading →

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Australia Day

Posted on January 25, 2013 by | 3 comments

January 26 is Australia Day, Australia’s national day. We have records that show some of Vancouver’s interactions with Australia and Australians. Here are a few examples.

The Young Australia League is a youth organization founded in 1905 that promotes “education through travel”, among other activities. They stopped in Vancouver during their 1929 overseas tour, along with a burro they picked up in their travels.

Young Australia League with burro

Members of the Young Australia League with burro, May 1929. Stuart Thomson, photographer. Reference code AM1535-: CVA 99-2027

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2012 Association of Moving Image Archivists Conference

Posted on January 11, 2013 by | Leave a comment

In early December, I attended the annual conference of the Association of Moving Image Archivists (AMIA) in Seattle. Here are a few of the highlights.

Cinerama street view

The Cinerama has been restored to its 1963 space-age look. A showing of “Hendrix 70: Live at Woodstock” was a highlight outside of the conference program. Photograph: Sue Bigelow

The Association of Moving Image Archivists (AMIA) is a professional association for those involved in the preservation and access of moving image heritage. Members come from all over the world to attend the conference.

Ffmpeg workshop

There was an excellent workshop on uses of ffmpeg for archivists. Ffmpeg is open source, free software for working with multimedia files. One of the advantages for archives is that ffmpeg is always adding the capability of working with new types of files, but not getting rid of any old functionality. This means that if archivists encounter an outdated type of file, ffmpeg may be able to work with it. Ffmpeg software can analyze a file and report on all the different kinds of data inside. We store the original files in our digital archives but we also create another version using ffmpeg that can be viewed on a modern computer. Continue reading →

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Happy Holidays

Posted on December 21, 2012 by | Leave a comment

The Archives will be closed from noon Monday December 24 to 9am Tuesday January 2.

Card from Mayor Rathie and Mrs. Rathie used 1963-66. Reference code PUB-: PDS 50

See you in the new year!

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Remembering . . .

Posted on November 9, 2012 by | Leave a comment

. . . the preparation . . .

29th Battalion Canadian Expeditionary Force training at Hastings Park, 1914. Stuart Thomson photo. Reference code AM1535-: CVA 99-155

Recruiting Station at Victory Square, 1941. Photographer unknown. Reference code AM54-S4-: Mil P265

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Something’s cooking in the Archivist’s kitchen

Posted on September 28, 2012 by | 10 comments

Second in a series about the BC Sugar records

While continuing to process our BC Sugar fonds, I had the pleasure of finding some cookbooks and they inspired me to try some historical recipes. Read on to see how they turned out.

“Great dessert ideas…try Rogers on ice cream!” Reference code: AM1592-S7-F1-: 2011-092.1557

Cookbooks are a favourite resource for social and cultural historians as well as scholars of gender studies and women’s studies. But the list of academics that use cookbooks as sources does not end there. Studying literature can be enriched by knowing what people were eating and cooking at various times. Continue reading →

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The Archives continues ‘pinning’ content to Historypin!

Posted on September 20, 2012 by | Leave a comment

This isn’t the first time we’ve blogged about our Historypin page. We’ve recently taken the time, however, to add a number of new features to our Historypin Channel. In addition to over 200 new photos, we’ve added a number of site-specific moving image files from the 1920s to the 1970s!

Here is a screenshot with one of our photographs ‘pinned’ in Street View. Using the ‘Fade’ bar on the left you can fade out the archival image to see what that intersection looks like in Street View today.

One of our summer interns, Jesse Cumming, identified 200+ photos to add to our Historypin Channel. He also created a couple of unique “Tours” (click on the “Tours” tab to view). The first is called Vancouver in Motion and collects all our newly added moving image clips. The second, A 360° trip down Burrard, brings together photographs from the City of Vancouver Transportation Division, to create a tour down Burrard St. from Broadway to Hastings, showing 360° views of intersections along the way. Continue reading →

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And…Action! On set in the Archives Reading Room.

Posted on September 13, 2012 by | 2 comments

Here at the Archives, we’re used to working with pre-existing documents and media, though we recently decided to try our hand at creating something new. The idea arose to make a video introducing and promoting our public reading room, which is open for anyone to come and conduct research.

The first step was to find inspiration. Prior to our new video, proper Reading Room protocol had been communicated through a series of humorous “Dos” and “Don’ts” photos. We loved the way it was fun and tongue-in-cheek while getting the important facts across.

This series of posters created by the then-Public Archives of Canada (now Library and Archives Canada) shows good and bad Reading Room behavior. Don’t behave like the gorilla!

One other work we enjoyed while preparing this video was created by our friend and colleague at the United Church of Canada BC Conference Archives, the late Bob Stewart, entitled “The Archives – More than a Holding Operation”. The title makes its way into a line in our video, our own little tribute. Unlike Bob, our Archives does not have access to a choir – and none of us can boast rapping skills (well, one of our interns, but we could not convince her to go on camera). Continue reading →

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