The Office of President and Vice-Chancellor of the University of British Columbia is a position that provides oversight and direction for the University's operation following the strategic framework and recommendations of the Board of Governors and the Senates (Vancouver and Okanagan). The President's duties, powers, responsibilities, and offices are specified under the British Columbia University Act. The commission of the President (63) includes the President as a member of the Board of Governors and chair of the Senates. They are also members of the Senate's standing (permanent) committees, except for the standing committee on appeals. They are a member of each faculty, and in the absence of the chancellor, they must confer degrees in their place. Under the Act (59), the President can recommend appointments and promotions. They may also remove teaching and administrative staff, summon faculty meetings, authorize lectures and instruction in any faculty, and establish any committees the President may consider necessary. The President's duties (62) include preparing and publishing annual reports on the University's progress, highlighting any essential recommendations to the Board of Governors and the Senate and reporting on any matter referred to the President by the Board of Governors or the Senate. In addition, the President must submit an annual budget and present the submissions to the Minister of Education.
Frank F. Wesbrook was recruited as the University's first President in 1913. He continued in this position until he died in 1919. He was succeeded, in turn, by Leonard S. Klinck (1919-1944), Norman A.M. MacKenzie (1944-1962), John B. MacDonald (1962-1967), Walter Gage (1967-1968), Kenneth Hare (1968-1969), Walter Gage (1969-1975), Douglas Kenny (1975-1983), George Pedersen (1983-1985), Robert Smith (1985) and David Strangway (1985-1997), Martha Piper (1997-2006 ), Stephen J. Toope (2006-2014), Arvind Gupta (2014-2015), Martha Piper (once more) (2015-2016), Santa J. Ono (2016-2022), Interim President Deborah Buszard from Oct. 2022-Nov. 2023 and Dr. Benoit-Antoine Bacon (Nov. 2023-present). The duties and functions of the President's Office have expanded with the growth of the University. Until 1968, the UBC Presidents carried out their responsibilities by assisting various faculty members. In 1968, President Hare appointed William Armstrong, Walter Gage, and William White as acting Deputy Presidents. He delegated the President's Office multiple responsibilities. When Gage became President following Hare's resignation in 1969, White and Armstrong became Deputy Presidents. The Deputy President's positions continued until 1975 when they were replaced with four vice presidents under President Kenny. In 1987, the vice-presidents' duties were divided into Administration and Finance, Academic, Student and Academic Services, and Research.

UBC's student newspaper was first issued under the title Anon, then Anonymous, before becoming the Ubicee in 1916. In 1918, the newspaper officially became The Ubyssey and its first issue was published in October of that year. Editors and contributors over the years have included Deb Hope, Pat Carney, Pierre Berton, Eric Nicol, Joe Schlesinger, Allan Fotheringham, Michael Valpy, Stephen Scobie, Bruce Arthur, and Earle Birney. Other notable alumni include cartoonist Katherine Collins, photographer Jeff Wall and prime minister John Turner.

The Reverend Betty Atwater (née Carol Betty Osborne) was born in 1915 near Great Falls, Montana, the fifth of seven children. Her father was a travelling Baptist minister. Atwater married Charles Phillips at age 15; by the time she met Lowry in 1939, she was divorced and living in Long Beach with her two young daughters.

Atwater was Malcolm Lowry’s typist during the spring and early summer of 1939 when the author was in Los Angeles. Without steady employment, Atwater did freelance typing work; her brother, Jimmy Osborne, was a friend of Lowry’s and recommended his sister when Lowry mentioned he needed a typist. Atwater assisted Lowry first with The Last Address and then for several weeks with a very early draft (possibly the first) of Under the Volcano. The two never met again after Lowry abruptly left Los Angeles for Vancouver, him having met his future second wife Margerie that July, but they maintained a limited correspondence until September 1939, when Atwater mailed Lowry the draft Volcano manuscript and what work she had managed to complete of it to that point.

After her brief relationship with Lowry (they were lovers, according to Atwater, during work on the Volcano typescript), Atwater became a Baptist minister, piano teacher, and student and teacher of astrology. She also continued to write poetry, plays, and novels. She married Dwight Edward Atwater in 1942.

Einar Neilson was born in Stavanger, Norway sometime in the early 1900s. He moved as a child to Manitoba, where he came of age and worked in the Grain Exchange for several years. As an adult, Neilson moved west, settling on Bowen Island with first wife Patricia Fitgerald. The couple purchased a 10-acre plot in the Eaglecliff area and built a house, which became “Lieben”. Neilson married second wife Muriel James in 1947, and together they opened “Lieben” as a retreat for writers and artists of all sorts. Malcolm Lowry was among the many artists, writers, and creatives who visited “Lieben” during its years of operation, roughly 1946-1960. Neilson and Muriel closed up the “Lieben” house in the early 1960s, once visitors had stopped coming, and built a house for themselves farther up the hill on their property.

William Loftus Templeton was born in Tipperary, Ireland, in 1889 to parents James Bradley Templeton and Kathleen Anne Denroche Templeton. He emigrated to Canada some time in 1912 and already had one child with wife Frances Smart by 1915. Templeton had five children: daughters Kathleen, Doris (who went by “Mickey”), and Norah, and sons Charles and William. The family moved from Toronto to Regina in early 1916, where they stayed for eleven years, then back to Toronto in 1927. Templeton left the family to find work (he was a department store manager) and moved alone from Montreal to Saskatoon to Edmonton, settling finally in Vancouver sometime before 1940. He worked as a manager for the Vancouver Better Business Bureau from 1940 to 1963. He and his former wife, Dorothy Burt, were friends of the Lowrys at Dollarton. Templeton died at Vancouver General Hospital on 19 April 1972.

William C. McConnell was born on February 12, 1917, in Vancouver, one of six children. He served as a Seargent in the Canadian Armed Forces during the second World War, and he was in one of the first cohorts to pass through UBC’s Law School post-war. He graduated and began practicing in 1949. He continued to practice law full time from 1949 until retirement in 1983; during his career, worked mostly as a barrister as was by all accounts highly successful and well respected in his field.

McConnell married first wife Alice in the early 1940s. Alice passed away after a long illness in 1981, and McConnell remarried many years later. Alice was a writer, and McConnell likewise was a respected and well-known writer of short stories. In addition to his full-time law career, McConnell assisted in establishing the journal Canadian Literature and the creative writing magazine Prism International. He founded Klanak Press in 1958 and served as its general editor until the mid-1970s.

McConnell was introduced to Malcolm Lowry by mutual friend Earle Birney sometime during Lowry’s Dollarton years. They remained friends for at least as long as Lowry was in Vancouver; Lowry relied on McConnell’s law expertise when working on October Ferry to Gabriola, as evidenced by McConnell’s name appearing on the frontispiece of at least the 1970 edition of that book in thanks for his help (“I wish to express my thanks to William C. McConnell, barrister, solicitor, and friend, for his help in all the legal matters in this book. M.L.“). He remained an admirer of Lowry’s writing, and he was invited to present at the 1997 Malcolm Lowry Conference in 1997 at the University of Toronto. McConnell passed away on December 6, 2001, in Vancouver.

David Merrill Markson was born December 20, 1927, in Albany, New York, to parents Samuel and Florence Markson. He served in the US Army from 1946 to 1948. After the war, Markson attended Union College, New York, graduating with a BA in 1950, and then Columbia University for his MA, graduating in 1952. His master’s thesis was on Lowry’s Under the Volcano, and it was during his work on his thesis that he began corresponding with Lowry. That correspondence evolved into a close personal friendship which lasted until Lowry’s death in 1957. Markson’s 1952 thesis was later expanded and republished in 1978 as Malcolm Lowry’s Volcano: Myth, Symbol, Meaning, the first major study of Lowry’s Volcano.

Markson married his wife, Elaine Kretchmar, in 1956, and the couple moved to Mexico in 1958. They stayed there until 1961, during which time Markson finished a draft of his first novel, then moved back to New York where they had their two children, Johanna Lowry Markson (b. 1963) and Jed Markson (b. 1964). After selling the rights to another of his books, the Marksons moved to Spain, where they lived for some time between ca. 1970 and 1972, before returning once again to New York. Markson separated from Elaine in 1982 and later took up a relationship with Joan Semmel which lasted for ten years.

During his career, Markson worked as a journalist, book editor, and as a college instructor at Columbia University, Long Island University, and the New School, while also writing and publishing works of genre fiction (mostly westerns), poetry, plays, and, later in life, experimental novels. He passed away on June 4, 2010, in New York.

Margerie Lowry (née Bonner) was born on July 18, 1905, in Adrian, Michigan, to parents Mr. and Mrs. John Stuart Bonner. Her father was a diplomat, newspaperman, and manager of a wire fence company, and reached the rank of Lieutenant Colonel in the AEF during the first World War. By the end of the war, he had lost much of the family’s money, and so daughters Margerie and Priscilla were encouraged to work. Both girls went into the film industry in Hollywood and did well. Margerie began starring as a horsewoman in Westerns, among other roles, at age 14, after completing only one year of high school. Between 1919 and 1923, Margerie did well enough as an actress that she was able to support herself, her sister, and her parents; her acting career largely ended with the advent of “talkies”.

Margerie was briefly married to Jerome Chaffee, from 1923 to 1925. After her divorce from him, Margerie continued working in various positions in film and radio, including as an animator for Disney, over the subsequent decade. She also wrote novels during this period, though none were published.

Margerie met Malcolm Lowry in Los Angeles, California, in 1939, and the two immediately took to each other. When Lowry moved to Vancouver later in 1939, Margerie followed him. The two were married, after Lowry’s official divorce from Gabrial, in 1940 and remained so until Lowry’s death in 1957. Lowry assisted Margerie with the publication of several of her novels, and Margerie likewise helped Lowry with the many works he began and published during their marriage.

After Lowry’s death in 1957, Margerie eventually moved back to Los Angeles, where she passed away in 1988.

Victor Doyen (b. 1942, d. 2018) was one of the preeminent Lowry scholars. He had a long and successful career in academia with a particular focus on Lowry’s work. His master’s thesis, Under the Volcano by Malcolm Lowry: An Ergocentric Approach, unpublished, was completed in 1963. His doctoral thesis, Fighting the Albatross of Self: A Genetic Study of the Literary Work of Malcolm Lowry, was published in 1973. He was a professor at the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven from 1974-2002, reaching Professor Emeritus status and serving as vice-dean of the Arts Faculty and head of the English Department there before retirement. He received a grant from the Belgian Foundation for Scholarly Research to study the Lowry manuscripts at UBC in 1970, visited the University of California, Berkeley, as a Fullbright scholar in 1984, taught a graduate seminar on Lowry archives manuscript research in 1987, and presented at the 1987 Lowry Symposium (UBC), the 1997 Lowry Conference (University of Toronto), and 2017 Lowry Conference in England. He also published, co-wrote, and edited many landmark works of Lowry scholarship, including, but certainly not limited to, the critical editions of Lunar Caustic and Swinging the Maelstrom.

Douglas Turner Day III was born May 1, 1932, in Colón, Republic of Panama, to parents Bess Turner Nelson Day and Douglas Turner Day II. After an early academic career marked by demerits, Day enlisted in the US Marine Corps, where he achieved the rank of second lieutenant and served as a pilot until an automobile accident in 1955. After, he was a lieutenant colonel in the Marine Corps Reserve.

Day took a bachelor’s degree, master’s degree, and PhD from University of Virginia (1952, 1959, and 1962 respectively) and joined the Department of English there as a professor of English and Comparative Literature in 1968; he retired in 2000. Day was a respected academic in his field, and he published several books of criticism, including Swifter than Reason: The Poetry and Criticism of Robert Graves (1963), a biography of Malcolm Lowry which won the 1974 National Book Award in Biography, and two novels, Journey of the Wolf (1977) and The Prison Notebooks of Ricardo Flores Magon (1991). Day also traveled and lectured extensively in Spain and South America, and he was elected a fellow of the Royal Geographical Society in 1995.

Day was married five times. First to Mary Hill Noble, from 1954 to 1967, with whom he had two sons and two daughters (one of whom died in infancy). Second to Elisabeth Marie Holscher, from 1967 to 1978, with whom he had one son. Third to Gay Allis Rose Clifford from 1979 to 1982. Fourth to Nancy Ellen Willner from 1982 to 1988. And finally, to Sheila Marie McMillen from 1990 until his death by suicide in 2004. Day had a debilitating stroke in February 2004 and died in his home in Charlottesville, Virginia, in October. His children are Douglas Turner Day IV, Ian Day, Patrick Day, and surviving daughter Emily Day Whitworth.

Terry Allen Simmons was born 12 April 1946 in Butte, California to parents Daniel F. Simmons and Jeanne Marlow. He had one twin brother, Gary, and a sister, Deborah. After growing up in Yuba City, Simmons earned his undergraduate degree in Anthropology in 1968 as one of the first graduates of the University of California, Santa Cruz. He then moved for his graduate studies at the Geography Department of Simon Fraser University in Burnaby, B.C., earning his Master of Arts in Geography in 1974. Afterwards, under the supervision of the humanistic geographer Yi-Fu Tuan, Simmons wrote a doctoral thesis at the University of Minnesota and in 1979 was awarded a PhD in Geography. While studying for these degrees, Simmons worked as a teaching assistant and lecturer of geography at various programs, including Simon Fraser University, the University of Minnesota, Lakehead University, and the University College of the Fraser Valley. In 1989, Simmons graduated from the Boalt Hall School of Law at the University of California, Berkeley. In 1988 and 1989, Simmons worked as a law clerk in the Land and Natural Resources Division of the U.S. Attorney’s Office in San Francisco and as a staff member for the Alaska Supreme Court in Anchorage, Alaska. Afterwards, he worked in Reno, Nevada both as an environmental and natural resources policy consultant and as an attorney practicing primarily in the areas of environmental, natural resources, water, land use, real estate, and business law. Simmons also became a Nevada Supreme Court Settlement judge, mediating appellate cases and actively arbitrating in Nevada trial level courts. After completing his academic degrees, Simmons continued his education by attending short courses and seminars focusing on cultural resource management, hazardous materials handling, and civil mediation. He also regularly taught courses and seminars in natural resources law, civil and criminal prosecution of environmental crimes, and similar topics.

Throughout his life, Simmons was highly involved in environmental activism. The summer of 1968, Simmons spent the summer as a research assistant in the national office of Sierra Club in San Francisco. After moving that fall to Vancouver to undertake graduate studies in the Geography Department of Simon Fraser University in Burnaby, B.C., Simmons was struck by the lack of similar environmental groups in B.C. He contacted local Sierra Club Bulletin subscribers and convened a meeting that led to the incorporation of the Serra Club of B.C. (SCBC). In fall 1969, Simmons was elected the first chairman of SCBC, as well as vice-president of the newly-formed B.C. Environmental Council. At SCBC’s first meeting, two of the one hundred members that signed up for the organization were Jim Bohlen and Irving Stowe, who alongside Paul Cote would later become recognized as co-founders of Greenpeace. In 1971, Simmons sailed as one of twelve crewmembers on the boat known as “Greenpeace” for its voyage from Vancouver, B.C. to Amchitcka, Alaska to protest U.S. nuclear tests. Then 25 years old, Simmons acted as the group’s geographer and legal advisor. This trip is now understood as the founding event of the environmental organization Greenpeace. Simmons did not remain actively involved in Greenpeace after this trip, instead taking part in other environmental activism efforts. In 1970, he acted as the Secretary of the Run Out Skagit Spoilers (ROSS) Committee that fought against Seattle City Light’s proposal to raise the Ross Dam by 125 feet. After leaving the role of Secretary, Simmons continued his involvement in ROSS as a member. In 1972, Simmons participated in an anti-war protest in Minneapolis at the University of Minnesota. Charged with aggravated assault against a police officer and rioting, Simmons received a one-year probation. In 1973, Simmons was interviewed as the SCBC vice-chairman on Alaskan pipeline construction activity and later appeared at a hearing of the BC Energy Commission to cross-examine statements made on behalf of the Canadian Petroleum Association. Simmons was appointed as one of six directors to the Forest Research Council of B.C. in 1981 and was a founding member of the Forest History Association of British Columbia in 1982. Simmons stayed an active member in the Forest History Association of British Columbia, serving as director at the time of his passing in fall 2020.

In addition to his involvement in various environmental efforts, Simmons was also Treasurer of the Eugen Rosenstock-Huessy Society, an advisory board member of the Berkely Canadian Studies Program, and an active member of the Vancouver St. John’s Anglican Church Learner’s Exchange. Simmons passed away in Vancouver on November 14, 2020.

Anthony “Tony” R. Kilgallin was born in London, England, in 1941. He emigrated to Toronto in 1951, then moved to Mexico in 1958. During that time, and before moving to North Vancouver in 1967, Kilgallin wrote a master’s thesis on Lowry, entitled “The use of literary sources for theme and style in Under the Volcano” (1965). Kilgallin was briefly a professor of English at UBC; he is noted as an assistant professor in the Summer 1970 roll. In 1973 he published Lowry, his biography of the same, with Press Porcepic (Ontario).

Arthur Harvey Burt, born in 1920, and wife Dorothy were part-time neighbours of the Lowrys at Dollarton. Burt was a schoolteacher, and he and Dorothy stayed at their Dollarton shack on weekends and in the summer months. They met and became close friends with the Lowrys in the early 1950s, frequently spending their Dollarton excursions in their company. By the time the Lowrys relocated to England in 1954, the couples were close enough that Burt was entrusted with the Lowrys’ shack, the boat with it, and the papers and books left inside. Burt would later donate many of the books to the UBC Library (the bulk of the Malcolm Lowry Personal Library Collection).

Burt was active with the North Shore Historical Society and a font of anecdotal information on Lowry and Margerie much sought after by Lowry scholars. Burt and Dorothy lived in Deep Cove, North Vancouver, until Burt’s death in 2003.

George Bluman was born in Vancouver in 1943, and completed his Bachelor of Science at UBC in 1964 with an honours degree in Physics and Mathematics. After finishing his PhD in Applied Science at Caltech, he joined the UBC Math Department in 1968 and worked as a professor until his retirement in 2014. During this time, Bluman served as the first undergraduate chair in Mathematics, the Head of Mathematics for five years, the co-founder of the Institute of Applied Mathematics, and a member of various UBC committees and task forces for admissions and recruitment. His mathematics research interests include symmetries and differential equations, and he has authored and co-authored numerous papers and books on these subjects, including Similarity Methods for Differential Equations (1974) and Symmetries and Differential Equations (1989).

Bluman has taken an interest in math education and readiness in secondary schools throughout his career, publishing studies and reports on mathematics competency in B.C. school systems, holding local workshops, and organizing aspects of the Euclid Mathematics Contest. In addition to this work, he has also served in various capacities for the Canadian Mathematics Society, including as Chairman of the Education Committee and a member of the Board of Directors. In 2001, he was the recipient of the Society’s Adrien Pouliot Award for his leadership and educational advocacy. He is currently Professor Emeritus in the Department of Mathematics.

The Humbird family was prominent in the lumber business from the late nineteenth century to the mid-twentieth century, first in the mid-western United States, and then in the western United States and British Columbia. The son of Jacob Humbird, a builder of railroads in South America, John A. Humbird was a shareholder in the Victoria Lumber and Manufacturing Company of Chemainus, British Columbia. The company was incorporated in 1889 and dissolved in 1950.

Humbird, who had interests in several companies, formed various partnerships with Frederick Weyerhauser; this included partnerships involving the White River Lumber Company in Mason, Wisconsin, and the Sand Point Lumber Company in Sandpoint, Idaho, and the creation of the Clearwater Timber Company, also in Idaho, in 1900. The Sand Point Lumber Company was combined with the lumber holdings of Edward Rutledge in December 1900 to form the core of a new business, the Humbird Lumber Company.

Humbird's son Thomas J. Humbird became manager of the company in 1902 and was involved in the operations of several mills, including the Sand Point mill. His son, John A. Humbird (grandson of the original John A.), continued the family tradition and was one of the key figures in the development of the Seaboard Lumber Sales Company, Limited of British Columbia in 1935.

Charles Hou is a Canadian educator and writer. He was born in North Vancouver in 1940 and earned Bachelor and Master of Education degrees from the University of British Columbia.

Hou is well known as an innovator in education. He taught high school in Burnaby, British Columbia, for thirty-four years, where, in his drive to engage high school students with Canadian history, he regularly incorporated week-long hikes, mock trials, costumed debates, and music video and film production into his courses. He has received a number of teaching awards, including the Hilroy National Award for Great Merit in 1986, and the Governor General's Award for Excellence in the Teaching of Canadian History in 1996.

In 1993, Hou, along with a group of other BC teachers, established The Begbie Canadian History Contest, a competition designed to raise the popularity of Canadian History among high school students and the wider public. The contest has been enormously successful and has expanded from its provincial roots to become an annual national competition that is offered in both French and English. Contest materials are now routinely used in classrooms across Canada.

Early in his career, Hou developed an interest in political cartoons as a vehicle for teaching history. He has spent decades consulting the archives of hundreds of different newspapers and magazines published across Canada and, to a lesser extent, the United States, in an effort to compile a comprehensive collection of Canada’s most important political cartoons. The result of this work is a series of books, co-authored with his wife, Cynthia Hou. The first volumes in the series, Great Canadian Political Cartoons, 1820 to 1914 and Great Canadian Political Cartoons, 1915 to 1945 were published in 1997 and 2002. A third volume, which will cover the years from 1946 to 1982, is forthcoming.

Hou has written or edited several other books, including The Helping Hand: How Indian Canadians Helped Alexander Mackenzie Reach the Pacific Ocean (with Sister Mary Paul Howlitt, 1971), The Riel Rebellion: A Biographical Approach (with Cynthia Hou, 1984), The Art of Decoding Political Cartoons: A Teacher's Guide (with Cynthia Hou, 1998) and The Begbie Canadian History Contest: The First Ten Years (2004). He has also published articles in various Canadian History journals and created print and online lesson aids and other materials to support the study and teaching of Canadian history. Most recently, he created the teacher’s guides to the award-winning 2007 multimedia production, From The Heart: The Freeman Legacy, a joint project of the City of Burnaby and SFU’s Learning and Instructional Design Centre.

Hou is now retired from teaching and lives in Vancouver, where he continues his research and his involvement with the Vancouver Historical Society and the British Columbian Historical Federation.

Bill and Joyce De Meester were semi-professional photographers from Ontario before settling in BC where they continued photography non-professionally. In 2002, they proposed to Deborah Greaves, the fundraising coordinator for the Okanagan Thompson International Sculpture Symposium (OTISS), that they would like to photograph the sculptures with the intent to make them available globally through different media outlets such as newspapers, magazines, postcards, books, or other fundraising opportunities.

The Okanagan Thompson International Sculpture Symposium (OTISS) was organized by bronze sculptor Jock Hildebrand in 2002 who wanted to provide educational, tourism, and cultural benefits to the community by bringing professional sculptors to the region. Eleven international sculptors and ten Canadian sculptors were invited to the Thompson Okanagan region to create permanent public sculptures in one of the nine host communities: Kelowna, Kamloops, Vernon, Penticton, Summerland, Osoyoos, Westbank, Lake Country and the seven First Nations bands in the Okanagan Nation Alliance. The project ran for over 100 days in BC.

Larry Wong was born in Vancouver’s Chinatown on August 14, 1938, one of the last babies to be delivered by a midwife in Chinatown. Wong is the sixth and youngest child of Wong Mow and Mark Oy Quon [Lee Shee]. Wong’s mother died when he was 18 months old and his father died when he was 28. Wong had five older siblings, Yung Git, Ching Won, Yung Wah, Mee Won, and Won Jin Lee (Jennie). Ching Won and Mee Won died before Wong was born. Yung Git died of tuberculosis when Wong was only four years old. Wong was closest to Jennie despite their seven-year age gap. Wong’s father was a tailor and the family lived in a small space in the back of his father’s shop on Main Street between Hastings and Pender.

Wong attended Strathcona School and Vancouver Technical High School. His first job was in a bowling alley, working as a pin boy. Later, Wong earned cash in a used car lot, washing cars inside and out. After graduation from high school, Wong did not have enough money to go directly to university. He worked for an English language news magazine called Chinatown News for two years. He started out selling advertising, and was later promoted to head of layout and design. Eventually Wong saved enough to enroll at the University of British Columbia where he studied psychology and creative writing; however, he dropped out after only two years. Wong decided that although he wanted to become a writer, university wasn’t the best way to approach it. Unsure of what he wanted to do, he accepted a job at Canada Post. He started as a clerk, filling out order forms, moved up to sorting mail, and later worked the front counter. When Wong was 34 years old, he was hired to work as an auditor for Canada Post in Toronto. After twelve years, Wong left Canada Post and began working with Employment and Immigration Canada. He was transferred back to Vancouver in the 1980s, retiring in 1994 after thirty years of service. After retirement, Wong threw himself into volunteering with various history groups. He helped establish both the Chinese Canadian Historical Society of British Columbia and the Chinese Canadian Military Museum Society, interviewing elderly Chinese residents and war veterans to record their stories. Wong appeared in several documentaries and wrote articles for newspapers and magazines. He arranged for exhibitions of artifacts and photographs to help showcase the story of Chinese Canadians. In retirement, Wong became a member of the Asian Canadian Writers Workshop and wrote a one-act play, Siu Yeh (Midnight Snack), which was produced at the Firehall Art Centre in 1995. In 2001, he gave a workshop at Historic Joy Kogawa House on writing family stories, with former writer-in-residence Susan Crean. Wong was also the writer, researcher and co-host, along with Nancy Li, for Rogers’ Cable Chinatown Today and served on the boards of Tamahnous Theatre, the Federation of B.C. Writers, the Westcoast Book Prize Society and the Vancouver Public Library, One Book, One Vancouver.

In 2011, Wong published his book Dim Sum Stories: A Chinatown Childhood in which he writes about growing up in Vancouver’s Chinatown in the 1940s and 1950s. Dim Sum Stories started off as a the one-act play called Sui Ye (Midnight Snack) before fellow Vancouver writer Jim Wong-Chu encouraged him to turn it into a book of short stories.

Larry Wong passed away on September 2, 2023 in Vancouver.

Wallace Bakfu Chung was born in Victoria on November 1, 1925. After graduating from Victoria High School in 1945, Dr. Chung attended Victoria College and the University of British Columbia, before being accepted to McGill University’s School of Medicine in 1949. After graduating from McGill University in 1953, Dr. Chung moved to Vancouver to complete a medical residency at Vancouver General Hospital. In 1958, he was appointed Chief Resident at Vancouver General Hospital, and in 1959 entered medical practice, where he specialised in vascular surgery. Soon thereafter, Dr. Wallace Chung began teaching at the University of British Columbia, and became a full Professor of Surgery in 1972. Dr. Chung was appointed Head of the Department of Surgery at the University of British Columbia Hospital in 1980, a post he held for nearly 10 years before retiring in 1991.

Dr. Madeline Chung (née Huang) was born in Shanghai, China, and was raised in Hong Kong. She graduated from Yale Medical Mission in Hunan, China in 1948, before immigrating to North America for a medical internship at St. Joseph’s Hospital in Victoria. Her next internship was at St. Mary’s Hospital in Montreal, where she met Dr. Wallace Chung in October 1949. The two were married on June 7, 1953 in Seattle, Washington, where Dr. Madeline Chung’s grandmother lived. Dr. Madeline Chung then returned to Rochester, Minnesota to complete a medical residency in obstetrics and gynaecology at the Mayo Clinic. She then moved to Vancouver to join her husband in 1954, where she worked as a pathologist before opening her own medical practice in 1956. She became a Clinical Instructor at the University of British Columbia Faculty of Medicine in 1964, was promoted to Clinical Assistant Professor in 1979, and became Clinical Associate Professor in 1990. For a time the only Chinese-speaking obstetrician in Vancouver, she delivered over 7,200 babies before her retirement in 1995.

Drs. Wallace and Madeline Chung were among the first Chinese-Canadians to pursue careers in medicine. When Dr. Wallace Chung arrived in 1953, there were only 7 doctors of Chinese ancestry practising in Vancouver, while Dr. Madeline Chung was the first Chinese-Canadian and the first female obstetrician in British Columbia. Together they had two children, Maria and Stephen, both of whom followed their parents into medicine.

Drs. Wallace and Madeline Chung have both contributed extensively to their community. Dr. Wallace Chung was a member of numerous cultural boards, including the Vancouver Chinese Cultural Centre, the International Dragon Boat Society, the British Columbia Heritage Trust, the Vancouver Maritime Museum, and the Canadian Multiculturalism Council, where he helped draft the 1988 Multiculturalism Act. He also served as Governor of the American College of Surgeons, President of the Canadian Society for Vascular Surgery, and Director of the B.C. Cancer Society. He was awarded a 125th Anniversary of the Confederation of Canada Medal (1992), a UBC Honorary Alumnus Award (2002), the Order of Canada (2005) and the Order of British Columbia (2006). Dr. Madeline Chung was a founding member of the True Light Chinese School in Vancouver, where she served as superintendent for 21 years and as treasurer for 27. She was made an honorary Life Member of the British Columbia College of Physicians and Surgeons (1999).

Dr. Wallace Chung began collecting the items in the Chung Collection as a child, inspired by a poster of the Canadian Pacific steamship Empress of Asia that hung in his father’s tailor shop in Victoria. He began collecting newspaper clippings and Canadian Pacific Railway pamphlets in 1931, although he soon set aside this hobby to focus on his education. He rekindled his interest in Canadian Pacific Railway materials in the 1960s, once he had finished school and begun working. He soon became known among booksellers and dealers as a serious collector. Thanks to these established relationships, Dr. Chung was frequently contacted by dealers about items that would fit into his collection. His interest in the Canadian Pacific Railway grew to include Chinese Canadian immigration and British Columbia history, as he became interested in tracing his father’s and grandfather’s journeys from China to Canada. Dr. Chung donated this extensive collection to the University of British Columbia Library in 1999, saying, “We are giving the collection to UBC so as many people as possible can have the opportunity to understand and appreciate the struggles and joys of those who have come before them.” Other parts of Dr. Chung’s collection may be found at the Vancouver Maritime Museum.

The Vancouver Punk Collection was compiled for a display held at the Irving K Barber Learning Centre in November 2022. The display documented punk in Vancouver and it’s political consequences. Vancouver’s punk scene was born just as the city was gaining more international significance in the late 1970s, becoming a focal point for youth rebellion against middle class complacency and respectability. Vancouver was central in the development of the scene in Canada and on the West Coast.

Philip Bridgman Lind was born August 20th, 1943, in Toronto, Canada to parents Susan Bridgman and Walter (Jed) Lind. He attended McGill University and later transferred to the University of British Columbia. He earned his Bachelors of Arts in Political Science and Economics, and then attended the University of Rochester to complete a Master’s in Political Sociology. In 1969, he began working for Rogers Communications Inc. alongside founder Ted Rogers. He continued work with Rogers for more than 50 years in various capacities, rising in the organization to become vice-chairman of the company, a position he held for over 30 years.

In 2002, Mr. Lind was awarded the Order of Canada for his career and input into Canadian culture and broadcasting. That same year, he received an LL.D, honoris causa, from the University of British Columbia. In 2012, he was inducted into the U.S. Cable Hall of Fame, only the third Canadian to be so honoured. In 1992, Mr. Lind was a founder of CPAC, the Cable Public Affairs Channel, Canada’s only privately owned, commercial-free, not-for-profit bilingual licensed television service. He has served on the CPAC board for almost 30 years. He is also a director of the Atlantic Salmon Federation, Vancouver Art Gallery and Art Gallery of Ontario. He funds The Phil Lind Initiative at UBC, an annual dialogue series and course hosted by the School of Public Policy and Global Affairs, as well as other cultural endeavours such as the Philip B. Lind Emerging Artist Prize, the Phil Lind Multicultural Artist in Residence and the Phil Lind Scholarship Fund.

Phil Lind’s paternal grandfather, John Grieve (Johnny) Lind, traveled to the Yukon in 1894, two years before the gold strike and three years before the international gold rush. While there, he successfully mined for placer gold in Fortymile River, and then, in late 1896 with news of the gold-strike, travelled to Dawson City and Bonanza Creek. Together with his partners, Johnny Lind bought and sold claims and successfully mined a significant amount of gold. He returned with his fortune to St. Mary’s, Ontario, where he used the money to begin St. Mary’s Cement, which grew to become the largest independent cement company in Canada. Inspired by his grandfather’s Yukon adventure, Mr. Phil Lind began collecting materials related to the Klondike Gold Rush. He compiled the collection over 50 years, and soon became known by Canadian booksellers and dealers as a collector of Klondike items. Mr. Lind donated the comprehensive collection to the University of British Columbia Library in 2020. He passed away on August 20, 2023.

G.F. Turner was involved in the construction of new buildings in Peking at the time of the Chinese Revolution (1911-1912).

James Fenwick Lansdowne was a Canadian wildlife artist whose work focused on birds and was frequently compared to that of renowned nineteenth century naturalist and painter John James Audubon. Lansdowne was born in Hong Kong and raised in Victoria, British Columbia, where he lived for most of life and where he had a studio. He was bedridden or in a wheelchair for long portions of his childhood due to polio, and it was during this time he taught himself to paint. Despite having receiving no formal training in art, by the time he was 20 his work had been exhibited at the Royal Ontario Museum and he had been profiled by MacLean's magazine as one of Canada's foremost bird artists. In addition to his paintings, his work was featured in advertisements, books, and even presented to the British Royal Family. Lansdowne was elected a member of the Royal Canadian Academy of Arts (1974), made an Officer of the Order of Canada (1976), and awarded the Order of British Columbia (1995).

Dr. Jacob Edwin Brouse was an early New Denver physician, and graduate of McGill University. His father and sons were all also doctors. In 1895 he moved to New Denver, British Columbia, where he opened the communities first hospital. In 1896 he became a coroner for the Slocan Mining division of West Kootenay electoral district. In 1897 he built the Slocan Hospital, which remained in use until the 1980s. By 1917, he left New Denver, passing in 1925, but not before leaving his name and legacy throughout the area. The town of Brouse is named for him, as well as Brouse Lodge, an independent living facility built on the site of his hospital. Two biographies have been written about Dr. Brouse: “Early Years: Dr. J.E. Brouse & his Slocan Hospital” by G.H von Krogh, 2023, and “New Denver’s frontier doctor: Doctor Jacob Edwin Brouse, 1868-1925” by John Brighton, 1984.

The intention of the Archives Collective was to acquire knowledge of the heritage of gay people, and in so doing develop “that sense of pride and security which is so vital to the building of self-confidence.” Run by a BC based group of librarians and archivists, such as Archives Collective founder James Thomas, Ron Dutton, and Rob Joyce, the Archive was founded in 1976 to collect and preserve materials by and about gay groups and individuals in the Pacific Northwest. Many of these items were immediately transferred to other organizations which were better suited for the long-term preservation of the materials. The Archives Collective “placed several thousand items in some twenty archival collections, but mainly in the Canadian Gay Archives… and in UBC Special Library Collections.” After the group disbanded in the late 1980’s, Ron Dutton continued his practice of collecting materials related to gay and lesbian life in BC, and in 2018 his collection was donated to the Vancouver Archives as the BC Gay and Lesbian Archive.

The United Nations Association in Canada (UNA-Canada) is a national charitable organization establisted in 1946.

Koberger was a printer.

Pleydenwurff was a woodcut artist.

Wolgemut was a woodcut artist.

Dürer was a woodcut artist.

Great Britain has a consulate location in Valparaiso, Chile.