The University Hill Book Club was formed in 1939. The object of the Club was to form a circulating book group for women in the area. Members lived in the University Hill area, paid a membership fee and chose a list of newly published books which would appeal to all members.

In 1889 the Amalgamated Society of Carpenters called union representatives together in Vancouver to discuss the formation of a central council to organize and represent workers. Formally constituted in 1890, the Vancouver Trades and Labour Council was funded through fees levied against its affiliate union members. In 1919 the VTLC supported the formation of the One Big Union (OBU), a full-scale industrial union based on socialist policies. The backlash against radical labour organizations after the Winnipeg General Strike (1919) resulted in the revocation of the Council's charter by the Trades and Labour Congress. Following the decline of the OBU the Council was reconstituted in 1920. In 1956 the VTLC merged with the Vancouver Labour Congress to form the Vancouver, Lower Mainland Trades and Labour Council. In the same year, it was renamed the Vancouver and District Labour Council (VDLC), which is as it is known today.

The Vancouver Area Council of the New Democratic Party was established in 1968 by the six provincial constituencies in Vancouver to involve the NDP directly in municipal politics. The VAC ran civic candidates in 1970, 1972, 1974. In the mid-1970s the VAC was, at times, in conflict with the Provincial Executive of the NDP as to civic election policy. The Vancouver Area Council was dissolved in 1976.

Administrative history unavailable.

The Vancouver Joint Labour Committee to Combat Racial Discrimination was established in 1948. In 1959, with the merging of the local labour councils, the committee changed its name to the Vancouver Labour Committee for Human Rights with the continuing sponsorship of the Vancouver and District Labour Council.

The Finnish Organization of Canada traces its roots to 1906. Organized in 1923, Vancouver Local No. 55 of FOC became the most influential local on the west coast. During World War II the FOC, as with other leftist organizations, was banned by the federal government. The FOC and its locals were again permitted to resume operations at the end of 1943. Although the organization has experienced a decline over the years, Vancouver Local No. 55 has survived and continues to pursue the traditions and ideals of FOC.

Engineer W.G. Swan played a significant role in the design and construction of bridges, railways and harbour works for more than six decades in British Columbia. He was born in Kincardine, Ontario and graduated from the University of Toronto in 1906. He joined Canadian National Railways as an engineer and came to British Columbia. After serving overseas during World War I, Swan returned to B.C. and established his own consulting firm. His firm was retained to work on the Pattullo Bridge (1938) and the Lion's Gate Bridge (1939). In 1945 Swan entered into partnership with H.A. Rhodes and Hiram Wooster.

W. Neale Turner was an English mechanical engineer who became the managing director of the Fraser River Gold Dredging Company in 1903. The Company, which had formed in 1902, abandoned its operations in 1906.

The Westcoast Transmission Company was incorporated in 1949 to extract and distribute natural gas and provide other energy services. Established by Frank McMahon, it had its headquarters in Vancouver. In 1988 the name of the company was changed to Westcoast Energy. By 2000, the company had five gas processing plants and three sulphur recovery plants. In March, 2002, Westcoast Energy was acquired by the U.S. company Duke Energy.

The Western Front was founded in 1973 by eight artists who wanted to create a space for the exploration and creation of new art forms. It quickly became a centre for poets, dancers, musicians and visual artists interested in exploration and interdisciplinary practices. One of Canada's oldest Artist Run Centres, the organization is situated in a turn of the century wooden building that houses a gallery, concert hall, dance hall, and production studios for electronic and print media.

As a focal point of experimental art practice through the 1970s and 1980s, the Western Front, in connection with other centres like it, played a major role in the development of electronic and networked art forms in a national and international context. This included video art, sound-art, the use of telecommunications to establish a global arts network, and the development of interactive technologies to explore the connection between the art-viewer and the art-space. In the 1990s the organization produced a number of multidisciplinary festivals and city-wide collaborative exhibitions including the Electronic Arts Festival, Reinventing the Diva, and Jiangnan.

Over the years the organization has become the training ground and springboard for many young artists, especially those working outside the commercial art market. With a staff of ten people plus interns and volunteers, the centre now produces over 100 events a year. Its artist-in-residence program invites artists from many different countries to produce new works in media/electronic art. It maintains five programs (Exhibitions, Front Magazine, Media Arts, New Music, and Performance Art), and publishes monographs, catalogues, audio works and a magazine which serves both as a newsletter to members and as a vehicle for new writing, photography and interdisciplinary performance. The Western Front maintains an extensive archive (video and audio tapes) of work created and presented over the past thirty years, and is committed to preserving the artistic legacy of Canada's artistic community.

The Western Miner was first published in the late 1920s as the British Columbia Miner. The publication, which, in the words of its first editor, was intended to be a "high-class journal" devoted to the mining industry in Western Canada, was directed primarily at those whose mining interests lay west of Manitoba, particularly within British Columbia, although copies could be found in most Canadian mining camps. It reported on discoveries, the mine labour situation, progress of the industry, and other issues relating to the mining industry. In January 1931, it became The Miner and in 1944 was renamed the Western Miner.

The Wigwam Inn was built at Indian Arm in 1911 by Alvo von Alvensleben.

Wil Hudson was a noted printer for over thirty years. In Vancouver, in the 1960s he was known as Grouse Mountain Press, New Age Press, and "Wil Hudson, Printer". In the 1970s at Cape Dorset, NWT, he published with the West Baffin Eskimo Coopeerative a native language printing type. Later, he settled in Powell River as a commercial printer until 1991.

Administrative history unavailable.

Won Alexander Cumyow is the first Chinese person recorded as being born in Canada, on February 14, 1861 in Port Douglas, B .C., located at the north end of Harrison Lake. Cumyow's parents had immigrated there from Canton (Guangzhou) and his father operated a business outfitting miners on their way to the Cariboo.

In addition to Chinese and English, Cumyow learned to speak Chinook which would prove useful in his future career. The family later moved to New Westminster, where Cumyow was educated in law and appointed court interpreter in 1888. He gained prominence as a merchant, community leader, and official Court Interpreter for the Vancouver City Police (1904-1936), and was involved with several groups, including the Chinese Empire Reform Association.

He married in 1889 and had ten children, including four sons and six daughters. His son, Gordon, succeeded him as Court Interpreter. He was the only Chinese person to have voted both before and after the Chinese were disenfranchised from voting, as recorded in a 1949 photo of an elderly Cumyow casting an election ballot.

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.

Jean Stewart Sheils was born Jean Stewart Evans on 12 February 1927 in Vancouver, British Columbia. She was the second child of Ethel and Arthur Slim Evans. Her older brother Stewart was born on 13 April 1922 and died in 1925 during the diphtheria epidemic in Vancouver. Ethel Jane Evans (nee Hawkins) was from Drumheller, Alberta and Arthur Herbert Evans was a well-known labour rights organizer originally from Toronto, Ontario. He led the 1935 On-to-Ottawa Trek during which over 1,000 unemployed men rode the rails to Ottawa to appeal to the government for better working conditions at the government organized labour relief camps. This Trek ended in Regina on 1 July 1935 when Trekkers and supporters were confronted with violence by the local police and the RCMP. Jean attended numerous public schools in British Columbia. After high school, she worked in a variety of jobs including employment as a steward on Canadian Pacific Railroad steamships, waiter, sales clerk, and manager of numerous bakeries for a leading grocery chain. She was working on a CPR ship in Victoria when a car struck her father while he was crossing the street on 23 January 1944. Jean returned to Vancouver to be with him through his hospital stay, before he passed away on 13 February 1944 at Vancouver General Hospital from injuries sustained from the accident.

On 13 June 1947, Jean married Seaman Les Sheils of Hornby Island. He later became a Mate and then a Master of deep sea towing vessels and worked in the North Atlantic, North Pacific, the Arctic, and the Caribbean. Later he worked for BC Ferries. They had two children: Jane, who died two days after being born, and Arthur, who was born in 1949 and died in 1984 in a car accident.

Jean devoted her adult life to the cause her father had believed in: fair work and wages. She was a founding member of the On-to-Ottawa Trek Committee that was formed in 1985 to celebrate the 50th Anniversary of the Trek. This Committee was the predecessor to the On-to-Ottawa Historical Society, which produced a video in addition to organizing the 60th Anniversary of the Trek. As well as performing volunteer work for the labour rights cause, Jean and Ben Swankey co-wrote a book in 1977 entitled Work and Wages! , a semi-account of the life of Arthur “Slim“ Evans. Through her work she maintained close relationships with several of the original Trekkers, notably Bob “Doc” Savage and Bobbie Jackson. Jean was also involved in the Hornby Island community, serving on the Co-op Board of Directors and on several ratepayer boards, as well as being involved with the Hornby Recycling Depot.

Jean passed away on 27 December 1995 at Saint Joseph’s Hospital, Comox, British Columbia, at the age of 68 after a lengthy battle with cancer.

Charles Robert Darwin was an English naturalist and geologist, best known for his book On the Origin of the Species. He is the father of evolutionary theory and natural selection.

William Brenton Burnett was born on June 13, 1870 in Sussex Corners, New Brunswick. In 1891 he received a B.A. from Acadia University. He went on to teach in Alberta and British Columbia before attending McGill University where he graduated with an M.D. From 1900 to 1914 he operated a private practice in general medicine in Vancouver, British Columbia. Leaving his private practice, Dr. Burnett focused on gynaecology and obstetrics until 1938. During this time he was also awarded the Fellow of American College of Surgeons degree.

He participated in several medical associations including the Vancouver Medical Association and the Canadian Medical Association. Additionally, Dr. Burnett was extremely interested in mining communities as indicated by his membership and executive roles in groups such as the Cariboo Gold Quartz Mining Co., B.C. and Yukon Chamber of Mines, and the Mining Association of B.C.

He died quietly on May 20, 1964.

Joseph Thomas Clover was born at Aylsham, Norfolk on 28 February, 1825. At the age of 16, he was apprenticed to Charles Mends Gibson, a surgeon and apothecary of the city of Norwich. As a pupil of Gibson, Clover was allowed to attend the Norfolk and Norwich Hospital, a mid-eighteenth century foundation with a first-class reputation. Before he became articled, Clover had already attended operations by Dr. Lubbock and Mr. Crosse of Norwich. From 1841-1845, he attended the Norwich Hospital, then from 30 September 1844 to 17 May 1845 he was at University College Hospital, London, attending upon Robert Liston, Richard Quain and other notable surgeons.

He became Resident Medical Officer at University College Hospital in 1848, and was admitted as a Fellow of the Royal College of Surgeons in 1850. Initially, Clover was drawn to the field of urology. He practiced as a surgeon, inventing two instruments for the crushing and removal of bladder stones. Ill health caused him to give up in 1853 and he turned to general practice. He set up his practice at 3 Cavendish Place, London, which became his home until his death in 1882. After several years in general practice he devoted his practice to anesthetics, and became "chloroformist" to the University College Hospital, the Westminster Hospital and the London Dental Hospital. Clover's choice of speciality helped to fill the vacancy created by the death of John Snow in 1858.

Considered an expert in anesthesia, Clover was sought out when important figures required surgery, administering chloroform to Napoleon III of France, on several occasions, Alexandra of Denmark, her husband Edward VII, Sir Robert Peel, Florence Nightingale and Sir Erasmus Wilson. Clover also invented and improved a myriad of anesthesia medical apparatus, including a chloroform apparatus and a portable regulating ether inhaler.

Clovert died of uraemia in 1882 and is buried in Brompton Cemetery, London, 200 yards away from John Snow.

John Scott Haldane was born on May 3rd, 1860 in Edinburgh, Scotland to Robert Haldane and his wife Mary Elizabeth. His uncle was Sir John Burdon Sanderson, Waynflete Professor of Physiology in Oxford and known for his stance on vivisection. Haldane graduated with a degree in medicine from Edinburgh University in 1884.

Haldane studied the a wide range of issues dealing with respiration, including suffocative gases in coal mines and wells, low barometric pressure and acclimatization of the human body to high altitudes, deep sea diving and effects of poison gas on the human body. Haldane’s research was influential in understanding of the effects of carbon monoxide on the human body and its role in deaths in colliery explosions and underground fires. It was at this time that he became associated with the mining profession, which continued until his death. His work saved countless lives and vastly improved safety in a myriad of environments.

In 1898, Haldane invented the haemoglobinometer, which was an apparatus used to quickly analyze the mixture of air and gas in blood. In 1917, he led a scientific expedition to Pike’s Peak in Colorado, where he studied the effects of low barometric pressure and respiration at high altitudes. Haldane developed stage decompression for the Admiralty, which has been a problem for their deep-sea divers who ran the risk of decompression sickness before this point. He also designed dive tables, which were used until 1956. During WWI, he identified the type of gas used by the Germans and designed a portable oxygen administration apparatus that was use in the field in oxygen tents. He designed the first gas masks for use in chemical warfare. Haldane was well known for often experimenting on himself, sometimes inhaling toxic gases and observing the effects of decompression on himself.

Haldane died in Oxford at midnight on March 14th 1936.

Francis Leslie Clay Reed was born in 1927 and raised in a farming community near Three Hills, Alberta. He was exposed to the forest industry early on, as a woods worker in the foothills near Sundre, Alberta. He obtained a B.A. in Economics at Lewis and Clark College in Portland, Oregon in 1954 and a M.A. in Economics at the University of Oregon, Eugene in 1959.

Mr. Reed served as a research economist with Stanford Research Institute in Portland, Oregon. Subsequent positions led him to Forest Industrial Relations Ltd., Council of the Forest Industries of B.C., and Hedlin Menzies and Associates Ltd., all of Vancouver. During this time, he was a member of the delegation that presented Canada's case before the US Tariff Commission's 1962 hearings on softwood lumber.

Reed then began a period in consulting economics and spent two years with the federal Prices and Incomes Commission, as Director of Price Reviews. In 1972 he founded an economic consulting firm called FLC Reed and Associates Ltd., specializing in resource development and regional analysis, which operated eventually in some 40 countries.

In 1980 he moved to Ottawa as the senior official in charge of the Canadian Forest Service. As Assistant Deputy Minister, he oversaw the reorganization of the agency and developed a series of new policy initiatives. In 1981 Reed chaired the Victoria meeting of the North American Forestry Commission and in 1982 led a technical forestry mission to the People's Republic of China.

In 1984 he moved to the Forestry Faculty at the University of British Columbia, as the first appointment in a new program of NSERC (Natural Sciences and Engineering Resources Council) funded research chairs across Canada. In this role he engaged in forest policy research and teaching, while participating in federal and provincial forestry affairs in Canada.

Upon his retirement in 1992 he was named Professor Emeritus of the Forestry Faculty of UBC. Reed then resumed his earlier career in international forestry consulting.

Special appointments in Canada include: The British Columbia Premier's Wilderness Advisory Committee, the Prime Minister's National Advisory Board on Science and Technology (NABST), the Canadian Forest Advisory Council, the National Advisory Board on Model Forests, and the boards of three forest sector research agencies: Forintek, FERIC, and the Pulp and Paper Research Institute of Canada. He also served on the Boards of the Canadian Bible College/Canadian Theological Seminary and Regent College.

International appointments include: nomination to the Royal Swedish Academy of Agriculture and Forestry, the Board of Governors of the Commonwealth Forestry Association, and the Science Advisory Board of the Temperate Forest Foundation.

Reed has published a number of works, including a history of the softwood lumber dispute between Canada and the US titled Two centuries of softwood lumber war between Canada and the United States - A chronicle of trade barriers viewed in the context of saw timber depletion.

Source: "FLC Les Reed biographical notes," document found in the "FLC/CFS history" file (File 2-6) of the Leslie Reed fonds.