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Travelling and tourism are prominent topics in the Chung Collection. The collection contains more than 10,000 archival items, including documents, photographs, books, and other artifacts. Many of these materials relate to travel through the Canadian Pacific Railway Company and offer fascinating glimpses into British Columbia’s history. They reveal traces of the province’s early commercial and industrial development, as well as stories of immigration and settlement in Canada. They also highlight the growth of leisure travel, especially the experience of exploring Canada by train or journeying across the world by cruise ship.
Browsing through these vintage pamphlets is like stepping back in time. They not only show the pricing and travel packages offered during that period, but also capture the excitement and romance of crossing a continent by rail or sailing to distant destinations. At the same time, the imagery and descriptions in these pamphlets reveal how people once imagined and represented different parts of the world, offering insight into the historical perspectives and cultural biases of the time.
This blog post highlights a selection of international travel promotional materials from the Chung Collection. Enjoy!
Please note that the Chung Collection may contain outdated or harmful language, stereotypes, descriptions, or imagery that reflect the perspectives of their time. Please read with historical awareness.
A Peiping sojourn
This promotional pamphlet from around the 1920s introduces Peiping, a former romanized name for Beijing, China. Its pages bring the city to life with descriptions of everyday street scenes and local traditions, from weddings and funerals to lively festivals, fairs, and markets. The pamphlet also highlights theatre performances, food, and a variety of places that visitors might explore. Together, this pamphlet offer a fascinating glimpse of how the city was presented to travelers nearly a century ago.
Here’s how it describes Peiping as a destination full of remarkable places to visit:
“If one stays in Japan, each city has its charm, its own special object of interest, but to really see Japan means traveling from one end of the island to the other, to the north – and then there is still the return. In Peiping and near Peiping are situated all the places of interest – the Great Wall, the Ming Tombs – so many intriguing spots that all description are dull as compared with the actuality.”
S/S Empress of France Mediterranean cruise de luxe : Istanbul March 1931, few notes on points visited during the excursion
This 1931 pamphlet describes a shore excursion to Istanbul during a Mediterranean cruise on the Empress of France. It offers a brief introduction to the city’s history and highlights several remarkable sites that tourists could visit while in Istanbul. You might even find inspiration for your next cultural trip to explore the prehistorical marvels of the cradle of human civilisation!
This 1964 pamphlet advertises Canadian Pacific Airlines tours in Italy. It includes detailed information on the daily schedule and tour costs. At the time, a 15-day tour of Italy from Rome to Sicily cost about 400 Canadian dollars for a single room, with hotels and meals included.
This 1930 pamphlet advertises 48 attractive escorted tours to Europe and back. It features a variety of itineraries to Hungary, with routes passing through many European countries. Every detail of these excursions was planned, from transportation to sightseeing. Take a look through the pamphlet and explore what these tour packages had to offer. Browse the price lists, discover the destinations, and imagine the experience of traveling across Europe almost a century ago!
To Australia and New Zealand by the Canadian Pacific route
This 1932 booklet advertises travel to Australia and New Zealand, and train and ship travel with the Canadian Pacific. Take a look through its pages and imagine embarking on a vintage journey across the Pacific. Travelers could board the quadruple-screw motor-ship “Aorangi” or the triple-screw steamship “Niagara” in Vancouver or Victoria and set sail toward the South Pacific. Along the way, the voyage included stops in the tropical destinations of Honolulu and the Fiji Islands. From there, passengers could continue on to New Zealand or Australia to explore beautiful cities and dramatic natural landscapes.
Explore the Chung Collection, one of the largest research collections on the Canadian Pacific Railway Company, featuring documents, maps, publications, photographs, and artifacts that illustrate CPR’s construction, steamship services, travel, and more.
Read more blog posts about Canadian Pacific Railway travel:
Applications are now open to join the 2026 UBC Library Writer-in-Residence program. This program provides a unique opportunity for a distinguished writer to engage with UBC students, faculty and community through enriching activities and events.
The Writer-in-Residence program at the Irving K. Barber Learning Centre (IKBLC) is an initiative designed to support and promote literary excellence within UBC’s academic community. Through this program, the library aims to foster a vibrant literary culture, encourage creative expression, and offer valuable insights into the writing process. The Writer-in-Residence also participates at Word Vancouver festival as a featured speaker.
The successful applicant will be an established author who has demonstrated a sustained record of excellence through publication with a recognized and reputable publishing house. While there are no restrictions regarding literary genre or form, applicants must possess a distinguished literary reputation, evidenced by critical recognition, awards, or other notable achievements within the literary community.
While residing within the Metro Vancouver area is not required, the Writer-in-Residence position requires an occasional in-person presence on UBC Vancouver campus throughout the residency period, which runs from September 19, 2026, to October 30, 2026.
Apply online by May 30, 2026. For more information on program eligibility and benefits, please visit the program website.
We have lost access to Cambridge University Press. Users will see a ‘503 Service Temporarily Unavailable’ error.
Users will see a red box pop-up saying ‘The organization you have selected has not submitted information to Cambridge University Press for their Shibboleth/Athens account. Therefore you cannot access Cambridge Core with this login.’
March 20th was Nowruz, which marks the Persian New Year and the arrival of spring in the Northern hemisphere. Nowruz, meaning “new day” in Persian, has been celebrated for over 3,000 years across regions influenced by Persian culture. The Haft-Seen table is adorned with seven symbolic items, each beginning with the letter ‘S’ in Persian: […]
To support cIRcle’s mission of open access and long-term preservation, cIRcle’s File Format Guidelines offer recommendations and suggestions on how to create accessible, stable, and usable digital files. Through this resource, we aim to help UBC community members who wish to deposit their works to cIRcle create a strong version of their materials, for use by a wide audience. Digital files created with accessibility and long-term preservation in mind contributes to increasing digital accessibility more broadly, in addition to increasing the availability and use of materials at UBC.
The creation and maintenance of accessible digital resources is a vital part of the transition to a more broadly accessible society, and it’s important to ensure that the digital resources we create are available to all users—and that said resources remain that way over the long-term.
There are important, concrete steps that can be taken to make content both more accessible and more stable into the future. While there is no universal format that can be accessible to all, there are numerous worthwhile steps that can be taken to increase the accessibility of digital materials. Read on to find out more about file formats, why they are important for cIRcle, and how you might strengthen your digital outputs.
What are File Formats, and How Do They Affect Usability?
Essentially, file formats are containers for digital content. Using a container that fails to provide equitable access, or that isn’t well suited to preservation, puts that content behind a barrier and threatens the ability to use that content in the future. Attributes that might not seem like issues at first glance can have significant downstream effects—meaning that it’s incredibly important to pay attention to file format choices.
For example, putting content in a recognized-text PDF file means that most screen readers can read it, unlike PDFs that are image-only (i.e. a PDF that has no searchable or selectable text). These types of limitations can create significant barriers for persons who are blind or visually impaired, persons who have learning disabilities, or persons with physical disabilities. Similarly, a lack of transcript for video or audio files can create barriers to access for persons who have difficulty hearing, seeing, or understanding the media contained within.
File formats can also have a significant impact on digital preservation efforts, with certain formats being less stable than others. To support our digital preservation activities, cIRcle may change the file format of submitted material during the deposit process (for example, a DOCX file may be converted to a PDF) to ensure the materials remain useable into the future. Additionally, cIRcle recommends against using proprietary file formats wherever possible, as they can pose additional challenges for long term preservation and general access by users.
Content Preparation
Small changes can make a large difference in the accessibility of materials. The cIRcle File Format Guidelines provide users with some concrete and practical steps to help them understand how to prepare their files for submission. The following examples highlight some thoughtfully created materials in cIRcle that act to make open access content more accessible to all:
When creating Academic Choices and Existential Perils : a tabletop role-playing game, the creators made sure that the PDFs had recognizable text and were in a screen readable fonts, tagged for assistive software and hardware, and had alt-text for the images within. A plain-text version in DOCX format was also provided as an additional access option for users of screen readers, or for anyone who would benefit from having a copy without the visual elements.
Additionally, the creators of the Thinking Climate Change podcast added an individual transcript for each podcast episode in a screen-readable font, with the transcript for each episode clearly noting the speaker’s name each time the speaker changes.
Accessible video deposits can include a number of elements, and the Using cIRcle to Share Community Engaged Research is one example. The creators provided a captioned MP4 file for the video itself; a tagged, readable PDF of the slides used; a copy of said slides in PPT format; and a tagged, readable PDF transcript that clearly notes the speaker’s name each time the speaker changes. The creators also ensured that all materials used a screen readable font.
Deposit Your Research
Have you reviewed our File Format Guidelines and want to submit your materials to cIRcle, or do you have further questions about how to prepare your files for cIRcle? If so, please consult our Submissions page for more information!
Dana-Lyn Mackenzie, a member of the Hwlitsum First Nation and lawyer, is an elected councillor of her Coast Salish nation. She co-created UBC’s Weaving Relations course, IDEAL program, and Cascades of Change program, among others, and has led the UBC Orange Shirt Day Intergenerational March since 2021. Dana-Lyn has worked in Indigenous programming and student affairs since 2012 and has spent the majority of her post-secondary career in four faculties at UBC, the Allard School of Law, Applied Sciences, Land and Food Systems and Forestry. Read Dana-Lyn’s full bio.
Q: Why did you want to participate in the EDI Scholar-in-Residence program?
It was brought to my attention during the application period—I hadn’t fully realized it existed. When I looked into it, I thought this was an incredible opportunity to engage with the public and the broader UBC community, and to explore some of the things I’ve been part of for years, as well as things I’m newly looking at through this faculty lens.
I really welcomed the opportunity to give that lecture in January—it was one of the highlights of my career.
Q: What has been the highlight of the last year for you professionally?
Definitely becoming a faculty member—it’s been incredible. I feel like I’m in my dream role right now with UBC. I love sharing knowledge, and really getting into the heart of teaching. The energy I feel from the students has been exhilarating, and I feel like we’re on this collaborative learning journey together.
Being an EDI Scholar-in-Residence at IKB [the Irving K. Barber Learning Centre] is also a dream come true—I can’t believe I’ve gotten this opportunity.
I’m also one of the Leading Scholars at Green College for new faculty, which has been really eye-opening and fun. It’s exciting to connect with people who are just spreading their wings in terms of their scholarship and research—it’s given me lots of good ideas.
“I really welcomed the opportunity to give that lecture in January—it was one of the highlights of my career.”
Q: What have been your biggest professional challenges?
For the past 14 years, I’ve done a lot of this work as a staff member—over 10 years at UBC and the remainder at another post-secondary institution. That’s been really interesting and has afforded me a lot of flexibility, but some of the restrictions on being a staff member have been challenging to overcome. The expectation of a nine-to-five schedule and having less time to research and think does make some of this work challenging.
For the last year, I’ve been a faculty member in Forestry within the Bachelor of Indigenous Land Stewardship program, and I’ve seen the difference in expectations on my time. It’s been exhilarating to immerse myself in scholarship. New doors have opened up and it’s been exciting to see all the possibilities.
Q: What are you hoping to achieve in your public engagement sessions during your term as an EDI Scholar?
I’m hoping we can have really collaborative learning—really big conversations where we learn and share from each other—and that it becomes a rich space for lots of voices and thought-provoking ideas.
I want it to be non-hierarchical, not me standing at a podium talking to the audience, but all of us being equal and having a space to explore some of the things that are sitting with us as we try to untangle these threads of decolonizing and figure out what they mean.
“I love sharing knowledge, and really getting into the heart of teaching.”
Q: Are there any resources at the library that you’re hoping to access during your time as an EDI Scholar-in-Residence?
There are some great resources coming out of Australia and New Zealand about how Indigenous communities are dealing with intersectional issues, such as gender, and the best ways to move forward in terms of building capacity and strong communities, and embedding community goals with community values.
I know a lot of these things from talking to people and from my own experience as a counsellor at my First Nation, but I’d love to have strong academic explorations that I can draw from—and contribute to if there are gaps.
The Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion (EDI) Scholars-in-Residence program is open to scholars who hold degrees in any discipline. Residency at UBC’s Irving K. Barber Learning Centre allows Scholars to participate in collaborative and interdisciplinary public programming with a clear impact on equity, diversity, and inclusion. For more information, visit the program website. This program is made possible with support from the Peña Fund.
Carol E. Mayer has won the Basil Stuart-Stubbs Prize for Outstanding Scholarly Book on British Columbia for her book Sea of Islands: Exploring Objects, Stories, and Memories from Oceania. The $3,500 prize, given by UBC Library and the Pacific BookWorld News Society, will be awarded at a reception to be held in April.
Published by Figure 1, the book is a study of the stories and journeys of cultural belongings within Canada’s largest Oceanic collection, housed at the Museum of Anthropology (MOA) at the University of British Columbia. Totalling some 3,500 objects, the collection is Canada’s largest and most diverse accumulation from the vast region of Oceania, which includes the large land bodies of Australia and Papua New Guinea.
Mayer is a celebrated curator who has spent decades tracing, researching, and documenting MOA’s Oceania holdings. The original collection was donated in 1927 by Frank Burnett, Vancouver-based writer and traveller who sailed the Pacific between 1896 to 1923. Written by Mayer in collaboration with MOA, Sea of Islands shares stories and insights from knowledge holders, scholars, and artists from across the Pacific, as well as members of diasporic Oceanic communities.
“I have been travelling the Pacific since 1997, following the footsteps of Frank Burnett, gathering stories, building community relationships, creating formal partnerships, collecting new works for the museum, organising internships and attending conferences,” says Mayer. “All these activities were triggered by my intention to reframe and decolonize the collections by reconnecting objects to their origins, their stories and their journeys.”
The collection has grown significantly, notes Mayer, thanks to the donations from immigrants who brought their memories and collections to Vancouver. “MOA was the obvious new home for the objects from the Pacific. The donors, the new donations, and their stories are now embedded in the fabric of the culture and history of MOA and Vancouver. I was very encouraged when the jurors for this award recognised the relevance of this collection to Vancouver and British Columbia.”
“This book is a wonderfully collaborative study that explores how this vast collection at MOA has evolved, and draws focus to the many stories contained within,” says Dr. Susan E. Parker, UBC’s University Librarian. “We are honoured to present Carol E. Mayer with this year’s Basil Stuart-Stubbs Prize.”
Carol E. Mayer is the Research Fellow—Pacific at the University of British Columbia’s Museum of Anthropology. Internationally known for her work as a museum curator, she has published widely on museum-related topics, curated more than forty exhibitions, and received fellowships from the Smithsonian Institution and the Sainsbury Research Unit and numerous awards.
The Basil Stuart-Stubbs Prize for Outstanding Book on British Columbia, sponsored by UBC Library and the Pacific BookWorld News Society, recognizes the best scholarly book published by a Canadian author on a B.C. subject. The book prize was established in memory of Basil Stuart-Stubbs, a bibliophile, scholar and librarian who passed away in 2012. Stuart-Stubbs’s many accomplishments included serving as the University Librarian at UBC Library and as the Director of UBC’s School of Library, Archival and Information Studies. Stuart-Stubbs had a leadership role in many national and regional library and publishing activities. During his exceptional career, he took particular interest in the production and distribution of Canadian books and was associated with several initiatives beneficial to authors and their readers, and to Canadian publishing.
