In honour of the 150th anniversary of the founding of British Columbia as a Crown Colony, the Royal British Columbia Museum (RBCM) in Victoria initiated the People’s History Project to capture the province’s history as seen through the eyes of British Columbians in this anniversary year.
You are invited to participate in this special project by contributing your memories and stories of British Columbia as text, audio, video and/or photography submissions to the RBCM’s project website. Submissions will be accepted from across the province until January 11, 2009. After the January deadline, the project will live on in the BC Archives in an electronic time capsule of BC history.
The People’s History Project ties in with the RBCM’s feature exhibit, Free Spirit: Stories of You, Me and BC, which runs to January 11, 2009. Many of the contributions to the People’s History Project will be integrated into Free Spirit throughout the exhibit’s run at the museum. If you aren’t able to visit Victoria before January to see Free Spirit in person, you can view the virtual exhibit.
Here are some stories the museum has already collected for the People’s History Project:
Close Encounters of the Hairy Kind
It had started snowing again, and after I had trekked along uphill for a ways, I noticed another set of tracks had joined the trail. Who on earth, I wondered, would be dumb enough to be out here in this wilderness in this weather (besides me, that is). Must be a bear, I thought; however, on closer inspection, I saw that the prints, deeply impressed into the new snowfall, seemed to be made by a two-legged critter… [read full story]
A Christmas Gift
Frantically the cook bundled herself and her baby in warm clothes, and, with remarkable intuition, grabbed a bag of flour from the counter where she had been making donuts. Off they hurried to the site of the disaster. Remarkably this courageous woman was able to work her way down to her injured husband. There she applied flour to his massive, hemorrhaging head wounds. This simple act helped the clotting process. Doctors would later say her first aid actions may well have saved his life… [read full story]
The Best of Intentions
She struggled making her way along the road pulling the sleigh but still no sign of George, no beams of light from the car bouncing off the winter black trees. She paused tucking the blanket carefully around Arline again. She had to keep going but by now the cold was seeping deep into her bones and slowing down her progress… [read full story]
