Have a great BC Day Weekend!

Alloway Library is closed this weekend, August 4, 5 & 6.

See you Tuesday!

All our hours are listed here.

And,  here’s a great article on what to celebrate on BC Day, highlighting  the role of Governor James Douglas (after whom a campus dorm is named)

Governor Douglas also adopted a standpoint on aboriginal rights and title that was radically liberal compared to the Canadian federal Indian Act system. He negotiated 14 treaties on Vancouver Island – the only treaties West of the Rockies until the Nisga’a agreement of 2000. Denied further funds from the Colonial Office in London, Douglas directed surveyors to lay out British Columbia’s first reserves to include all occupied village sites and farm fields, “and as much land in the vicinity of each as they could till, or was required for their support.” Douglas further instructed that Indigenous people should be allowed to “freely exercise and enjoy the rights of fishing the Lakes and Rivers, and of hunting over all unoccupied Crown Lands in the Colony,” and should be permitted to “dig and search for gold, and hold mining claims on the same terms precisely as other miners.”

The point, Douglas said, was to ensure that Indigenous people were “conscious that they were recognized members of the Commonwealth.” There was only one significant intrusion on Indigenous customs that Douglas insisted upon: the abolition of slavery. Terry Glavin, Maclean’s; August 1, 2018