Blog & News

Heritage BC's 2025 Heritage Legacy Fund (HLF) intake closed on August 15, 2025 and received 92 complete applications totalling $1.8 million in funding requests. The applications showcased the incredible breadth of heritage work happening across the province. Applicants submitted 39 Heritage Conservation proposals, 9 Heritage Planning initiatives, 27 Heritage Awareness projects, and 17 Indigenous Partnership projects.

Following adjudication by volunteer panels of heritage professionals, 30 outstanding projects were recommended for support. Heritage BC is proud to award an all-time high of $494,475, supporting 11 Heritage Conservation projects, 4 Heritage Planning initiatives, 10 Heritage Awareness projects, and 5 Indigenous Partnership projects.

See the full list of recipients here.

Listen to a special Remembrance Day interview on CBC On The Coast with Gloria Macarenko.

Gloria interviews BCHF President Sarah Ling and BCHF Director/Larry Kwong's Biographer Chad Soon about the contributions of Chinese Canadians in the Second World War.

Listen here.

"Stewards of Our Stories" opens November 12 at the Amelia Douglas Institute! This original exhibition explores Métis-led cultural stewardship and celebrates historical Métis material arts. 

Stewards of Our Stories features items on loan from Heritage Services, City of Surrey, presented alongside objects from the Amelia Douglas Institute’s own collection. Visitors will have the opportunity to explore beautifully decorated bags and pouches, intricately beaded housewares, vibrantly embroidered moccasins, and other items that reflect the knowledge, skill, and resilience of the Métis people who made them.  

This exhibition celebrates the chance to share these items in a Métis-led space. Their presence at the Amelia Douglas Institute means they can be seen, valued, and understood in the context of Métis ways of knowing. Stewards of Our Stories traces the different journeys Métis objects have taken and highlights how Métis people are reconnecting with their heritage through community-led care of heritage objects.  

As the centre for Métis culture and language resources in BC, the Amelia Douglas Institute proudly features rotating exhibitions and a permanent display of Métis art in their Surrey showroom. 

Exhibition Dates: November 12, 2025 – May 1, 2026 
Admission: $5, free for Indigenous guests 
Book your visit today: ameliadouglasinstitute.ca

The Oliver & District Heritage Society will host a special Remembrance Tour at the Oliver Cemetery on November 8th at 11 am to honour and pay tribute to Oliver's veterans.

Pre-registration is required, please contact curator@oliverheritage.ca to sign up. This program is FREE to attend.

The China Creek South Skatepark is believed to be one of the oldest still-operating public skateparks in Canada, and more than 45 years later, it continues to hold historical significance. It attracted skateboarders from the local neighbourhood and beyond, and was the only public skatepark in Vancouver until 2001 when the Hastings Bowls Skatepark opened. It is a landmark not just for skateboarders, but for Vancouver’s recreational landscape. In recognition of its historical significance, the Vancouver Heritage Foundation, the Vancouver Skateboard Coalition, Parks Board, and the City of Vancouver recognized this site with the 92nd Places That Matter plaque on July 16, 2022. Its enduring legacy speaks to the foresight of the community members and youth who advocated for it, as well as to the resilience of skateboard culture itself—once dismissed as a passing fad, now recognized as an Olympic sport.

Watch the full video here.

In the late 19th and early 20th Century, the majority of Vancouver Harbour's waterfront was sold as private property. By the 1950s, people were realizing this was a mistake: public access to the shorelines and beaches was an asset worth investing in. Dr. Rod Day takes us through the 50 year journey to restore public ownership of the Ambleside waterfront that culminated in the final house being purchased in 2025.

Watch the full video here.

VANCOUVER, B.C. – The Japanese Canadian War Memorial Committee (JCWMC) invites the public to attend its annual Remembrance Day Ceremony on Tuesday, November 11, 2025, at the Japanese Canadian War Memorial in Stanley Park, Vancouver.

The ceremony, which will begin promptly at 10:30 AM, will be a poignant tribute to all who have served. This year holds particular significance, as the committee marks the 80th anniversary of the end of the Second World War and the 75th anniversary of the start of the Korean War.

More information, include a livestream link, can be found here.

The B.C. Workers’ News, which began publishing  in 1935, is now available online! It changed its title several times in ensuing years. Other titles were People’s Advocate, Advocate, The People, People, Pacific Advocate and The Pacific Tribune. 

This collection includes issues of the newspaper since its inception in 1935 until 1946. Under censorship provisions of the War Measures Act, the newspaper published by the Communist Party was forced to cease publication for over two years from 1940 to 1942. 

Access the collection here.

What would you pack if you were forcibly removed from your home today? This is what photographer Kayla Isomura asked more than 80 fourth and fifth generation Japanese Canadians and Americans for her travelling exhibition, The Suitcase Project, which will be on view at the Museum of Vancouver starting November 20, 2025.  

In 1942, approximately 23,000 Japanese Canadians and more than 100,000 Japanese Americans living on the west coast were uprooted from their homes and placed in internment camps or incarceration.  

“In the Canadian context, Japanese Canadians were not allowed to return home, and their possessions were sold by the government or looted,” says Isomura. “If you were going to lose everything—your home, your business, your memories and personal possessions—what would you take outside of things for survival? Or would you focus on your practical needs?”  

Subjects for The Suitcase Project were given 24 to 48 hours’ notice to assemble their things, similar to what many Japanese Canadians faced in 1942. Ranging from infants to 51-year-olds, they were photographed in the Lower Mainland, Vancouver Island and Western Washington. The photos show subjects with their luggage and what they decided to pack, in addition to video interviews and information about internment/incarceration. 

“I never knew what my grandparents or great-grandparents packed with them when they were interned, so I wondered what I could survive with sentimentally and how others would interpret this idea,” says Isomura, who identifies as fourth generation Japanese Canadian. “The original idea wasn’t just about what or how people would pack, but also what they are forced to leave behind.” 

Considering current debates on belonging, citizenship and representation, and while diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives are challenged and dismantled globally, the history of internment/incarceration resonates today. The Suitcase Projects forces viewers to think, “what if it were me?”

ACWW and Chinatown Wonders presented the launch of Larry Grant’s personal and historical story of identity, place, and belonging, as told by a Musqueam-Chinese Elder caught between cultures.

It’s taken most of Larry Grant’s long life for his extraordinary heritage to be appreciated. He was born in a hop field outside Vancouver in 1936, the son of a Musqueam cultural leader and an immigrant from a village in Guangdong, China. In 1940, when the Indian agent discovered that their mother had married a non-status man, Larry and his two siblings were stripped of their status, suddenly labelled “bastard children.” With one stroke of the pen, they were no longer recognized as Indigenous.

In Reconciling, Larry tells the story of his life, including his thoughts on reconciliation and the path forward for First Nations and Canada. When Larry talks about reconciliation, he uses the verb' reconciling,' an ongoing, unfinished process we’re all going through, whether Indigenous and settler, immigrant and Canadian-born. “I have been reconciling my whole life with my inner self,” he explains. “To not belong was forced upon me by the colonial society that surrounded me. But reconciling with myself is part of all that.”

This event took place on September 14, 2025, at the Chinese Cultural Centre Museum (555 Columbia Street, Vancouver). You can watch the full video here.