Mary F. Bishop (née Fraser) was born in Cobourg, Ontario on July 29, 1913, the only child of James Kenneth Fraser and Anna Beeman. In 1935 she received a Bachelor’s Degree in History and Literature from Queen’s University in Kingston, Ontario. She married Joseph (Joe) Bishop in 1937 and had three children: Charles Walter Fraser (Chuck) Bishop, Ann Josephine Louise Bishop, and James Kenneth Branson Bishop.

Over the following decades, the Bishop family relocated several times, corresponding to Joe’s duties within the Canadian Military. They lived in Washington, D.C. (1952–1962), where he served as Commander Canadian Army Staff and Canadian Military Attache, then in Vancouver (1956–1962) where he was Commander of the Canadian Army’s B.C. Area. Between 1962 and 1964, they lived in Colombo, Sri Lanka, where Joe served as a consulting engineer. While in Sri Lanka, Mary began what would become a long-term dedication to voluntary service in family planning movements: she worked as a clinic volunteer, and served on the national executive committee for the Family Planning Association of Sri Lanka.

After her return to Canada, Mary dedicated her efforts to groups concerned with reproductive rights, family planning, and population planning. She served on the board of the Planned Parenthood association of B.C. (PPABC) from the mid-1960s, and was its president between 1971–1973. She also served on the board of the Planned Parenthood Federation of Canada (PPFC), was involved in the International Planned Parenthood Federation (IPPF), and served on the IPPF Panel on Population Laws and Policies (Western Hemisphere Region). Her other volunteer involvements include the Canadian Institute of International Affairs; the University Women’s Club of Vancouver’s human rights committee; the University of British Columbia (UBC) Alumni Association heritage committee; Girl Guides of Canada (where she served as National Director from 1939–1949); and the Norman MacKenzie Scholarship Award jury at UBC. In 1984, Mary’s longstanding volunteer service was recognized when she received the Lifestyle Award from Hon. Monique Begin, Minister of National Health and Welfare in Ottawa.

Mary completed a Masters degree at UBC in 1971, her thesis titled “From ‘Left’ to ‘Right’: A perspective on the role of family planning in the West and in South Asia.” She subsequently worked as a research associate with the Department of Health Care and Epidemiology in the Faculty of Medicine, where she was later appointed an honorary lecturer. Throughout the 1970s and 80s, Mary pursued a project of writing a history of the birth control movement in Canada, which she aimed to publish as a book. While her book project never came to fruition, she did publish several articles, including “The Early Birth Controllers of B.C.” (BC Studies, 1984), “The Politics of Abortion: Trends in Canadian Fertility by Larry Collins—Revisited” (Atlantis, Fall 1983), and an entry on “Birth Control” in the first and second editions of the Canadian Encyclopedia. She also contributed a chapter to Not Just Pin Money: Selected Essays on the History of Women’s Work in British Columbia on the life of B.C.-based birth control activist Vivian Dowding.

Mary died on November 1, 1997 in Vancouver at the age of 84.

The John Howard Society of British Columbia was initially established in Vancouver in 1929 and incorporated in 1932, becoming the first John Howard Society in Canada. The objects of the Society as outlined in its constitution were: to seek to remove conditions which lead persons into crime; to befriend the first offender; to work for the wise and just treatment of those confirmed to penal institutions; to guide and help the mothers, wives and children of men in prison; to help discharged and paroled men and women to re-establish themselves; and to work for wise and just legislation with reference to court procedures and penal administration. The John Howard Society of Canada was later established in 1962. In 1983, the John Howard Society of British Columbia moved its head office to Victoria to act as an umbrella organization for the various independent John Howard Societies operating throughout British Columbia, including the John Howard Society of British Columbia, Nanaimo Area Council.

Over their histories, regional John Howard Societies in British Columbia have aimed their services towards delivering programs and services for people impacted by the criminal justice system, as well as those facing multiple barriers such as homelessness, unemployment, substance abuse, developmental disabilities, and mental health disabilities. Programs and services have provided assistance with housing, education, employment, and other community-based needs. Regional societies have also been involved in services and advocacy to encourage alternatives to the social justice system, including parole, probation, bail supervision, and community assessments. The John Howard Society, Nanaimo Area Council specialized in local programs including addiction treatment, restorative practice, community reintegration, employment, and community health and wellbeing

In September 2022, the John Howard Society, Nanaimo Area Council partnered with Connective and changed its name to Connective Support Society, Nanaimo. In September 7, 2022 press release, the organization explained the change as a response to a need for unified programming serving the needs of marginalized people experiencing homelessness, addiction, and justice system involvement.

Founded in April 1983 and registered as a non-profit charitable organization in 1987, the Or Gallery is an artist-run centre located in Vancouver, B.C. The Or Gallery Society set its constitutional purpose to establish and maintain a non-profit art gallery for the benefit of the community as a whole; to hold exhibitions of paintings, etchings, statues, photographs, sculptures and other works of art; to do everything incidental to the above. This mandate has evolved to also: provide a space for experimental art practices; make art accessible to a wide and varied audience by organizing artistic projects as sites other than the Or Gallery; and place an emphasis on works that privilege ideas and an interrelation between curatorial and artistic practices. The Or Gallery supports emerging, conceptual, and experimental art practices via: exhibitions of local, national, and international artists; assorted outreach activities, including professional and general-interest lectures, workshops, and community-initiated programming; and collaborative work with formal educational institutions and community-based organizations. It also publishes artist books, editions, and anthologies, and since 2010 has operated the Or Bookstore which specializes in artists’ publishing.

The Or Gallery was founded in April 1983 at 1729 Franklin St. as a personal gallery space of Vancouver-based artist Laiwan. Laiwan had been living in a former deli on the ground floor of the Hillington, an apartment building whose residents were primarily artists and musicians. She opened the storefront as gallery space, inviting artists to exhibit and perform for a small fee to support rent payments. The Or Gallery’s name is derived from that of the former deli, “Food for Thought”—Laiwan altered an awning above the storefront’s window by whiting out most of the letters to leave only “or.” Laiwan operated the Or Gallery until October 1983, at which point Ken Lum moved into the space. Running the gallery as a personal curatorial project, Lum ran exhibitions purported to be financed primarily by his own funds and exhibition openings’ beer sales. In 1984, a small group of artists including Arni Runar Haraldsson, Petra Watson, Lori Hinton, Michelle Normoyle, and Ken Lum officially incorporated the gallery as the Or Gallery Society. After Ken Lum’s tenure, the Or Gallery’s Director/Curator would change over approximately once a year. The Director/Curator would use the space as both a gallery and living space, splitting rent and advertising costs with exhibiting artists. In its first few years, the Or Gallery hosted short exhibitions by emerging artists and programming related to larger collections and more established artists. By 1987, the gallery was incorporated as a non-profit organization to fund payment of artists’ and curatorial fees. As the Or Gallery’s organizational structure became more formalized, the tenure of Director/Curator was lengthened from one year to more indefinite terms. Although the approach has varied between Director/Curators, the Or Gallery’s exhibitions and programming have come to be associated with a critical, experimental, and socially responsive lens.

Since its founding in 1983, the Or Gallery has held early exhibitions, performances, publications, film screenings, and projects by well-recognized names in contemporary Canadian art, including: Dana Claxton, Stan Douglas, Geoffrey Farmer, Rodney Graham, Brian Jungen, Garry Neill Kennedy, Roy Kiyooka, Tim Lee, Myfanwy MacLeod, Luanne Martineau, Jeff Wall, Ian Wallace, Marianne Nicolson, and Lawrence Paul Yuxweluptun. The Or Gallery has also hosted exhibitions by internationally renowned contemporary artists including Francis Alÿs, Martin Creed, Tacita Dean, Matthew Higgs, Barbara Kruger, Martha Rosler, and Krzysztof Wodiczko. Many works exhibited at the Or Gallery have contributed to intersectional conversations about race, class, sexual orientation, and identity in the art scene.

The Or Gallery collaborates with art galleries locally, nationally, and internationally. As a member of the Pacific Association of Artist-Run Centres (1988), the Or shares advocacy principles with and participates in initiatives with other B.C. artist-run centres. Based on its gallery location, the Or has also collaborated with neighboring galleries in Vancouver. In 1987, when a fire destroyed the Or Gallery’s space and records at 1729 Franklin St, the gallery was relocated to the studio of contemporary Director/Curator Phillip McCrum on the third floor of 505 Hamilton St. The Or was subsequently located at 314 W. Hastings St. (1988-1993); 112 W. Hastings St (1993-1999); 103-400 and 103-480 Smithe St. (1999-2008); 555 Hamilton St. (2008-2019), a building that has also housed the Bau Xi Gallery, Contemporary Art Gallery, and Morris and Helen Belkin Art Gallery’s Satellite Gallery; and 236 E. Pender St. (2019-present), which had formerly housed the Unit Pitt Gallery. In 2010, the Or Gallery opened the first international satellite space operate by a Canadian artist-run centre, the Or Gallery Berlin. The Or Gallery Berlin operated at 37 Oranienstrasse until July 2014, at which point it moved and became the Or Gallery Berlin Project and Residency Space. Although this space closed in 2015, the Or Gallery has maintained involvement in Berlin’s contemporary art scene.

The Or Gallery is currently run by a volunteer, artist-member Board of Directors and a paid Director/Curator. The Board of Directors contracts practicing artists as Director/Curator, who determines the focus of programming. Director/Curators have included: Laiwan (1983), Ken Lum (1983-1984), Arni Runar Haraldsson (1984-1985), James Graham (1986), Ellen Ramsey (1986-1987), Phillip McCrum (1987-1989), Nancy Shaw (1989-1991), Susan Schuppli (1991-1993), Janice Bowley (1994-1996), Reid Shier (1996-2002), Sydney Hermant (2002-2005), Michèle Faguet (2005-2007), Jonathan Middleton (2007-2017), Denise Ryner (2017-2022), and Jenn Jackson (2023-present).

Chiyoko Szlavnics was born in 1967 in Toronto and is a composer and visual artist currently residing in Berlin. Her parents, maternal grandfather, and experiences from her childhood have greatly influenced her musical and graphical works. Born to two artists, her mother, Aiko Suzuki, worked with painting, textiles, sculpture, and designing dance sets, and was of Japanese descent; her father was a highly analytical artist, something Szlavnics says she inherited, and was of half-Serbian and half-Hungarian descent. Her maternal grandfather was an avid nature lover, and when Szlavnic would visit him they would often spend time at the beaches on the north shore of Vancouver where they would explore the life cycle of salmon. This time on the beach would influence her interest in beating sounds within her compositions, as she often reflected on how the light bounced and reflected on water.

Her musical endeavors started at the University of Toronto where she originally studied flute and saxophone in the Faculty of Music where she graduated in 1989. Post-graduation, she worked under the direction of Nic Gotham at Hemispheres, an improvising ensemble based in Toronto. In 1993, she was asked to compose a piece for Hemispheres, and that is when she used her line drawings for the first time to organize and create the sound. In 1994, she took private composition lessons from James Tenney, and during this time she began to start her own composing. She moved to Berlin in 1997 after winning a scholarship to attend the Akademie Schloss Solitude. There she began collaborating with various other musicians and developing her unique, experimental compositional approach to music. In her compositions she explores: states of harmonicity, beating and rippling sounds, exceptionally slow glissandi (gliding between pitches), intonation, and combing musical instruments with sinewaves. Her compositions are composed for violin, cello, flute, clarinet, trumpet, trombone, percussion, among others and can be found throughout her 30+ works. Szlavnics says her main goal when composing is to take risks and be surprised by her music.

As a visual artist, she predominately creates line drawings using a fine line pen. Drawing is an integral part of her compositional process, as a way to map her preliminary ideas for the music. The lines represent how the tones are extending though time, or could also represent specific instrumental intervals. These lines are an abstract way for her to represent her imagined sound world since she is not inclined towards the traditional graphic score. Similar to her musical compositions, the unexpected is central to Szlavnics’ drawings. The drawings consists of lines, dots, and how they connect; there are some drawings that are in a in a moiré fashion as well. Later in her drawing career, she focused more on the visual arts aspect of the drawings instead of drawing for musical composition.

Lori Freedman was born in 1958 in Toronto and is a composer and clarinetist. Having parents who were both musicians, from a very early age Freedman began to learn numerous musical instruments: piano, guitar, drums, and trombone. It is her mastery of the clarinet that has catapulted her to international acclaim and what she is most notably sought after and known for playing. Her compositions and performances have led Freedman to become a member of the international group known as “the renaissance musicians.”

Freedman studied clarinet at the University of Toronto, and after graduating in 1977 she continued her studies at the Academy of Woodwinds at the Banff Center for the Arts in Alberta. In 1981, two musicians, Pauline Oliveros and Eric Dolphy, would inspire her with their spontaneity and improvisation that would change her outlook on music completely. Their comfort with taking risks in their music would inspire her to begin studying with Larry Combs at the Chicago Civic Orchestra when she first started improvising with her own music. Improvisation would become a central component in her compositions and live performances of the clarinet and would bring her high acclaim.

Freedman has performed in over 100 cities in over 20 countries all around the world. With a packed touring performance schedule, it is not uncommon for her to have more than 75 shows in a single year. In the midst of her own full performance schedule tour, recording, and workshops, she also has been commissioned by numerous contemporary artists to create music for them to perform. She also composes musical scores for dance, theatre, cinema, and other visual arts. One of her accolades includes the Freddie Stone Award in 1988 for the “demonstration of outstanding leadership, integrity and excellence in the area of contemporary music and jazz.” In 2003, 2004, and 2006 she was awarded "Clarinetist of the Year" at the National Jazz Awards. Most recently, in 2017, she was elected to be a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada for “outstanding artistic achievement.” In addition, she has taught at the Schulich School of Music at McGill University in Montreal where she conducted classes on bass clarinet and coached the contemporary/improvised music ensemble.

In 1927 Matthew Lindfors opened the Scandinavian School of English; then from 1939-1954, he operated the Scandinavian film service. In 1951 he founded the Swedish Cultural Society. He also served as correspondent for the Canadian International Service of the C.B.C. from 1947-1959 and editor of the Swedish Press from 1933 until his death in 1971.

Elizabeth Raum is a prolific composer and oboist. She lived with her husband in Halifax, Nova Scotia, where she was principal oboe with the Atlantic Symphony Orchestra, until 1975 when they moved to Regina, Saskatchewan. She was an oboist with the Regina Symphony Orchestra from 1975 onward, and principal oboe with the Chamber Players from 1986 until 2010.

Her composition repertoire includes: four operas, 90 chamber pieces, 18 vocal works, and a variety of choral works, ballets, concerti, and major orchestral works. Three of her operas have been filmed for the CBC. She has been commissioned as a composer by orchestras and music organizations across Canada, the US, Europe, China, and Japan, and has received numerous Canadian achievement awards for her work, including an Honorary Doctorate in Humane Letters from Mt. St. Vincent University, Halifax, in 2004 and the Saskatchewan Order of Merit in 2010.

CKOV Kelowna was established in 1928 by George Dunn, Bobby Johnston, Harry Blakeborough and James William Bromley Browne with the original call sign 10AY. The station broadcasted church services, plays, and performances by the Ogopogo Concert Club and was known as the Kelowna Amateur Radio Club. Significantly, it is recognized as one of British Columbia’s first radio stations. By 1931, it received a commercial license and 10AY switched to CKOV with the slogan “The Voice of the Okanagan.” The station had a firm grip on media in the Okanagan. It was a CBC Trans-Canada Affiliate by 1946 and it even began CHBC-TV in 1957, alongside CKOK Penticton and CJIB Vernon, although CKOV sold their shares in the late 1970s. Further, CKOV became the first licensed private radio network in Canada through obtaining CKCQ Quesnel in 1957, CKWL Williams Lake in 1960 and CKBX 100 Mile House in 1971.
Okanagan Broadcasters Ltd. (owned by the Browne family for 50 years) sold CKOV to Seacoast Communications Group Inc. in 1988, and by 1998, Jim Pattison Industries Ltd. acquired the assets for CKOV Kelowna from Seacoast. CKOV Kelowna moved to the FM band at 103.1Mhz in 2007 and as a tribute to the Browne family who aided in launching CKOV, the new station continued with the official CKOV call sign but identified on air as “B-103.” In 2010, the call letters were changed to CKQQ-FM and by 2017, the station was rebranded as Beach Radio 103.1 which provided Classic hits from the 80’s and 90’s.