How language revitalization boosts Indigenous health

New research shows that reviving Indigenous languages may do more than preserve culture—it may also improve public health.

2025 Employee Recognition Award winners announced

From left to right: James Bachmann, Anton Nonin, Caitlin Lindsay, David Cumming, and Dr. Susan E. Parker.

UBC Library is pleased to announce that Caitlin Lindsay, David Cumming, Alexandra Kuskowski, James Bachmann, and Anton Nonin are the 2025 recipients of UBC Library Awards. Each year, the Library Awards Program shines a light on faculty and staff who have demonstrated exceptional creativity, innovation, leadership, excellence and a dedication to customer service through their work.

The awards were presented during the 2025 UBC Library Summer Recognition Awards Ceremony, held on Tuesday, June 10, 2025.

Congratulations to this year’s award recipients, and thank you to everyone who participated by submitting nominations.

Employee Excellence Award – Caitlin Lindsay

Caitlin Lindsay (Access Services Librarian, Borrower Services) is the winner of the 2025 Employee Excellence Award, which recognizes those whose track record for quality work is matched only by the kindness, compassion and respect that make their contributions so effective.

Caitlin exemplifies UBC Library’s core values of openness, belonging, connection and curiosity. She is known for being collaborative, working closely with the Head of Koerner Library and Koerner teams, as well as other branches and units across UBC campuses. She consistently works to make processes clear and effective, improving access to resources and even updating signage.

Innovation Awards – Alexandra Kuskowski and James Bachmann

Alexandra Kuskowski (Learning Services Librarian, Chapman Learning Commons) and James Bachmann (Instruction Librarian, Law Library) are the winners of the 2025 Innovation Award, which recognizes Library employees who have demonstrated new and innovative ways of performing existing processes or who introduced a new library service or program that benefits employees and library users.

Alexandra serves as the Chair of the UBC Library Basic Indigenous Reference Training, and has shown ongoing and crucial support for this program. Her work on this training supports both UBC Library’s Strategic Framework and the Indigenous Strategic Plan. She has also disseminated the core learning through conferences. Her work has demonstrated an innovative and proactive response to the critical goals set within the Indigenous Strategic Plan.

James helped to found and develop the new Canadian Access Legal Citation Guide, an open access, bilingual legal resource. This new citation guide is a free, inclusive alternative to the standard legal citation guide, which exists behind a paywall. He led approximately 15 law librarians from across the country to develop and finalize the guide, which is now available to anyone needing to cite legal materials.

Unsung Hero Award – David Cumming

David Cumming (Information and Reserve Assistant/Facilities Liaison, Woodward Library) is the winner of the 2025 Unsung Hero Award, which honours colleagues who keep UBC Library’s programs, services, and infrastructure running. When they do their jobs well, their work is seamless and often goes unnoticed.

David helps to ensure that his branch facilities are well maintained to support the needs of students, faculty, staff, researchers and community. From monitoring equipment and supplies to stack maintenance and even trouble shooting technology, his work is crucial to the library functioning smoothly.

Leadership from Within Award – Anton Nonin

Anton Nonin (Senior Rights and Permissions Assistant, Digital Initiatives) is the winner of the 2025 Leadership from Within Award, which recognizes library employees who demonstrate leadership through their ability to inspire engagement in others, and who goes above and beyond for the betterment of their workplace.

Anton’s leadership shines through his actions, by fostering collaboration and providing mentorship to his team in an inclusive environment. He is a calm presence, who brings a detail-oriented and solutions-focused attitude to his work to improve systems and support his colleagues.

Congratulations to this year’s Library Recognition Award winners!

Library Catalogue is Down

UBC Library Catalogue is currently not working https://webcat.library.ubc.ca

IT is working on it. Links to print books from Summon and other sources will not work while it is down.

Chung | Lind Gallery Summer Hours

Due to staffing changes, the Chung | Lind Gallery will have reduced hours for summer 2025.

The planned summer opening hours are:

  • June 11-14, 2025: Open from 10 am-5 pm
  •  June 17-28, 2025: Closed
  •  July and August, the Gallery will be open Wednesdays to Saturdays from 10 am-5 pm

As opening hours are subject to change, please check the hours portal for the most up-to-date information.

During our reduced hours, we will have limited availability for guided tours and class visits.

We invite you to enjoy our audio highlights tour, our audio guide, or our 360-degree virtual tour. You can also browse digitized materials from the Chung and Lind Collections, and enjoy stories from the Chung | Lind Gallery Blog.

If you have any questions, please feel free to contact us through the RBSC contact form or by sending an email to rare.books@ubc.ca. Thank you again for your understanding and interest in the Chung | Lind Gallery!

It’s the Cream of the Crop!

Many thanks to guest blogger Gabriella J. Cigarroa for contributing the below post! Gabriella is a graduate student at the UBC School of Information and recently completed a Co-op work term with Rare Books and Special Collections Library.


It’s the Cream of the Crop!: The B.C. Dairy Historical Society Collection

As a Co-op Project Archivist in Fall 2024, I processed the B.C. Dairy Historical Society collection. Since 1998, the B.C. Dairy Historical Society (BCDHS) has collected a breadth of records documenting the history of the provincial dairy industry. Used to write books including Jane Watt’s Milk Stories: A History of the Dairy Industry in British Columbia, 1827-2000 and High Water: Living with the Fraser Floods, this collection includes a wealth of journals, photographs, and records from provincial dairy organizations and producers. Materials originated from the Fraser Valley Milk Producers’ Association (now known as Agrifoods, and owners of Dairyland until 2001), Palm Dairies (a dairy local to Vancouver that was bought by Dairyland in 1989), and assorted dairy industry professionals and enthusiasts. 

Some photos of my favorite finds in the collection are shared below: 

RBSC-ARC-1875-AR-04: St. Charles Evaporated Cream [cow-shaped clock]

RBSC-ARC-1875-AR-07: [Movie camera and attachments]

A movie camera owned by Neil Gray, who was a driving force in the B.C. dairy industry as a previous General Manager for the Fraser Valley Milk Producers’ Association, Director of the National Dairy Council of Canada, President of the B.C. Dairy Council, and member of the B.C .Dairy Historical Society.

 

RBSC-ARC-1875-SPLP-07 – Approaching Prospects. One of two LPs from the 1940s, records of salescasts presented by the Milk Industry Foundation that were used to evaluate and teach dairy salesmen. Each is a one-of-a-kind reference recording, used to test the master recording before making copies to distribute.

 

 

As of 2023, dairy was the top agricultural commodity in B.C. This collection documents the work of dairy co-operatives, producers, and other industry professionals to develop that market.  

If you think about us the next time you visit the dairy aisle at your local grocery store, please contact RBSC about making a research visit. 

UBC Library receives the David Suzuki fonds

Photos of Dr. David Suzuki and Dr. Tara Cullis

Image credit: David Suzuki Foundation

UBC Archives has received the David Suzuki fonds, an archival collection that chronicles the professional work of internationally recognized scientist, environmentalist, and broadcaster Dr. David Suzuki.

The collection is a treasure trove that includes book manuscripts, handwritten notes for speeches delivered by Dr. Suzuki throughout his career, correspondence relating to his published articles, his broadcasting and literary career, and his work in the Department of Zoology at UBC, materials from the David Suzuki Foundation, audio cassettes, research materials, photographs, video recordings of his CBC television series The Nature of Things, and much more.

We sat down to talk about the archive with Dr. Suzuki and Dr. Tara Cullis, award-winning author, former faculty member of Harvard University, president of the board and co-founder of the David Suzuki Foundation, and partner of Dr. Suzuki. Regarding their ties to UBC, Dr. Suzuki is a UBC Professor Emeritus and Dr. Cullis is a UBC alumnus and recipient of the 2016 UBC Alumni Global Citizenship Award.

Our conversation explores how they decided to donate these materials to UBC, highlights from the archive, and how these materials can support future climate research.


Q: What motivated you to donate this archive to UBC?

Cullis: We are inundated with stuff, so we’re always trying to clear house somewhat and find a better home for some of the treasures that we have. But also, [these materials are] a record of a lot of interesting things that have happened over the years, and we don’t have a place for them. We don’t have the skills of an archivist… We chose UBC since that’s where David had been based for so long and had such a vibrant lab.

Image: Dr. David Suzuki in the Department of Zoology lab, 1978. UBC Open Collections.

Suzuki: I’d never thought about my legacy, and it was really Tara who saw the opportunity. I thought if I was going to leave it somewhere, UBC was the obvious place to leave it to, because I’d spent my whole life here. And maybe there’s a PhD student that might actually find it of interest.

Q: What would you say are some of the highlights of the archive for you? Are there any particular materials you’re excited for people to discover?

Cullis: I know one of them is David’s letter from Prince Charles—he was then Prince Charles—which David got about 40 years ago… I think [that letter] really opened our eyes to how profound an understanding of the environment, and the issues involved, Prince Charles had… That letter that he sent, which I think is about 11 pages, handwritten, it’s one of our treasures.

Suzuki: That’s a whole thesis in itself. That letter was so revelatory. He was a young prince, the king-in-waiting… He was still a young man then, but he had nailed the environmental issues. He said at the beginning [of the letter] that someone had put a speech that I had given on his desk, and he had read it. And he kept pulling things out of my speech that he agreed with.

“We chose UBC since that’s where David had been based for so long and had such a vibrant lab.”

Q: How have your views on environmental issues evolved over the years?

Suzuki: I began my public speaking career as a geneticist, and I was very concerned about the way genetics had been applied in the past and the potential of genetic engineering. So I was really focused on my discipline of science and the effect on the public, but over time, increasingly, I became more involved in environmental issues.

And so my speeches, which all began [with a focus on] genetics, became more of an introduction into my more recent concerns…. When I began speaking about genetics in the 1960s, I thought cloning was going to take decades. The speed with which scientists have acquired technological control [over genetics] has been absolutely amazing. Who could have ever dreamt that we would not only be able to decipher the entire human genome by the year 2001, but that we can now make genes at will. Back in the 1960s and 1970s, it was unthinkable that we would have the technology to actually go in and alter specific genes.

“I began my public speaking career as a geneticist, and I was very concerned about the way genetics had been applied in the past and the potential of genetic engineering.”

Q: How is this evolution reflected in the archives?

Suzuki: My speeches are very interesting because I write out all of my speeches longhand. If you look at a speech I gave in 1965, and one that I gave in 1970 and in 1975, I think it would be a very interesting to see the evolution of my thinking, because certainly my ideas now about the environmental impact are fundamentally different from 1962.

Cullis: I would like to look back at early warnings, and just see how far along we are on that kind of checklist of things that were going to happen. That’s a bit of research I would like to do.

Image: Dr. Suzuki delivering speeches in 1971 (right) and 1990 (left). UBC Open Collections.

Meet Joshua Bransford, recipient of the UBC Undergraduate Prize in Library Research

About the prize

The UBC Undergraduate Prize in Library Research is a way to showcase students’ effective and innovative use of library services, information experts and resources provided by the UBC Library. Applications for these prizes also provide students with an opportunity to reflect on their information-seeking experience, showcase their research beyond the classroom, and promote scholarship excellence at the undergraduate level at the University of British Columbia.

The Prize was established by UBC Library to encourage more and deeper use of its resources and collections, to advance information literacy at UBC, and to promote academic excellence at UBC.


Q: Could you tell us a little bit about your project?

My project (The Neoliberal Production of Urban Space and Urban Subjects in India and Bolivia) looks at two cities in the Global South, and the effects of neoliberal restructuring on their inhabitants and spatial planning. The first case is an ongoing megaproject development in Bangalore, India, which aims to turn Bangalore into a “global city” by attracting foreign investment. The second case is an informal market in Cochabamba, Bolivia, which has dramatically expanded since the imposition of neoliberalism in the 1980s. I especially aimed to look at how the residents of these places were responding to the changing political-economic conditions around them in ways that were not always intuitive. By drawing mainly upon the work of Louis Althusser and Verónica Gago, I argue that in order to adequately understand ‘neoliberalism,’ the daily experiences and practices of neoliberal subjects need to be meaningfully considered. I consulted library databases to find Bolivian economic history, census data, and World Bank reports, and acquired much of the theoretical background from texts available in the UBC library. The full paper can be found in Volume 19 of Trail Six, the UBC undergraduate geography journal, which is available here: https://trailsix.geog.ubc.ca/.

Q: What does winning this prize mean to you?

This prize is an amazing opportunity for students seeking to take their research beyond the classroom. It is very assuring to have your work recognized and appreciated, and I’m so grateful to the UBC Library for giving me this opportunity. I am also so happy for my other prize winners, Sophie, Ciara, Ethan, and Ridhwanlai—their projects sounded amazing!

Q: What are your plans for the future?

I’d like to go to graduate school at some point, and this paper actually helped clarify much of my research interests. I am interested in economic geography and political economy, with a specific focus on the geographies of privatized warfare. I want to explore how the outsourcing of war to private companies plays out, and how that changes the dynamics of war and accumulation in a globalizing world. In the meantime, I’d like to work doing action-oriented research on foreign policy, immigration, or something similar.

Q: Do you have a favourite research spot at UBC Library?

Probably the Ridington Room in IKB MAA. Second place would be the reading room on the fourth floor of IKB, or the fifth floor of Koerner. I enjoy a comfortable chair and some quiet.


Meet Sophie Pavey, recipient of the UBC Undergraduate Prize in Library Research

About the prize

The UBC Undergraduate Prize in Library Research is a way to showcase students’ effective and innovative use of library services, information experts and resources provided by the UBC Library. Applications for these prizes also provide students with an opportunity to reflect on their information-seeking experience, showcase their research beyond the classroom, and promote scholarship excellence at the undergraduate level at the University of British Columbia.

The Prize was established by UBC Library to encourage more and deeper use of its resources and collections, to advance information literacy at UBC, and to promote academic excellence at UBC.


Q: Could you tell us a little bit about your project?

Cosmographia is a 1574 cosmographical text, which contains five movable volvelles (rotating circular slide charts). UBC has a copy in its Special Collections. My project situated Cosmographia in early printing history, trade networks and paper production systems. I was also interested in how the reader’s ability to manipulate the volvelles disrupts the linear reading experience generally expected of early modern readers.

Q: What does winning this prize mean to you?

I am delighted that others enjoyed reading my project as much as I enjoyed working on it.

Q: What are your plans for the future?

In September I’ll be starting law school here at UBC — I look forward to making use of some new and different library resources!

Q: Do you have a favourite research spot at UBC Library?

I enjoy spending time in the Education Library in the Neville Scarfe building. The plants are lovely and it’s very quiet.


Meet Ciara Albrecht, recipient of the UBC Undergraduate Prize in Library Research

About the prize

The UBC Undergraduate Prize in Library Research is a way to showcase students’ effective and innovative use of library services, information experts and resources provided by the UBC Library. Applications for these prizes also provide students with an opportunity to reflect on their information-seeking experience, showcase their research beyond the classroom, and promote scholarship excellence at the undergraduate level at the University of British Columbia.

The Prize was established by UBC Library to encourage more and deeper use of its resources and collections, to advance information literacy at UBC, and to promote academic excellence at UBC.


Q: Could you tell us a little bit about your project?

This project consists of a primary source portfolio, my annotations, and a ‘wandering’ essay that traces my research path. The idea was to engage with historical materials, as a practice in working with primary sources in order to produce original analysis and interpretations, much of which would be expanded on in the essay component. I’d done a lot of work with material sources in my archaeology courses, and I really wanted to take the skills and approaches I picked up there and apply them to this project, since it presented a really great opportunity to interact more with visuality and materiality. In the process of looking for sources on Irish Lace to include in this project, I found that there was this interesting discrepancy, where there were a lot of historical accounts from the perspectives of consumers, but the identities of the lace-makers and knowledge of their conditions was strikingly absent, even in museum records. I was so fascinated by the absence of the lace-makers and of Ireland itself within these accounts, and I wanted my project to build upon this absence, trying to fill it through my analysis of artifacts, photographs, and other materials.

Q: What does winning this prize mean to you?

Winning this prize affirmed a lot of things for me, particularly that my approach of using materiality is something that works really well and that it can offer insight into events and historical actors that doesn’t always exist in written records. I love working with textiles especially, and I think this process of working on this project and through my reflection for the prize application has made me far more comfortable working within this area of textile and fashion history, which I hope to keep pursuing. On another note, this project has been so special to me because so much of this project intersects with my family’s history and my own experiences working in similar fibre-arts like crochet and embroidery. In fact, through researching this project and discussing it with my family, I found out that my great-grandmother was a lacemaker in the late 19th century, and a lot of my sources mentioned the area she was working in. Through this project, I was able to learn more about the experiences of my great-grandmother and her fellow lace-makers, and getting a chance to share those experiences with others has truly been one of the best parts of this prize.

Q: What are your plans for the future?

For the immediate future, I’m going to Dublin in June to participate in an archaeological fieldwork course and to hopefully get some research done for my honours thesis. While the site I’ll be working at is a medieval one, a lot of the coursework deals with this history and how it’s represented, including visits to museums and other archaeological sites in the area. I’m hoping this experience helps me build on the skills I’ve been developing through this project and others. For my thesis, I really want to continue looking at Irish textiles and how they intersect with some really pivotal moments in the 19th and 20th centuries, whether that’s the Great Famine, the Celtic Revival, or Irish Independence. And while I’m not sure if I’ll be focusing on Irish Lace specifically, a lot of the resources and ideas I encountered during this project will certainly be shaping my approach to future research. Beyond my thesis, I want to continue doing this sort of analysis and work with textile materials, because there is something so magical about encountering historical or archaeological handicraft and working with it. And while I’m a bit torn between pursuing archival studies and conservation work after my undergraduate degree, I’ve been able to find myself a niche that I enjoy working with, and that I see myself continuing in.

Q: Do you have a favourite research spot at UBC Library?

Most of this project was researched and written in the Ridington Room at the MAA Library, which I think is one of the coziest places on campus, especially on a rainy day. But as far as research spots go, I’d have to say the Koerner Library is probably my favourite, since there’s just so many interesting books and resources there. I’ve been able to find just about anything, whether it be commentaries on Shakespeare, 19th century journals, or microfilms of medieval manuscripts. I would definitely recommend poking around to see what you can find, even if it’s just for fun. There is almost always a nice, quiet corner to get some work done, and having all those books and resources nearby definitely helps me stay grounded during my research.


Indigenous Stories of the Klondike Gold Rush: Part 2 – Chief Isaac

In our last post, we introduced the Tr’ondëk Hwëch’in people and the important role they played during the Klondike Gold Rush era, guided by photos from the Phil Lind Klondike Gold Rush Collection. This week, we examine the impacts the Gold Rush migration had on the Tr’ondëk Hwëch’in and their traditional territory, and meet ever-revered Tr’ondëk Hwëch’in chief Chief Isaac.

For important contextual information about 19th– and 20th-century photographic representations of Indigenous people, and the outdated language present in the Phil Lind Collection, please visit our previous blog post.

Impact on the Tr’ondëk Hwëch’in & the land

Settler descriptions of the landscape during the Klondike Gold Rush era painted an image of a hostile territory, portraying the land as “treacherous [and] empty”, despite the fact that it was inhabited by around 200 Tr’ondëk Hwëch’in people at the time.

Though many prospectors did not intend to settle permanently, historian Charlotte Gray nonetheless describes the migration as one of conquest. Photos in the Phil Lind Collection show sprawls of tents around the Yukon and Klondike Rivers, offering a visual representation of the magnitude of the migration.

“Klondike City, and the mouth of Klondike R.” (1898)

As plots of land in Dawson City were too expensive for many prospectors, they began to occupy Tr’ochëk, a traditional Tr’ondëk Hwëch’in fishing settlement along the Yukon River, even erecting their tents between Tr’ondëk Hwëch’in homes.

Tr’ochëk after settler occupation, labelled “Klondyke City” (1899)

They renamed the settlement Klondike City, an English corruption of “Tr’ondëk”, which translates to “hammer river”.

This photo’s caption gives credit to the origin of the river’s name, though mistranslates it (sometime after 1896)

This occupation had drastic impacts on the natural landscape upon which the Tr’ondëk Hwëch’in relied for centuries, forcing them to change their traditional survival patterns. Settlers chopped down trees, ripped up creeks, and overhunted, which resulted in a major decrease in moose and caribou.

Settlers were not only generally careless about the damage they caused to the land, but were also apathetic or even hostile toward the Tr’ondëk Hwëch’in people.

Chief Isaac

The lasting legacy of Chief Isaac, Tr’ondëk Hwëch’in chief during the Klondike era, is one of strength and resilience for the Tr’ondëk Hwëch’in people. A skilled negotiator and vocal advocate for his people, he was respected by the Tr’ondëk Hwëch’in and settlers of Dawson City alike.

While few settlers attempted to learn the Hän language, Chief Isaac (whose traditional name is not known) learned English, giving public speeches and advocating for his people in local newspapers, including the Klondike Nugget and the Dawson Daily News.

Dawson Daily News (1909), one of the newspapers in the Phil Lind Collection

Chief Isaac worked hard to maintain diplomatic relations with the settlers, but was unafraid of criticizing their indifference toward their dispossession of his people. In a local newspaper, he wrote:

“Million white man come and cut down Indian’s wood, kill Indian’s game, take Indian’s gold out of the ground,

give Indian nothing. Game all gone, wood all gone, Indian cold and hungry, white man no care.”

As the stampeders’ incursion on Tr’ochëk became increasingly invasive, Chief Isaac decided to relocate his people. They set their sights on Moosehide Village, a traditional fishing camp south of Dawson City. Despite friction from the Northwest Mounted Police, who had unofficially laid claim on the site for their new compound, Chief Isaac was resolute. In 1900, the Tr’ondëk Hwëch’in moved to Moosehide Village, where they built a thriving community.

“Chief Isaac’s Salmon-Racks” (published in book in 1900)

 Legacy of the Klondike Gold Rush 

The Klondike Gold Rush had lasting impacts on the Tr’ondëk Hwëch’in and their territory. Their rivers’ gold held the promise of great prosperity for the nation, however, the descent of 100,000 prospectors decimated their land, displaced them, and as former Tr’ondëk Hwëch’in chief Chief Roberta Joseph states, “left [them] with nothing”.

Cultural portrayals of the Klondike Gold Rush have historically been recounted from a settler perspective, obscuring the experiences of First Nations peoples. As Kaska Dene artist Joseph Tisiga notes, the cultural identity of the Yukon Territory hinges upon a romanticization of the Gold Rush era, negating the rich cultures of Indigenous communities that have inhabited the region for millennia.

Tr’ondëk Hwëch’in territory, in a book about the Yukon (1898)

The Tr’ondëk Hwëch’in today

The mass settler migration of the Klondike Gold Rush era had deeply damaging impacts on the Tr’ondëk Hwëch’in and their territory. Despite having to adapt their traditional ways, they maintained many cultural practices, and the nation thrives today. Like all First Nations in the Yukon Territory, they are self-governing, enabling them to guide the law that governs their land.

The Tr’ondëk Hwëch’in are committed to preserving and practicing their culture and teaching it to future generations. They hold biennial gatherings at Moosehide Village, have established the Dänojà Zho Cultural Centre, and teach Hän in schools.

View of the Yukon River from Moosehide Trail, which leads to Moosehide Village (1908)

Tr’ochëk was designated a National Historic Site of Canada in 2002, emphasizing it as a core component of Hän, Yukon, and Canadian heritage. During the Klondike Gold Rush, settler occupation may have rendered the location one of great turmoil. But today, Tr’ochëk is a tranquil place where Tr’ondëk Hwëch’in citizens and others can reflect on the land’s expansive Indigenous history, which began long before the Klondike Gold Rush.