Friday 1 November 2019

Family Bonds and Belonging: A Look a Family Identities

The many identities that we explore at Halloween, which I explore every year in my annual Halloween survey, remind me of our wonderful exhibition, Family Bonds and Belonging. Nova Scotians have two more days to see it. (Last day is November 3.) It includes some amazing objects on loan from the Royal British Columbia Museum.


The exhibition includes a beautiful circle of original period clothes from the waves of families from all over the world who made Canada home from 1897 to 2017 called Turning Points. It is circled by a ring of important evens that challenged and changed the way the way we define family and how government policies changed the way families came to Canada.

These big and amazing masks, on loan from the Royal BC Museum, were used in Chinese Freemasons’ parades & ceremonies.The Head Tax and Chinese Exclusion Act laws kept most Chinese immigrant men from bringing their families to Canada until 1947, so the Masonic lodges were like family for them.