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.

 “…my dear old man’s beard”, of Henry Crease are one of the most touching and surprising object in Family Bonds and Belonging. Henry's wife Sarah clipped the bear one afternoon in 1903 as Henry napped by the fire in his final days as his health declined. Henry's beard is on loan to us from the Royal BC Museum as a reminder that some families take comfort in the lingering traces of a deceased loved one, sometimes in surprising ways. It is an apt point to consider at this time a year as many people mark November 2, All Souls Day, the commemoration of the departed.