On August 5, 2025, the Library’s main EBSCOhost profile will migrate to a new user interface.
This interface will become the new point of access for all subscribed EBSCOhost databases. A select number of medical and allied health databases will remain accessible on the old interface until December 22, 2025.
Visit the new LibGuide to learn more about UBC’s migration, and consider registering for an upcoming EBSCO training session!
Many thanks to guest blogger, Barbara Towell, for contributing the below post! Barbara is E-Records Manager with Digital Programs & Services at UBC Library and an avid cyclist.
Clara and Kitty Wilson. Uno Langmann Family Collection of B.C. Photographs. UL_1591_0087
On Monday, July 17, 1939, twenty-something sisters, Clara and Kitty Wilson, left their comfy family home on the west side of Vancouver and embarked on a two-week self-guided cycling holiday to Vancouver Island. This journey was one of a decade of summer cycling tours they undertook in British Columbia. They documented their trips through a series of photos and letters home that have been brought together in a wonderful photo album, now fully digitized and available on UBC Library’s Open Collections and forming part of the Uno Langmann Family Collection of Photographs. For Kitty and Clara Wilson, the summer of 1939 was one of leisure, adventure, letter-writing, and fun.
86 years after Clara and Kitty’s trip, my partner and I plan to recreate that ride, tracing the sisters’ tire marks, staying in the places they stayed, seeing the sights they saw. Our tour, like many of Kitty and Clara’s, begins at the Plaza Hotel in Nanaimo (now called Fairmont Hotels and Resorts), and carries on north to Campbell River. Some of the hotels and camps where Clara and Kitty stayed still exist, but most are gone. All the natural monuments remain however, and we plan to visit the waterfalls, rivers, and maybe the potholes mentioned in the letters. As for the buildings, I hope to find at least the addresses of where these places once were. In short, we plan to do just what Kitty and Clara did all those summers ago: enjoy a journey powered by legs and bicycles.
The Route
Kitty and Clara began their ride on July 17 and arrived in Campbell River on July 23, 1939. Their trip took place along what is now known at Highway 19A Ocean Side Route, which was at the time, primarily a gravel road. The highway was only fully paved in 1953, as part of WAC Bennet’s highway improvement plan. The sisters averaged just over 40K per day; theirs was a leisurely pace. Kitty herself said it best in a letter home: “We walked up every hill that was more than a foot high and still made good time.” I like the attitude conveyed in the letters; some days they just didn’t feel like riding, especially once they got to Campbell River where they were spoiled by the proprietor of their lodgings, Mr. Danby. They were on holiday after all.
The Gear
We don’t plan on sourcing and riding the same kind of bikes Kitty and Clara used (this isn’t that kind of recreation), but judging by the photographs, the sisters appear to be riding 1930s Dutch-style bikes that weigh-in at more than 20 kilograms each. They named these bikes Rastus (Clara), and Ginger (Kitty).
We Leave Nanaimo. Uno Langmann Family Collection of B.C. Photographs. UL_1591_0047
Kitty and Clara did not itemize their gear, but I can see from the photos that they traveled light: one small suitcase each strapped on to their bike’s luggage rack. Given the heft of Rastus and Ginger, packing light was necessary. I believe they brought their bikes on the ferry that docked at what is now Canada Place in Vancouver then took the CPR Princess Elaine to Nanaimo. It would be another twenty years before BC Ferries established the same routes to Nanaimo.
The Lodging: Auto Camps
There are still evidence of tiny cabins dotting the seaside on Vancouver Island. They were an invention that developed together with the expansion of the road network. I never knew what an auto camp was before I started reading the letters, but in 1939 they were everywhere. The sisters wrote to the proprietors of the auto camps along their route in advance ensuring they had a place to stay.
The Letters
Kitty and Clara wrote and received letters from their family daily, care of various post offices along their route. To the 21st century reader, the sisters’ address and the manner in which they write paints a veneer of white British middle-class privilege and youthful ease. Their letters are full of comic misspellings, nicknames, and devil-may-care kinder-pomp. In contrast to the casual and nonchalant attitude taken up in the letters, the sisters planned this trip carefully. Two young women cycle-touring the dirt roads of Vancouver Island was not a common sight in 1939, and the people they told had opinions about their adventure. The sisters maintained an attitude about their trip that strikes me as particularly modern; they didn’t seem to be especially influenced by people’s opinions of how to spend their leisure time.
These two were not ordinary.
I hope you will join me in part two of this blog as we recreate the ride Kitty and Clara embarked upon 86 years ago, compare the sights, and perhaps get to know these intrepid sisters just a little.
Image courtesy of Open Data Watch. CC BY 4.0
As part of a panel at the Canadian Health Libraries Association conference this June, UBC Research Data Management Librarian, Eugene Barsky, discusses how descriptions of data and persistent identifiers impact the way others find open datasets.
View slides from his talk now in cIRcle: Good-enough lifecycle of a published dataset.
Explore Eugene’s collection of papers and presentations in Open Collections to learn more about persistent identifiers and data management, as well as data deposit and discovery platforms like Borealis and Geodisy.
cIRcle accepts small, static datasets designed to be open access such as supplementary data accompanying a research article. For larger, dynamic datasets where access controls, version history, and other data management features are needed, the UBC Dataverse Collection in Borealis is recommended.
To learn more about which platform is for you, consult our quick digest of the differences and advantages of each repository: Guidelines for recommending UBC Library Repositories for Data: cIRcle and Borealis.
Need more help? Contact cIRcle or the Research Data Management team for a consultation.
Research Data Management @ UBC. A collection of information and services for UBC faculty and students. Accessed June 19, 2025.
Tri-Agency Research Data Management policy. Policy to support Canadian research excellence by promoting sound RDM and data stewardship practices. Accessed June 19, 2025.
One of our most popular blog posts of all time examines the captivating story of northern British Columbia ghost town Anyox, a former company-owned mining community abandoned in 1935.
This week, we bring you Part 1 in a two-part series exploring lesser-known British Columbia ghost town stories. To kick off the series, we’re taking a look at the Corbin Miners’ Strike of 1935.
Ghost Towns in Open Collections
Fragments of Corbin’s history, as well as those of other B.C. ghost towns are present throughout UBC Open Collections, including in the Uno Langmann Family Collection of British Columbia Photographs, and the B.C. Historical Newspapers and B.C. Sessional Papers collections. These materials help to provide a richer picture of these once-bustling communities, illuminating both their prosaic and extraordinary events.
A distant view of Premier, B.C., now a ghost town (1925)
The early years of the British Columbia labour movement
As British Columbia became increasingly industrialized through the mid-1800s, workers often faced abysmal working conditions: unbearably long work days, inadequate wages, and no health or unemployment insurance, to name a few. In 1850, miners in Fort Rupert, B.C. chose to strike against the Hudson’s Bay Company for breaching their contract of employment. This would be the first of many miners’ strikes in B.C. throughout the 19th and 20th centuries, with some ending peacefully and others turning violent.
The Corbin Miners’ Strike of 1935 is a uniquely compelling tale in British Columbia labour history. While many labour movement stories tell of brave workers putting their bodies on the line, the fearless front line that led the Corbin Miners’ Strike was comprised not of the town’s miners, but of their wives.
Simmering tensions in Corbin
Corbin, B.C., located near the Alberta border on Ktunaxa territory, was founded in 1905. Owned and operated by Corbin Coke and Coal, the mining town suffered harsh winters made even more arduous by its isolation.
In 1935, after years of working in poor conditions for low wages, Corbin’s unionized coal miners decided to strike. Utilizing a common tactic of the time, Corbin Coke and Coal hired scabs—employees who had agreed to work despite the strike—rather than negotiating with the union.
Black Wednesday
As Corbin Coke and Coal knew they would face resistance to bringing in scabs, they contracted both private security services and the local police force to accompany their new hires in crossing the picket line. On the morning of April 17th, 1935, the striking miners and their wives set out to block the scabs from entering the worksite. The company’s small army of hired police and security encircled the strikers, and the women of Corbin, who held the frontline of the protest, stood face-to-face with a large snow plow.
The violence that ensued was shocking. The snow plow advanced at the line of women, but they were surrounded and had nowhere to go. First-person accounts describe the snow plow crushing women’s legs and even dragging one woman hundreds of feet. Police beat the protesters, causing broken bones and severe bruising. The horrific incident would become known as Black Wednesday.
Nelson Daily News (April 19th, 1935)
The events of Black Wednesday unsurprisingly brought publicity to the strikers’ plight. Nelson, B.C.’s local newspaper reported that miners from other Canadian communities planned to travel Corbin to march for May Day, an international day for workers’ rights, in solidarity with the striking miners. The strikers had also found a strong ally in Fernie MLA Tom Uphill, who advocated for the miners both to the government and on public radio.
Nelson Daily News (April 30th, 1935)
Despite this mounting public awareness, the sacrifices paid by the strikers, and especially the women of Corbin, were unsuccessful in swaying Corbin Coke and Coal. Less than one month later, the company closed the mine for good, and the town was subsequently abandoned.
The enduring spirit of Corbin, B.C.
Today, Corbin is a fascinating ghost town made more attractive by its beautiful surroundings, making it a popular travel destination for history buffs and outdoor enthusiasts alike. But the events of Black Wednesday have also established it as an important site in Canadian labour history, where its women are remembered as “militant participants in [British Columbia] labour struggles”.
Stay tuned…
… for our next blog post, where we dive into the history of Barkerville’s Chinatown.
View of storefronts in Barkerville (date unknown)
References
Burton, M. B. & Verzuh, R. (2016, September 8). Coal Mountain: Where women paid in blood. The Tyee. https://thetyee.ca/Culture/2016/09/08/Coal-Mountain/
Durtnall, B. M. (2023, October 22). Black Wednesday: Miners’ wives & the 1935 Corbin, B.C., strike. HubPages. https://discover.hubpages.com/education/Black-Wednesday-Miners-Wives-And-the-1935-Corbin-BC-Strike
BC Labour Heritage Centre. (n.d.). Working people: A history of labour in BC. https://www.labourheritagecentre.ca/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/2025-Update-History-of-BC-and-Working-People-1840-1914-revised.pdf
Users trying to access AMS (American Mathematical Society) books or journals are currently being forced to login twice to access content.
After logging in via the library website and landing on the AMS page, AMS will send users to a ‘Access through your institution” page when trying to access full text. If you search for “UBC” as your institution and login with your CWL you will gain access.
As a direct workaround to access or share an individual title, you can place this URL prefix in front of the AMS URL that you want to access: https://go.openathens.net/redirector/ubc.ca?url=
eResources is working with AMS to get this issue fixed ASAP.