The Mackenzie-Papineau Battalion, Veterans of the International Brigades, also known as the Mac Paps, were founded in 1971 to aid and maintain contact with former members of the Battalion who were involved in the Spanish Civil War in the 1930s. The first president was Len Norris who also was the editor of the Association's news bulletin, "the Map Pap'er" from 1972-1986.

The Lower Mainland Branch of Veterans Against Nuclear War was organized in Vancouver in 1984 by local members of the national organization headquartered (and registered as a society) in Nova Scotia. VANA was founded in Halifax in 1982 under the name of Veterans For Multilateral Nuclear Disarmament and chanaged its name in 1986. As of 1989, the Lower Mainland (B.C.) Branch was one of 13 local branches of VANA in 7 provinces.

Veterans Affairs Canada is responsible for pensions, benefits, education and training for retired and serving members of the Canadian Armed Forces and their families.

A. Hyatt Verrill was born in 1838 in the United States. An archaeologist, explorer, inventor, illustrator, Verrill was also a prolific author, writing on extremely diverse subjects such as whaling, travel, natural history and the radio. This writing resulted in the publication of more than 100 books, including several science fiction novels written under the pseudonym Ray Ainsbury. Verrill served as the natural history editor of Websters International Dictionary in 1896, and invented the autochrome process of natural colour photography in 1902.
According to the synopsis for his book Never a Dull Moment, Verrill discovered and described many new species of insects, reptiles, birds and shells, discovered and excavated countless prehistoric ruins and tombs, and devoted almost forty years of his life to exploring the deserts and jungles of Central and South America. He was a boat builder, a member of Buffalo Bills Wild West Show, a member of several aboriginal tribes, and has lived through such disasters as shipwrecks, hurricanes and earthquakes.
A. Hyatt Verrill died after a series of strokes in November of 1954, at the age of 83.

Coolie Verner was born on April 25, 1917, in Portsmouth, Ohio, the son of an American military officer. His family were old-established tobacco farmers in Virginia. Verner attended the College of William and Mary in Virginia, receiving an A.B. in 1937 and an A.M. in 1950. He received his M.A. and Ed.D. from Columbia University, New York, in 1951 and 1952, respectively. Verner spent two years studying art in Paris and one year at the University of London on a Fulbright Fellowship, 1952-1953. Between 1942 and 1947, Verner served in the U.S. Army, advancing from private to captain. During his service in the Army, he became an expert in bomb disposal and has been personally thanked by Queen Elizabeth for defusing a bomb in the crypt of St. Paul's Cathedral in London. Verner taught adult education at the University of Virginia from 1947-1950. From 1953-1961 he was Professor of Adult Education at Florida State University. He joined the Faculty of Education, UBC, in 1961, where he taught adult education until his retirement in 1977. On October 12, 1979, Professor Verner died at his home on Mayne Island, B.C.
Verner's contributions to scholarship lay in three fields of endeavour: adult education, rural sociology, and the history of cartography and carto-bibliography. As an adult education professor, Verner helped create and develop the field as an academic discipline. He wrote over 170 works and lectured on the subject in Canada, the U.S., and countries as far away as Australia and New Zealand. Under his guidance, UBC became recognized as one of the world's foremost centres for adult education. As a rural sociologist, Verner directed studies for the Canadian government on the Okanagan and declining rural life in Canada. He also acted as a consultant to countries overseas, and he was a Canada Council Fellow 1968-1969. Equal if not greater than his interest in these two areas was Verner's passion for the history of cartography and carto-bibliography. His first publications in the field were studies in the 1950s on the early maps of Virginia. His last book was a historical cartographic work, The Northpart of America. Verner collected maps and kept detailed carto-bibliographic descriptions of them. In addition, many of the thousands of other maps he examined in his research. He was particularly interested in developing a research methodology for the study and description of early printed maps.

The Vermilion Forks Mining and Development Company undertook mining activities and developed access to electricity in the area of Princeton British Columbia in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. It was established under the ownership of the London and Vancouver Finance and Development Company, in which Alfred St. George Hamersley was a major investor. Until his return to England, Hamersley oversaw the activities of the company. It was managed by Ernest Waterman with the involvement of W.J. Waterman.
In the 1910s, its name was changed to the Princeton Coal and Land Company, Limited, Electrical Syndicate. The Vermilion Forks Mining and Development Company was dissolved in 1917. In 1922 Ernest Waterman and E. Barr Hall established the Princeton Light and Power Company. 1928 the Princeton Coal and Land Company was dissolved.

R.H. Vaughan was employed by the B.C. Department of Public Works throughout British Columbia including Smithers, Duncan, and the Fraser Valley.

The Vancouver, New Westminster and District Union Label Trades Council was organized in 1939. The objectives of the Council were to promote a greater demand for products bearing the union label and for labour performed by union workers. Activities were promoted on a national scale with the creation of the Union Label Trade Department of the Canadian Labour Congress, in 1956. The Council was superceded by the British Columbia Union Label Trades Council in 1980.

The Young Men's Christian Association (YMCA) was founded in England in 1844. The YMCA began operations in Vancouver in 1886. It has been active in promoting adult education, physical education, camping, youth services and international development.

The Vancouver Women's Musical Society began as the Vancouver Women's Musical Club in 1905. In 1906, Esther Beecher Weld and Walter Coulthard the mother of BC Composer Jean Coulthard, guided the incorporation of the Club.

The Vancouver Women in Focus Society, commonly known as Women in Focus, was established as a non-profit society in 1974 and originally started as part of the Women's Office at the University of British Columbia. It began when two members of the Women's Office Collective, Jeanette A. Auger and Marion Barling, taught a workshop in video skills and produced a special series of half hour programmes entitled Women in Focus. The original function of the group was to “support the production of feminist video and film, and to encourage women artists in the making of images which reflected their lives and experiences.” The group then further expanded out into distribution and in 1975 became the first national feminist film and video distribution centre in Canada. Women in Focus continued to grow and develop as a society by conducting video production workshops, lectures, concerts, film screenings, poetry readings, dances, and presentations on the theory and practice of feminist art. As part of its public programming mandate, Women in Focus rented out videotape production equipment and published a quarterly member newsletter called “Focus.” In 1978, the group began their gallery program as an offshoot to the Vancouver Women’s Film and Video Festival. The group continued to host sporadic monthly exhibitions of local women artists until 1986, when they established the Floating Curatorial Gallery as a year-round schedule of exhibitions.

Women in Focus additionally had “a mandate to emphasize women’s and artists’ issues among public policy makers on regional, national, and international levels.” As such, Women in Focus participated in and/or was a member in organizations such as: The National Action Committee on the Status of Women, the Association of National Non-Profit Artist-Run Centres, the Independent Film and Video Alliance, the Canadian Museums Association, Amnesty International, the B.C. Museums Association, the British Columbia Federation of Women, Vancouver Artist’ League, Vancouver Cultural Alliance, the Canadian Conference of the Arts, the B.C. Film Industry Association and the Coalition for the Right to View. The society also organized several film festivals in Vancouver and the Fraser Valley, and attended festivals elsewhere, becoming part of an international network of feminist groups. Women in Focus was further involved in multiple projects and groups dealing with violence against women, pornography, child abuse, women’s labour laws, lesbian rights, racism, education, women in politics, and women in prison. They distributed a variety of educational materials on these subjects and maintained a significant print library of books, newsletters, pamphlets, magazines and newspapers.

During the period covered by these records the society moved from the Women’s Office to #6-45 Kingsway, Vancouver, then to #204-456 West Broadway, Vancouver, and then to their final location at 849 Beatty Street, Vancouver. The office on Kingsway was next door to the office of Vancouver Rape Relief, and there was close community between the two groups, as well as with other local women’s groups. By 1990, Women in Focus’ film library had almost 200 titles and they were distributing tapes all over the world. However, the group was experiencing financial difficulty by the spring of 1991. The Women in Focus Board of Directors decided to close the society and seized a sizable amount of money from a bank account shared with In Visible Colours, a women of colour film and video group, in order to pay the society’s creditors. The ensuing legal battles caused large financial and organizational strain, as all members of the board resigned and were replaced multiple times. After a year of inactivity, the Society attempted to return to its normal operations. However, in March of 1992, Women in Focus received notice from Canada Council informing them that their Distribution operating grant had been terminated. Women in Focus ceased its distribution operations, left the Beatty Street location, and placed the society’s assets into storage. The Society stayed in operation for another year, organizing gallery shows in other organizations until March 1993 when Women in Focus ceased operations entirely. In April of that year, the group official disbanded.

Because of the collective nature of the group, it was not run on a hierarchical basis. The group was run by a volunteer Board of Directors and one or two permanent staff. Smaller standing committees were also established to handle the various functions of the society, such as the Gallery Committee and the Finance Committee. Funding was generated through a distribution, a wide variety of grants, events, and fundraising ventures. Because the group was predominantly run by volunteers, the membership frequently changed. However, there are some names which recur frequently, both as representatives of Women in Focus and in relation to independent projects mentioned in the Women in Focus records. These include Marion Barling, founder of the group; Lyn MacDonald, Susan Moore, Michelle Nickel, Jill Pollack, Nicola Sumner, Colleen Tillman, Kern Windwraith, Sue Jenkins, Sara Diamond, Jill Baird, Jackie Levitin, Robin Lawrence and Zainub Verjee.

The Vancouver Vietnam Day Committee was formed in 1966 through a coalition of several organizations that opposed the Vietnam War. A coordinating committee was established in 1968 to establish additional committees and organize demonstrations. A schism in the movement in 1969 led to the formation of the Vancouver Committee to End the War in Vietnam, which turned its assets over to the Vancouver Vietnam Action Committee later that year. At the conclusion of the war, the Committee ceased operations.

The Vancouver Union Label Trades Council was organized in 1939. The objectives of the Council were to promote a greater demand for products bearing the union label and of labour performed by union workers. Activities were promoted on a national scale with the creation of the Union Label Trade Department, CLC, in 1956. The Council was superseded by the British Columbia Union Label Trades Council in 1980.