New Director for Learning Centre

The opening reception and art exhibition tour of Generation One took place on May 5, 2011 to an audience of full capacity.    A platform for local Asian artists to showcase their artworks in the community, this is the second year that Generation One has been hosted at the Irving K. Barber Learning Centre.   This year Generation One is a collaboration between professional and emerging artists.    From May 2nd to June 5th, there will be the First Wave of artists from Dimasalang III group and UBC’s Visual Art students displaying their artworks on the walls of the IKE’S CAFE. Starting June 6th to June 25th, the second wave of emerging artists who submitted their entry form prior to May 15th may also be able to participate in Generation One.

To view these photos, please click here.

For more information about the Irving K. Barber Learning Centre Art Exhibits, please visit our website.

This week, we are taking a closer look at the community of Hartley Bay — the community that the Hartley Bay Meeting Room (room 266), in the Irving K Barber Learning Centre is named after.

Image Credit: Map of Hartley Bay, from http://www.gitgaat.net/place/enlargemap.htm

Hartley Bay is the home of the Gitga’at First Nation, members of the Tsimshian cultural group. A village of 200, accessible only by air or water, Hartley Bay is located at the mouth of Douglas Channel, about 630 kilometres north of Vancouver and 145 kilometres south of Prince Rupert.

On March 22, 2006, the people of Hartley Bay were the first responders to the passengers aboard the sinking BC Ferries Queen of the North. The community was recognized for their heroic actions by the Governor General on May 3, 2006 and received the Governor General’s Commendation for Outstanding Service.

The XWI7XWA LIBRARY, located at 1985 West Mall has a variety of material on the community of Hartley Bay, including material in their special collections. Contact Ann Doyle, head of XWI7XWA LIBRARY, for more information on accessing material in the special collections.

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, JCPC 24.008.

Group photograph in dining hall in Slocan Camp, JCPC 17.005

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

Our featured place this week is Sandspit, a small community of approximately 400 people, located on the northeastern tip of Moresby Island, near Spit Point. Situated between two beaches– Shingle Bay Beach to the west and Shell Beach to the south-east– Sandspit is the only settlement on Moresby Island.

Located on a long peninsula of sand and gravel, Sandspit has been home to the Haida people for thousands of years. The town today is sustained by logging, transportation (it has the largest airport on Haida Gwaii) and tourism.

In Rare Books and Special Collections, we do not have a lot material on Sandspit. So, to search for archival records related to Sandspit, or other small communities in British Columbia, we recommend that you try searching MemoryBC.ca, a portal where you can access descriptions of archival materials preserved in repositories throughout the province.

If you search for the keyword “Sandspit”, you will retrieve records from the Haida Gwaii Museum at Qay’llnagaay, located on nearby Graham Island.

Room 381, the Sandspit Meeting Room, is named after this important community in British Columbia. Located on the third floor of the Irving K Barber, this meeting room is part of the Gateway Programs: Arts One, Science One, Coordinated Science and Coordinated Arts.