Live@Lunch and Friends Talks

Live@Lunch
Noon to 1:00pm
Newcombe Conference Hall, Royal BC Museum
Free admission. Bring your bagged lunch and enjoy this monthly exploration of a variety of engaging topics related to RBCM research, travel, collections and exhibitions. There will be plenty of room for lively discussion, active learning and a sharing of local expertise.

Friends of the BC Archives events are taking a break for the summer. The next event will be held on September 26, 2010.

Sunday, September 26, 2010 from 2:00 - 4:00 p.m.
Newcombe Conference Hall, Royal BC Museum
Michael L. Hadley: Canada's Navy 1910-2010: A Centennial Story
Canada's navy has developed in unique and striking ways in response to issues as diverse as national defence, peacekeeping, fisheries and sovereignty patrols, coalition warfare, and humanitarian aid. It has arguably been a major force in nation-building. Its history has been shaped not only by domestic and international politics, but by the pressures of global concerns and technology. It is a distinctly Canadian institution. Marking the navy's Centenary, this talk will highlight key themes, events and people, and reflect on the delights of sleuthing in archives while conducting historical research.

Michael L. Hadley is a prize-winning naval historian, and Professor Emeritus, University of Victoria.


Sunday, October 17, 2010, 2:00 - 4:00 p.m.
Newcombe Conference Hall, Royal BC Museu
Annual General Meeting 2:00 - 2:30 p.m.
Lecture 2:45-4:00 p.m.
(This event is FREE)
David Mattison: Wild and Picturesque: The British Contribution to Early British Columbia Photography
Wild and picturesque, grand but monotonous was how Francis George Claudet described his new home in New Westminster to his brother in a letter from 1860. He was but one of many photographers from Great Britain who passed through or resided in the twin colonies of Vancouver Island and BC between the late 1850s, particularly around the start of the Fraser River Gold Rush, and the Klondike Gold Rush of 1897-1898. Although we know little of the aesthetics that informed these photographers, some conclusions will be drawn by comparing their education, backgrounds and surviving work with those of their contemporaries in Great Britain. Some comparisons will also be made with the images of British colonial photographers elsewhere. The subject content of the photographs and market conditions will be explored, as will the role of photography in promoting immigration and investment. The educational and entertainment aspects of photographs will also be highlighted, in particular the collecting and display of landscape and portrait photographs.

David Mattison is the author of Camera Workers: The British Columbia, Alaska & Yukon Photographic Directory, 1858-1950 (Web site), Eyes of a City: Early Vancouver Photographers, 1868-1900 (City of Vancouver Archives, 1986), and numerous articles on British Columbia's photographic history.


Sunday, November 21, 2010 from 2:00 - 3:30 p.m.
Newcombe Conference Hall, Royal BC Museum
Kathryn Bridge: Forgotten Voices, Marginalized Voices. The importance of using child-created records to document nineteenth century settler children in British Columbia.
Why is it that historians have underutilized or avoided incorporating records created by children such as diaries and letters when researching and writing? The perspectives of children are important and different than those of adults; children are valid observers and their written records hold information not duplicated in adult-created records. This talk will examine examples of child-created records and demonstrate how they offer evidence about family relationships and the world of child peers, but also how these records document the development of gender roles and expectations, contain perspectives about Empire and race, about how different children reacted to the routines of life, of schooling, of family tragedies, and of the anxieties and expectations of growing-up.

Kathryn Bridge has worked in the BC Archives and now Royal BC Museum for many years and held various positions as an archivist and a manager. She has curated exhibitions on Emily Carr and other topics and has written books about BC artists, mountaineers, and other pioneers and their times, all grounded in the archival collections of the BC Archives. At present, Kathryn is a PhD Candidate in History at the University of Victoria.