Hours:
- Monday to Friday, 10:00am-4:00pm (full service) and 4:00pm-6:00pm (partial service); Saturday 10:00am-4:00pm (partial service)
- For a list of full and partial service hours and days closed, see BC Archives Hours of Operation
Location: 675 Belleville Street, Victoria, BC, V8W 9W2
Contact:
- British Columbia Archives: access@royalbcmuseum.bc.ca 1-250-387-1952
- Sisters of St. Ann Archives: archives@ssabc.ca 1-250-592-0685
Access:
- All persons wishing to perform archival research must register before being admitted to the reference room. Registration can be done in person during regular service hours (Monday-Friday, 10:00am-4:00pm) or online. To register, persons must be 16 years of age and must present photo identification at the time of registration. If registering online, please bring your photo identification with you on your first visit.
- The Sisters of St. Ann Archives may be accessed by appointment only.
Website: http://royalbcmuseum.bc.ca/bcarchives/
The British Columbia Archives collections contain more than 60,000 boxes of government textual records; 20,000 boxes of non-government textual records; 5,000,000 photographic images; 10,000 paintings, drawings, and prints; 63,000 maps, atlases, and architectural drawings; 5,300 film or video titles; and 13,000 sound recordings.
Government records date from as far back as 1849 when the Colony of Vancouver Island was established. Government records include the records of any ministry, agency, board, commission, Crown corporation, institution, committee or council reporting or responsible to the Government of British Columbia. Public health services in British Columbia began in 1869 with the passage of an ordinance for promoting public health in the colony. This ordinance became part of the provincial statutes when British Columbia joined Confederation in 1871. In 1893, the Public Health Act created the Provincial Board of Health which was responsible for managing public health, social welfare, and social assistance in the province. The British Columbia Archives maintains the records of the Provincial Board of Health (1893-1946) and its successor departments up to its present incarnation as the Ministry of Health Services (2008- ) as well as subordinate agencies such as the Cancer Control Task Committee, the Inspector of Hospitals, the Emergency Health Services Commission, and the Mental Health Services Branch.
Non-government records created by private individuals, organizations, and corporations include ships’ logs; Hudson’s Bay Company post account books and journals; the letters and diaries of gold seekers, pioneers, missionaries, and school teachers; medical case books; literary manuscripts; and the personal and family papers of notable settlers and residents of the province. The non-government records contains a strong collection of material related to the history of medicine. The West Coast Medical Historical Society Oral History Collection consists of 120 audio reels of oral history interviews with doctors, nurses, medical students, and hospital workers relating to the history of medicine in British Columbia.
The British Columbia Archives also maintains the records of numerous hospitals in the province including: Royal Jubilee Hospital (1858-1971), King’s Daughters’ Hospital (Duncan, B.C.) (1915-1981), Ocean Falls General Hospital (1935-1972), Port Simpson General Hospital (1908-1944), Royal Cariboo General Hospital (1864-1949), Royal Columbian Hospital (1861-1943), Slocan Hospital (1899-1901), Vancouver General Hospital (1972-1974), the British Columbia Hospitals’ Association (1918-1968), and the Female Infirmary for the Sick and Destitute of all Denominations (1863-1871).
Other collections related to the history of medicine include the Aaronson’s Drug Store (1914-1942) fonds; the records of John T. Marshall (1900-1975), who worked with the United Nations and the World Health Organization; the records of public health nurse Monica M. Green (ca. 1920-1970), whose photograph collection documents public health nursing and personnel in British Columbia; the records of Dr. Richard Foulkes (1923-2007) who served as the executive director of the Royal Columbian hospital and directed the provincial government’s Health Security Program Project; and the records of the Alcohol Research and Education Council which was founded in 1915 as the British Columbia Prohibition Association.
The British Columbia Archives contains a wealth of material related to the First Nations people of the province. This includes government records, such as the records of the provincial Ministry of Aboriginal Affairs and the federal Department of Indian Affairs and Northern Development; the records of organizations and institutions such as the Kuper Island Indian Industrial School (1889-1938) and the 1997 North American Indigenous Games; and the records of individuals such as ethnomusicologist Ida Halpern (1910-1987) and missionaries George Henry Raley (1863-1958) and Robert James Roberts (1831-1905).
The British Columbia Archives is also the home of the Sisters of St. Ann Archives. The Sisters of St. Ann are a congregation of religious women founded in Vaudreuil, Quebec in 1850. In June, 1858, during the Fraser Gold Rush, four Sisters and a laywoman arrived in Victoria and established a school for both aboriginal children and the children of colonists. The Sisters subsequently founded schools, hospitals, and other programs in Victoria and other communities in British Columbia, Yukon, Alaska, and Washington State. The Sisters of St. Ann Archives is a private archives which documents the legacy of the Sisters of St. Ann in the West. The archives constitutes a separate body of records within the British Columbia Archives. To find out more or to access the Sisters of St. Ann Archives, call or email to make an appointment.
The British Columbia Archives is in the process of digitizing its photographic records. Currently over 80,000 images are available to be viewed online.
The British Columbia Archives has also created a series of online Reference Guides to aid researchers in identifying and locating records relevant to their research. The guides are organized into four categories: BC History, Vital Statistics and Genealogy, Land and Settlement Records, and First Nations Research.