The Pacific Science Institute was created in 1920 as the first Pan-Pacific Scientific Conference.

Biographical information unavailable.

Guy Palmer was born in England in 1913. After moving with his family to Canada following World War I, he attended the University of British Columbia. Palmer graduated with a BA majoring in zoology, in 1934. After graduation, he returned to England, where he worked for several years before enlisting in the army during the Second World War. Following the war, he returned to British Columbia and the UBC campus when he went to work for the BC. Research Council. He remained with the Research Council until his retirement in 1978. Palmer participated in theatrical productions with the Players' Club during his student days. However, he never lost interest in theatre. When he returned to work on the UBC campus, he performed a few productions. Perhaps more importantly, Palmer photographed dress rehearsals of major productions between 1954 and 1988.

A member of the University of British Columbia Class of '51 in Mechanical Engineering, Harry Palmer began his career as an engineer. In the late 1970s, his career interests began to shift from engineering to documentary photography. By the early 1990s, Palmer had photographed people and places across Canada and into France, Belgium and Holland. Palmer's documentary photographs have been exhibited internationally, and in 1992, his portrait work of the Companions of the Order of Canada was the subject of a book, 125 Portraits. After moving into creative digital photography, Palmer donated most of his conventional photographs to the National Archives of Canada in 1988. After that, he began to create images using 3-D computer software and printing with a sophisticated digital printer ("Giclée "). To mark the 50th anniversary of his graduation from UBC, Palmer donated a set of original, signed Giclée prints to the Faculty of Applied Science.

Abra Palumbo was born in 1945 in New York City. Her father was a science teacher and a naturalist, and as a child, she often assisted her father with newborn animals. After leaving the U.S. in 1967, she lived in various parts of Canada, primarily B.C., where after the homebirth of her child in 1972, she became active in the emerging movement of midwifery. The midwifery movement came from a community of people who were not interested in the hospitalization or drugs systematically used and wanted to naturalize the birthing process. Palumbo's involvement in the movement began at a grassroots level, without any particular training in the matter but as part of a support network of like-minded individuals. While midwifery certification was available through Washington State University, Palumbo's family responsibilities prevented her from taking the required courses. Instead, she began assisting in births in 1974 in the Kootenay region, while she and others started an apprentice-style training system as community midwives, occasionally supported by medical professionals. The midwifery movement met with a great deal of resistance from medical professionals of the time, and much of their training came from on-the-job assistance of home births. However, the stance of the medical profession towards homebirths began to change as the concept became popular. Palumbo retired from midwifery in 1986 and moved into a career in early childhood education after assisting in roughly a hundred deliveries during her career.

PANG Oie Tin (also known in Canada as Victor Pang) was born in China on June 14, 1906, in the village of Leung Ho Han in the county of Zhongshan in Guangdong province. He was the son of PANG Mew Sai (father) and Shee Chay Chong (mother), and the second eldest of four children.

PANG Mew Sai had sailed for Canada from Hong Kong, arriving in Vancouver on January 5, 1913. Mew Sai paid the $500 head tax and found employment as a farmer in Central Saanich, B.C. in the Keating Road area, despite intentions to work as a merchant.

PANG Oie Tin arrived in Victoria in 1921 to join his father, paying the $500 head tax. For the next quarter of a century, father and son worked together as farmers in Central Saanich and grew produce.

Oie Tin visited China at least twice, returning in 1926 and again in 1928. On these trips, he married Gun Ya Lee and fathered a son, Yip Ping Pang. His wife and son remained in China.

In 1942, in the midst of the Sino-Japanese War (1937-1945) and WWII, the 廣東 Guangdong area was captured and Oie Tin lost track of his wife and son. It was presumed they were among the tens of millions of civilian casualties.

In 1946, Oie Tin Pang farmed a seven-acre parcel of land at 2272 Edgelow Road in Saanich. It is believed that he formally purchased the property in 1947 after the Chinese Immigration Act was repealed and restrictions to Chinese owning property were lifted.

On October 13, 1948, Oie Tin left Canada temporarily to meet his second wife, Sit Mui Lee, through an arranged marriage. Oie Tin met his fiancée at the San Francisco airport. Her travel documents had been pre-purchased to facilitate a smooth entry into Canada. She was 24-year-old, Gim Fuey Low, a Canadian-born Chinese who had left Canada for Hong Kong on June 26, 1928.

Oie Tin and Sit Mui (listed as Gim Fuey Low on the marriage certificate) were married in a civil ceremony in Vancouver.

On May 16, 1951, Oie Tin Pang became a Canadian citizen.

In 1957, he purchased a C.I.30 certificate from a man named LEE Wa Quon. The identification was used to help his wife's mother immigrate to Canada, posing as the wife of Lee Wa Quon.

Oie Tin Pang passed away on September 20, 1978, at the age of 78. He is interred at Royal Oak Burial Park in Victoria, B.C. He is survived by his spouse, Sit Mui, and seven children and four great-grand children.

Morris Panych is an award-winning Vancouver playwright, actor, and director. Born in Calgary in 1952, Panych received a diploma in Radio and Television Arts from the Northern Alberta Institute of Technology in 1973 and a Bachelor of Fine Arts from UBC in 1977. He has since performed in and directed many stage productions and became a prolific writer of original plays in which he has acted, directed, and produced. His first play, Last Call, A Post-Nuclear Cabaret, was nominated for three Dora Mavor Moore Awards (Toronto). Other plays by Panych include Contagious (1984), Cheap Sentiment (1985), and Simple Folk (1987). During the early 1990s, Panych wrote plays for young people, including The Cost of Living (1990) and 2B WUT UR (1991). Panych was artistic director for Vancouver's Tamahnous Theatre from 1984 to 1986. Shortly after that, he won seven Jessie Richardson Theatre Awards to produce his play 7 Stories (1989). In addition, Panych has received Jessie awards for acting in and directing the works of other playwrights, most notably for his direction of Sweeney Todd (2000). In 1994 he received the Governor-General's Award for Drama for his play The Ends of the Earth. Panych has continued to write, and six books of his plays have been published by Talon Books (Vancouver). These include 7 Stories (1990), The Ends of the Earth (1993), Other Schools of Thought (including Life Science, 2B WUT UR, and The Cost of Living) (1994), Vigil (1997), Lawrence & Holloman (1998), and Earshot (2001). In addition, Panych has appeared in film and television productions.

Paperny Films is an internationally recognized, independent, Vancouver-based production company established in 1994.
Following graduation with a Master's Degree from the University of Pennsylvania's Annenberg School of Communications, David Paperny took a position with the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) in Toronto in 1983, first as a researcher and then as a producer. In 1989, he moved to Vancouver to produce documentaries for the CBC, which included 1993's The Broadcast Tapes of Dr. Peter, which earned Paperny an Academy Award nomination in 1994. That same year David Paperny along with his wife and fellow Annenberg graduate Audrey Mehler. From an original staff of two, Paperny Films has grown over the years to include a permanent staff of eighteen with an additional 100-200 production staff on contract at any given time. Currently, Paperny Films has seven productions running simultaneously and is considered one of the busiest West coast production companies. In 2006 Paperny's production budget totalled more than $9 million.
Since its inception, Paperny Films has adopted a relatively broad scope of programming. The material includes in-depth profiles of well-known Canadians, including Mordecai Richler, Jimmy Pattison, Nancy Greene, Henry Morgentaler. Productions have included historical documentaries subjects such as the history of British Columbia, the Winnipeg General Strike of 1919, the Holocaust, the Canadian War Experience during World War II and the Korean War and the history of the Canadian airline industry; science documentaries showcasing Canadian medical research; social documentaries on arranged marriages in the Canadian Sikh community and Canadian emigration to the United States; sports documentaries, lifestyle documentaries; the Canadian business establishment and the black market trade in human organs. The reality series in this collection examine the issues of being single in Vancouver and the experience of functioning as a surrogate mother.
Until the creation in 2006 of a documentary intended for theatre release, the market for Paperny productions was exclusively television. Networks that have purchased broadcast rights to Paperny productions include; CBC, CTV, Discovery Health, Global, History Television, the Independent Film Channel, Life Network, LOGO, Slice TV. While many of the productions have a uniquely Canadian subject matter and tell important stories of the Canadian experience, they also have a resonance extending beyond its national borders. As a result, Paperny Films continues to contribute to the growing Vancouver film and television sector.

Frank Parish was a British diplomat in the Consular Department in China from 1844-1852.

Mary Olga Park (née Bracewell) was a contemporary spiritualist mystic and self-published writer who lived most of her life in Vancouver, British Columbia. She was known for her non-denominational, theological beliefs and for the prophetic visions she experienced. She did not consider herself the head of a church or esoteric cult—or as a medium or psychic—but rather as a spiritual teacher.

Park was born to Ellen and Bruce Bracewell on February 24, 1891 in Gargrave, Yorkshire, England. As a child, Park showed an interest in nature, music and religion. Park was raised as a Wesleyan Methodist. After the local Wesleyan church disbanded, she secretly attended an Anglican Church against her parents’ wishes, as she was drawn by the music, liturgy, and sacramental worship. Park attended various schools in the suburbs of Birmingham until the age of fourteen, when she won a scholarship to Aston Pupil Teachers’ Centre. She studied there for three years, but also wished to pursue a career in music.

Park and her family immigrated to British Columbia in 1910, when Park was 19 years old. It was a difficult transition for Park, who had abandoned her musical and educational opportunities and social connections in England. The family settled in Revelstoke, British Columbia and soon after moved to a farm in South Vancouver, British Columbia. By 1914, Park began to receive dream visions showing her the experiences of soldiers in the First World War. From then on, she received psycho-spiritual experiences of Jesus Christ and other saints, philosophers, and thinkers.

On March 24, 1917, Park married James Fleming Park, and they had two children: Robert Bruce Park and James Samuel Park, who died a few days after his birth. Throughout the 1920s, Park was active at St. Mary’s Anglican Church in South Vancouver. She taught Sunday school and was a leading member of the church choir. During this time, Park became close with Rev. Charles Sydney McGaffin, the rector of the church. She considered him to be a man of progressive spiritual understanding. Through the 1940s, Park continued having visions and mystical experiences. Notably, Park received the words and music for a mystical communion service she practiced for the rest of her life at her own home worship altar, and kept a regular morning and evening practice of contemplative prayer. Park also became the Canadian representative of the Churches’ Fellowship for Psychical and Spiritual Studies in 1956–1963, corresponded with the Psychical Research Society in London, and was a member of the Spiritual Frontiers Fellowship.

Due to the broadening of her theology, she eventually felt compelled to move outside the parameters of the institutional Church. As she grew older, Park became dissatisfied with the nature of church dogma, or in her words, “Churchianity,” and broke ties with the Anglican Church. After her husband's death in 1959, she went to live with her son until 1964, when she moved to a small cottage in Port Moody. She devoted the rest of her life to living as a solitary contemplative. After word of her spiritual “awakening” and beliefs began to spread by her self-published books and by word of mouth, she received “seekers” and “learners” who wished to receive instruction on her spiritual practice. She began to regard those with whom she built her spiritual relationships as an informal society which had roots in interior realms and she referred to it as the Society of the Mystical Communion of Christ (SMCC).

Park continued to live alone at her cottage until 1978 when, after breaking an ankle, it was necessary to move back to Vancouver where she continued to receive visits from seekers and learners. Due to her advancing age and frailty, Park was transitioned to a care center for the elderly in Vancouver in 1983. Mary Olga Park died on December 13, 1985 at the age of ninety four.

Alfred Vye Parminter was a member of UBC's Faculty of Education’s teaching staff from 1962 until his retirement in 1982. He received a B.A and M.A. from UBC in 1943 and 1964 and a Ph.D. from Stanford University. Before becoming a faculty member at UBC, Parminter worked for the Department of Indian Affairs as an “Regional Inspector of Indian Schools in British Columbia,” writing both his M.A. and Ph.D. theses on the topic of education in indigenous communities. While at UBC, Parminter participated in multiple committees that investigated the challenges indigenous students on campus faced while attaining their degrees. In 1982 Parminter retired from the University - at that time, he was honoured with the title of Assistant Professor Emeritus of Education. Parminter passed away on September 20, 1990.

John A.E. Parnall completed his B.A. (1935) and B.Ed (1949) at the University of British Columbia and an M.A. at Toronto. After serving as Associate Registrar and lecturer in the Department of Mathematics, Parnall became Registrar at UBC in 1957 and held that position until 1980.