Sunday, January 8, 2012

Women's History Tour - Roedde House, Vancouver - Feb 5, 2012

“The Women of Roedde House Museum Tour” by local historians

Sunday February 5th, 2012

11:00am to 12:30pm

1415 Barclay Street

$5 per person, all proceeds to the Roedde House Preservation Society

*Tour followed by a reception & light refreshments*

maximum 20 people

To arrange pre-paid TICKETS contact: (604) 684-7040 or info@roeddehouse.org or email Jolene@herstorycafe.ca

(order your tickets early as we expect this event to sell out)

Roedde House Museum in Vancouver's West End is a late-Victorian home in the Queen Anne revival style, built in 1893 for the family of Matilda & Gustav Roedde, the city's first bookbinder. It has been faithfully restored with period furnishing and family artefacts to reflect the day-to-day life of a middle class, immigrant family at the turn of the last century.

TOUR by: Lorraine Irving, (BC Genealogical Society & Mt View Cemetery tours) will speak on the tragic 1925 murder of young nurse Anna Catherine Roedde at Vancouver General Hospital. Lara Campbell, (Herstory Cafe & SFU Women’s Studies) will speak on Women & Domestic Service. Jolene Cumming, (Herstory Cafe & the Stanley Park History Group) will speak on Leisure & Recreational activities of the day.

More info: www.herstorycafe.ca and www.roeddehouse.org

Wednesday, October 19, 2011

Herstory Cafe - Bread and Roses - October 27, 2011

A great event is coming up for Canada's Women's History Month.

And it's Vancouver's Herstory Cafe's anniversary - this will be the 50th public event sponsored by Herstory Cafe and its founders, Jolene Cumming and Lara Campbell. Congratulations!

BREAD AND ROSES: The History of Women in the Vancouver Labour Movement

An illustrated talk by Joey Hartman, President of the Vancouver and District Labour Council and Vice President of The Pacific Northwest Labour History Association.

Introduction by Vancouver City Councillor Ellen Woodsworth

Thursday October 27, 2011 from 7:00 pm to 8:30 pm at one of my fave places, the Rhizome Cafe on Broadway in Vancouver, BC, just off Main.

See you there!

Thursday, August 4, 2011

Women's History events coming up, Greater Vancouver, BC

The Lesbian Landmarks tour of Vancouver's Commercial Drive area tonight has sold out, but other women's history events are coming up this month and early fall.

Sunday August 14th, 2011 11:30am-12:30pm
4th Annual Herstory Cafe Summer Picnic at Camp Vivian, Tea Swamp Park, Vancouver, BC.

This summer we are meeting at historic Tea Swamp Park in Mount Pleasant at the corner of 15th Ave and Sophia St (2 blocks east of Main St).

This little park was officially named Tea Swamp in 1985 after the Park Board was petitioned by the Brewery Creek Historical Society. A large swamp formed by a beaver dam once sat at this location. The swamp created an opening in the dense forest allowing vegetation to flourish, including Labrador tea plants (Royal BC Museum link).

Bring your own lunch, blanket or chair and your favourite women's history book or photograph and share its story with the group. Cancelled if raining. Look for the “Camp Vivian” banner.

Vancouver Parks link with map and directions to Tea Swamp Park.

A free event!
Sponsored by Herstory Cafe: www.herstorycafe.ca

Thursday, September 8, 2011 7:00pm
Terrain of Memory: A Japanese Canadian Memorial Project. A talk by Kirsten Emiko McAllister
Japanese Canadian National Museum at the Nikkei Place, 6688 Southoaks Crescent, (just off Kingsway) Burnaby.

JCNM’s Speaker Series: Dr. McAllister will present her book Terrain of Memory which tells the story of the Japanese Canadian elders who built a memorial in New Denver, British Columbia, to transform a site of political violence into a space for remembrance. It shows how their memorial transformed the valley where once over 7,000 women, men, and children were interned into a pilgrimage site for Japanese Canadians where they can mourn and pay their respects to the wartime generation.

SPEAKER: Kirsten Emiko McAllister is an associate professor in the School of Communication at Simon Fraser University. For more about her book, Terrain of Memory: A Japanese Canadian Memorial Project, go to Terrain of Memory at UBC Press.

Book signing and refreshments.
A free event!
The Herstory Cafe is co sponsoring this event with the Japanese Canadian National Museum:
http://www.jcnm.ca/special-events/speakers-series-mcallister
Japanese Canadian National Museum: www.jcnm.ca
Telephone: 604 777 7000

Sunday, December 5, 2010

WHN/BC 2010 Conference Sessions - links and info posted

Here is a recap with information links for those who were in the Zhindagee and BC Digitization sessions yesterday at the Women's History Network of BC's 2010 conference.

The first session, with Mahinder Kaur Doman Manhas, author of the new book, Zhindagee: Selected stories of our first daughters, was at turns sad, moving, funny, and heart warming. We heard readings from the book from Mahinder and also friends and relatives of women in the book. Good questions and so much to think about. One point mentioned about preserving women's history in general too was the importance of keeping journals - and preserving those already written by family. With the family's permission, excerpts from one woman's previously unpublished manuscript are included in the book. I can't wait to read all the stories in the book myself.

Zhindagee, Selected stories of our first daughters - cover.

This is a limited edition book, and Mahinder suggests people, if they can, buy one to donate to a library or other place where more people will be able to read it. (I'm donating a copy to the BC Genealogical Society library, for example.) If you'd like to buy one, or more, you can contact the author - see the Zhindagee website - or contact her through WHN/BC whnbc@shaw.ca. There will be an Zhindagee event early in the New Year in Vancouver and probably books will be available there.

West Beyond the West: British Columbia's history, heritage and culture: westbeyondthewest.ca/search

In the second session, Ken Cooley, Associate Librarian at the University of Victoria Library, spoke about both the BC Digitization Coalition and the University Library's current projects, and Lara Wilson, University of Victoria Archivist, spoke about her Archives' digitial initiatives and about the Archives Association of British Columbia.

Although a good number of projects to digitize BC historical materials are completed or underway, these are mainly from larger institutions (with larger budgets). Among other things, the BC Digitization Coalition is working to promote digitization in smaller institutions and groups by promoting the use of the West Beyond the West portal website, and the free software Digital Collection Builder, and by providing training for this and some support. Soon there will be a Digital Collection Builder workshop at the University of Victoria, for instance. And the Archives Association of British Columbia offers education sessions, some by distance education, including Managing Your Oral History Project and Managing Archival Photographs. These are open to members and non-members.

University of Victoria, BC, Digital Collections: http://library.uvic.ca/site/lib/dig/UVicDigitalCollectionsIndex.html

The University of Victoria Library and the University Archives digital collections - Digital Collections A-Z - already includes several resources of particular importance to women's history - the British Colonist newspapers 1858-1910, selections from the records of Peggy and Nicholas Abkhazi, photographic glass-plate transparencies by Herbert Geddes depicting life in Japan c. 1910, military oral histories, and BC Provincial Normal School oral histories. Projects underway include future digitization of a collection of lesbian and bi-sexual oral histories (to be on-line in 2011) and of Government of British Columbia publications, and of materials from the Victoria Women's Movement Archives, held by the UVic Archives. Funds for this last project are being raised right now; read about it in Times Colonist article by Katherine Dedyna, November 4, 2010. Lara Wilson stressed that the University of Victoria Archives collects local history, as well as University materials. Contact her if you have a collection that may be of interest there.

And, last but not least, thank you to all the conference participants and volunteers!

Edited 7 Dec 2010 Mdr

Saturday, December 4, 2010

The Most Significant BC Women Writers?

Alan Twigg’s new book, 150 Great B.C. Books & Authors: The Essentials, Volume 4 of his Literary History of British Columbia (Vancouver: Ronsdale Press, 2010) has raised a bit of controversy already.

Although many more women are mentioned in the text, these are the women Twigg highlights.

Margaret McNaughton
Audrey Thomas
Julia Henshaw
Pat Lowther
Martha Douglas Harris
Alice Munro
Agnes Deans Cameron
Helen Akrigg
E. Pauline Johnson
Susan Musgrave
Lily Adams Beck
Terry Reksten
Irene Baird
Margaret Trudeau
Emily Carr
Anne Cameron
Dorothy Livesay
Lynne Bowen
Elizabeth Smart
Jeannette Armstrong
Ethel Wilson
Sheryl McFarlane
Gilean Douglas
Alexandra Morton
Louise Jilek-Aall
Sage Birchwater
M. Wylie Blanchet
Biruté Galdikas
Jane Rule
Irene, Hazel and Veera Witte
Christie Harris
Maria Coffey
Margaret Craven
Ivan E. Coyote
Sheila A. Egoff

Who's missing? Whose writing do you feel might not be 'really' significant to BC literary history, especially women's literary history in BC?

What might your list of significant BC women authors and books look like?

What about including more poets, historians (and publishers and bookstores)?

From the Women's History Network of British Columbia's November 2010 newsletter. See the website for a full copy.

Thursday, December 2, 2010

Walk Myself Home Book Launch - Vancouver - Dec 6 2010

Walk Myself Home, an anthology of poetry, fiction, non-fiction and interviews, all on the subject of violence against women, edited by Andrea Routley (Caitlin Press, 2010).

Book Launch, Monday, December 6, 2010

at Joy Kogawa House, Vancouver, 7:30 - 9:30 pm.

With authors Sara Graefe, Kate Braid, Anne Hopkinson, Fiona Tinwei Lam, Roy Roberts, Zhong Chen and Elee Kraljii Gardiner.

R.S.V.P. to kogawahouse@yahoo.ca
Historic Joy Kogawa House, 1450 West 64th Ave., Vancouver.



Tuesday, November 9, 2010

Women's History Network of BC - Newsletter On-line

The November 2010 WHN/BC newsletter is now on-line at the website: www.whnbc.ca

More news about the conference, 4 December 2010 in Victoria, book reviews, upcoming events and more about our members, as well as some snippets of British Columbia women's history.