Featured Place at IKBLC: Slocan

This week’s featured place name and Irving K. Barber Centre room is Slocan.  Slocan can refer to a number of geographic features- Slocan Valley, River, Lake, or City. This region is in the West Kootenay area of British Columbia.

We are using Slocan to highlight our Japanese-Canadian resources, because the village of Slocan (commonly known as Slocan City) was one of the sites of the Japanese Canadian internment camps during the Second World War.

The photographs below are from the Japanese Canadian Historical Photograph Collection, which is digitized and available freely online. There are a number of photographs of the Slocan internment camp in the collection, including photographs of Japanese Canadians arriving at the camp, as in the first photo, and of daily life in the camp, as in the second photo, taken in the dining hall.

Japanese Canadians being processed in Slocan

Japanese Canadians being processed in Slocan, JCPC 24.008.
Group photograph in dining hall in Slocan Camp

Group photograph in dining hall in Slocan Camp, JCPC 17.005

Sign for SLAIS

Sign for SLAIS, photograph courtesy of School of Library, Archival and Information Studies.

Cross-posted at Rare Books and Special Collections, UBC Library.

Leave a Reply