Events
You Got Trouble! Policing the Vancouver Waterfront in the Early Twentieth Century
Speaker: Madison Heslop, Assistant Professor of Canadian History, Western Washington University
The end of the “golden age” of shipping arrived at precisely the time when urban British Columbia and the Pacific Northwest began to thrive. Nevertheless, old negative attitudes about the urban waterfront and the people who lived there survived the transition into the twentieth century and continued to be fueled by local conditions in Vancouver, where the disruptions and displacements of colonialism, a mostly immigrant population, and volatile regional economy made the city a highly changeable place. By the start of the First World War, however, the Vancouver Police had begun turning the city’s dockside neighborhoods into closely monitored spaces that the city’s leaders and businessmen hoped might make Vancouver into Canada’s foremost Pacific port. This talk will dig into police records, maps, and newspapers of the era to sketch a picture of life in Vancouver’s urban waterfront at the start of the twentieth century, as well as the people and institutions who shaped it.
Madison Heslop is an Assistant Professor of Canadian history at Western Washington University. She received her PhD in History from the University of Washington, where she wrote her dissertation on the connected histories of the Seattle and Vancouver waterfronts.
Annual General Meeting
The Queer Frontier: The Untold Story of Canada’s Queer Wild West
Speaker: Glenn Tkach
Glenn has a background in theatre, specialising in storytelling, mime, and physical theatre. He’s chosen to make storytelling his full-time gig, along with his project the Pink Hat. He loves exploring the connections between the past and present. When asked what his most memorable experience on a tour was, Glenn replied, “I’ll never forget the time a young woman burst into tears and fell into my arms crying – so moved to hear a history she’d never heard before, and about the sacrifices made by those who came before.”
Glenn created the Really Gay History Tour in 2018. He has continued his research on the erased history of queer people in the nation’s development.
Summer 2024
The May lecture is the last one until September. Director Denise Jacques is working on a program of field trips for the summer months.
Details coming soon.