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archival descriptions
Brochures – miscellaneous
CA UVICARCH AR009-Post-Totem-Miscellaneous brochures · File · 196-
Part of Stuart Baker fonds

Comprises miscellaneous brochures for various theatrical productions and companies, possibly printed during the 1960s.

Lake Cowichan Group
CA SVE SD-01-02-01-01 · File · [198-] or [199-]
Part of Sara Diamond fonds

File consists of 3 video interviews with Mrs. Atwal, Mrs. Maan, Mrs. Johal, and Mrs. Gill (first names excluded for privacy reasons). Subjects include: Immigrant experience; lives of Indo-Canadian women in 1940’s Lake Cowichan ; women’s contributions to the union; arranged marriages; forest industry safety; budgeting working class wages; benefits of trade unionism.

Mrs. Atwal, Mrs. Maan and Mrs. Johal were all born in India and immigrated to Canada and settled in the Lake Cowichan and Duncan areas on Vancouver Island where they raised their families. Mrs. Gill was born and raised in Victoria and moved to Lake Cowichan following her marriage. Their husbands all worked in the logging industry.

Seed, Irene
CA SVE SD-01-02-01-16 · File · [198-] or [199-]
Part of Sara Diamond fonds

File consists of video interviews with Irene Seed. Subjects include: Youbou, BC; 1930s; nursing; life with a child in rural Vancouver Island; racial segregation in the forestry industry; Women’s Auxiliary; mill safety; Youbou loggers; widow’s pension.

Irene Isabel Seed, nee Powell, (1909-2004) was born in Vancouver, BC, the eldest of five sisters. Her father worked as a foundry moulder. She graduated a nurse from Vancouver General Hospital in 1931. She met her husband Frank (1907-1963), a salesman, at a United Church Young People’s Church meeting. They married in 1934. By 1939, they had moved to a Vancouver Island mill town, Youbou, on Lake Cowichan, where they raised five children. Frank worked as a millwright for Industrial Timber Mills and Irene was active in the Women’s Auxiliary.

Storm, Marjorie
CA SVE SD-01-02-01-18 · File · [198-] or [199-]
Part of Sara Diamond fonds

File consists of video interviews with Marjorie Storm. Subjects include: Fraser Mills; sexual harassment; National Selective Service; Pacific Veneer, Canadian Forest Products; equa pay and access; New Democratic Party; domestic challenges; IWA Women’s Auxiliary; 1970’s women’s movement.

Marjorie Cynthia Storm nee Smart (1921-2007) was born in Glamorgan, Wales. She joined her father in Canada in 1931, living for a short time in Calgary, then moving to Vancouver by 1932. She married salesman William Storm. In 1942, when her daughter was nine-months-old and after her husband had enlisted, she joined the workforce. She subsequently worked 37 years in the forestry industry taking on many roles including shop steward, secretary of the grievance committee, plant chairperson, safety committee member, recording secretary on the women’s committee of the BC Federation of Labour, and member of the human rights branch. In the 1970’s became politically active and rose to Vice-President of the BC NDP in 1973.

Fordham, Elizabeth
CA SVE SD-01-02-01-05 · File · [198-] or [199-]
Part of Sara Diamond fonds

File consists of 3 video interviews with Elizabeth Fordham. Subjects include: Immigration experience; clothes pressing; Great Depression; women’s labour movement; 1930’s pacifism; On To Ottawa Trek; 1934 West Coast waterfront strike; reproduction rights; summer camp for worker’s children.

Elizabeth Jane Fordham, nee Bray, was born in London, England in 1901. In 1924, Elizabeth accompanied her ex-boyfriend’s aunt to Regina, Saskatchewan, to put some distance between them. She worked at several odd jobs and as a domestic before moving to Vancouver by 1929. She worked as a presser for a time at Swan Brothers. In 1930, she married Richard Henry Alfred Fordham (1896-1977), a sawmill worker and fellow English immigrant. Richard was unemployed for a large part of the Depression and, facing eviction, they joined other unemployed in picketing landlords evicting the poor. By the 1940’s, Elizabeth was with the Women’s Auxiliary of the Worker’s Unity League. The League was responsible for establishing the Children’s Jubilee Summer Camp in Indian Arm for workers’ children in 1936. Elizabeth is recorded as a first director in the society’s 1944 incorporation papers. By the 1950’s, the couple had settled in the suburbs of South Vancouver. Elizabeth’s passion for the pacifist movement, summer camps, and civic concerns, can be traced through her letters to the editor over the following decades.

Godfrey, Lil
CA SVE SD-01-02-01-06 · File · [198-] or [199-]
Part of Sara Diamond fonds

File consists of 3 video interviews with Lil Godfrey. Subjects include: Logging at Lake Cowichan; domestic challenges; IWA Women’s Auxiliary; 1946 strike; Gordon’s general store; Indo-Canadian community in the Cowichan area; trade unionists labelled communists.

Harriet Lillian Godfrey, nee Greenwell, (1915-1999) was born in Extension, Vancouver Island. Her father was a third generation miner. The family had mined in Wellington, BC, Sydney Mines, Nova Scotia, Durham and Northumberland, England. Lillian trained as a teacher, however, there were no jobs available during the depression so she took on housework jobs. She married logger Ralph Clement Godfrey (1904-1994) in South Wellington in 1937 and the settled in Lake Cowichan. Lil joined the IWA Women’s Auxiliary in 1940.

Bullock, Ruth
CA SVE SD-01-02-01-03 · File · [198-] or [199-]
Part of Sara Diamond fonds

File consists of 4 video interviews with Ruth Bullock. Subjects include: Early life on Salt Spring Island; domestic work; the Great Depression; injustices faced by women and girls; reproductive rights; the CCF; canning industry; assembly line work; union factionalization; women’s auxiliaries.

Ruth Bullock (nee Fraser) was born 1909 in Trout Lake, West Kootenay District, B.C. Ruth was a feminist dedicated to reproductive rights education and advocated for legal abortion. In 1934, she joined the Cooperative Commonwealth Federation (CCF) a social democratic party. She met her husband, Reginald Walter Bullock (trade unionist, CCF member, boilermaker) in 1938. The Bullocks left the CCF and Communist Party during WWII in protest of the organizations’ support for the war effort, subsequently joining the Canadian Trotskyist movement in Vancouver until the branch disbanded in 1985. When Socialist Challenge/Gauche socialiste was recognized by the Fourth International Ruth declared her support and remained an active supporter. In her later years, she managed Vanguard Bookstore, a distributor of radical literature. Ruth died 1994 in North Vancouver.

Griffin, Betty
CA SVE SD-01-02-01-07 · File · [198-] or [199-]
Part of Sara Diamond fonds

File consists of video interviews with Betty Griffin. Subjects include: Boeing factory work in WWII; Mayday Parade; Powell Street grounds demonstration; equal pay; Worker’s Educational Association; Miss Production contest; the war effort and Fascism.

Margaret “Betty” was born in 1922. After her first year of university she supported the war effort by working in the aviation manufacturing industry with Boeing at their main factory on Sea Island. She became a union supporter and organizer. Her husband, Harold “Hal” Griffin, was associate editor of the Pacific Tribune in the early ’50s. In 1959, Betty became an elementary teacher in Burnaby. She quit when she became pregnant in 1963 and no maternity leave was available. On her return to teaching four years later she joined the BCTF negotiating team, helping to establish maternity leave and indexed pensions. She was given an honourary lifetime membership for her 14 years of service. She was Past-President of the Burnaby Teachers’ Association. At the age of 92 she declared her hobby was “Fighting injustice.” She died on May Day, May, 1, 2017.

Shiels, Jean
CA SVE SD-01-02-01-17 · File · [198-] or [199-]
Part of Sara Diamond fonds

File consists of video interviews with Jean Shiels. Subjects include: Relief in the 1930’s; Women’s Unity League; the single unemployed; On to Ottawa trek; Mother’s Council; peace movement; League Against the War on Fascism; support for Spain in the 1930’s; Young Pioneers.

Jean Stewart Evans (1927-1995) was born in Vancouver, BC, second child of Ethel, and well-known labour rights organizer, Arthur “Slim” Evans. She recalls a childhood home always open to organizers and labourers in need, and impacted by her father’s arrests and short-term imprisonments. After high school, Jean took a variety of jobs including as an attendant on Canadian Pacific Railroad steamships, server, sales clerk, and bakeries manager for a grocery chain. In 1944, her father died three weeks after being struck by a car while crossing the street. Jean married Seaman Leslie Arthur Sheils of Hornby Island in 1947 and they had two children. Les became a Master of deep-sea towing vessels and worked internationally, and in later years, worked for BC Ferries. Jean devoted her adult life to fighting for fair work and wages; was a founding member of the On-to-Ottawa Trek Committee (1985); and co-wrote an account of her father’s life (1977). She volunteered in the Hornby Island community; serving on the Co-op and ratepayer boards, and with the Hornby Recycling Depot. Jean passed away in Comox in 1995.

Scott, Jean
CA SVE SD-01-02-01-15 · File · [198-] or [199-]
Part of Sara Diamond fonds

File consists of video interviews with Jean Scott. Subjects include: Prairie life; domestic work; country hospital work; WWII; domestic abuse; Canadian Air Force; CCF; Political Action Committee; Canadian Congress of Labour; International Woodworkers Association; the International.

Born Dorothy Jean Mathie (1912-2015) in Brandon, Manitoba. Her father was a retail grocer. Jean spent several years nursing her mother and helping with her siblings. At 20 she moved to Saskatchewan, married, and lived on her in-law’s farm. She left her husband early on because he was physically abusive; an experience that influenced her future activism. She worked as a domestic and nurse to survive the separation, eventually joining her married brother in Calgary around 1940. Determined to be self-sufficient, she continued housekeeping while attending business school. Jean took an office job at No 2 Wireless & Gunner School during the war. By the mid-40’s Jean and other family members relocated to Vancouver. She used her secretarial skills at a number of trade unions including the I.W.A and United Steel Workers of America. Later she married widower Francis Baldwin Scott (1911-2000). Jean remained an activist and earned numerous honours from their Chilliwack community. She was 90-years old when she received a doctorate from the University of the Fraser Valley. She was awarded a Governor General Person Case Medal (1990) and wrote her biography “Brown Sugar and a Bone In The Throat” (2005). Jean lived to be 102.

Tagashira, Masue
CA SVE SD-01-02-01-20 · File · [198-] or [199-]
Part of Sara Diamond fonds

File consists of video interviews with Masue Tagashira. Subjects include: Village life in 1920s Japan; immigration experience; logging camp at Stave Lake; domestic work; language challenges for immigrant women; exploitation of women’s labour; Vancouver’s “Japantown”.

Masue (1908-1992) was one of nine children born to a farming family in the village of Mitsuse Kanazaki, Saga-Ken, Japan. Masue married her first husband, Shigeo, there in 1927, following him to Stave Falls, B.C., where he had been working as a logger and shingle maker. They had two children: Donald (Masayuki) born in the camp, and daughter, Aiko, born Vancouver. They had moved to the city in 1930 after Shigeo suffered serious work injury resulting in the loss of an eye . Unable to support his family and deeply depressed, Shigeo was admitted to Essondale Hospital where he committed suicide in 1931. Masue, without much English and only rudimentary skills, placed her children in a Victoria church-run orphanage. She struggled in subsistence jobs and married twice more: the first short-lived, and then finally, in 1938, to Rinkichi Tagashira (1887-1973) owner of Heatley Trading Co. Ltd. Masue’ children came to live with them near Rinkichi’s warehouse in “Japantown”, Vancouver’s east side immigrant neighbourhood. In 1942, the Tagashiras, like 20,000 other Japanese Canadians in B.C., had their assets seized and were interned in the province interior: Rinkichi to Tashme and Masue, Donald and Aiko to Slocan. They eventually returned to their old neighbourhood in 1949 where they operated a rooming house. Masue was an active member of the JCCA Redress Committee.

CA JHS A.2012.017, A.2013.018-001-1 · File · 22 November 1862
Part of John Keenlysides Congregation Emanu-El collection

File contains the first report by the Secretary, A. Hoffman, to the congregation. Manuscript of five pages, dated and docketed 22 November 1862, Victoria, Vancouver Island, folded, docketed on outside as “Secretary’s Report Nov. 22/62”. Reports on meetings, efforts to raise funds, etc.

CA JHS A.2012.017, A.2013.018-001-4 · File · 7 July 1864
Part of John Keenlysides Congregation Emanu-El collection

Summary Suit in Supreme Court of Civil Justice, Victoria, 7 July 1864, two pages part printed and part manuscript, recording claim for loss on non-fulfillment of contract for supplying lumber for the new synagogue. Summary Suit #1459, J.G. Jackson, Plaintiff vs. Hoffman, Sr.

CA JHS A.2012.017, A.2013.018-001-6 · File · 1864
Part of John Keenlysides Congregation Emanu-El collection

File contains the "Act to Incorporate the Israelite Congregation named 'The Emanuel of Victoria, Vancouver Island'". Passed the Legislative Assembly 2d June, 1864, R. W. Torrens, Clerk of the Legislative Assembly. Passed the Legislative Council 16th June, 1864, E. J. Nesbitt, Clerk of the Legislative Council. Received my Assent this 7th day of July, 1864, A. E. Kennedy, Governor. Victoria, Vancouver Island: printed by authority of the government by Harries and Company, 1864.

Folio, 29.3 cm, pp. [3] on single folded sheet of cream paper. Near fine. Original folio printings, never bound, of the draft and final act legally establishing the first Jewish Congregation in western Canada, the oldest surviving synagogue in Canada, housed in what is now the oldest surviving synagogue building on the West Coast of North America. The synagogue was founded in 1859 and the present synagogue building was built in 1863. Unrecorded original printed acts, the Harries imprint very rare indeed.