Past Exhibitions
HOUSING VALUES
Feature Gallery & Gallery 7 (Anvil Centre)
Closing April 2024
Opening reception February 20, 2024 @ 6 - 8 pm
Anvil Centre, Museum Galleries (3rd floor)
777 Columbia Street
*This event is open to the public, free, and does not require registration.
Housing is the hottest topic around these days. Everywhere you turn, people are talking about housing but it’s not a new concern. How much, where and what people live in has been debated since New Westminster was founded in 1861. Housing Values is a new exhibit presented by the New Westminster Museum & Archives, examining ideas around housing in New Westminster and how cultural values, economics and history influence where and how we live in this city. The exhibit opens in October in honour of the United Nations’ World Habitat Day.
Programs associated with this exhibition:
Storytelling Walk: Homelessness and New Westminster (All Ages)
Walk with Museum staff and the New Westminster Homelessness Coalition Society today learn about homelessness in our community from a historical perspective. Engage with important sites and stories, including the voices of those with lived experience. The current work of the NWHCS and supportive housing will also be discussed. Presented as part of the official kick off to Homelessness Action Week in New Westminster.
Saturday, October 7
10:00am - 12:00pm
Registration Fee: Free Course ID: 191645
RECONCILING
Gallery 7 (Anvil Centre)
February 16 2022 – September 2023
Through three installations, Reconciling addresses truths attached to acts of reconciliation. Haida/Nisga’a artist Luke Parnell explores a feeling of disenchantment through his piece Neon Reconciliation Explosion; the downed statue of Judge Begbie addresses the imposition of foreign laws on a land; and the 215 shoes placed at New Westminster’s cenotaph reflects our community’s response to the Residential School legacy in Canada.
Programs with this exhibition
Neon Reconciliation Explosion Field Trip
We have worked with Luke to create an interactive activity for students. Students will receive an inquiry-based tour of the exhibition and can then reflect, create, and connect with what reconciliation means to them.
Click here to see the full flyer
Celebrating Black History in Canada through Tessellation and Portraiture
Moved by a push for greater social justice, New Westminster Secondary School Art students researched prominent figures from Black History in Canada and share their contributions in black and white tessellation patterns and portraits. Equal parts black and white, these works challenge a Eurocentric-lens that is too often applied when discussing history by featuring People of Colour and Black Canadians in an equally starring role. Each student provides a thoughtful artist statement with their portrait.
This exhibition replicates the original class work, design, and display.
The 215
AIR HUGS
NEW WEST TOGETHER DURING COVID-19
A new exhibit on the community’s resilience during the pandemic.
Gallery 7 at New Westminster Museum
3rd floor Anvil Centre
Tuesday March 31, 2021 – Sunday September 5, 2021
DO YOU HAVE MORE INFO?
Do you know the story behind a photo in the exhibition? Do you want to share your experiences of the pandemic?
Stories from the past and present in New Westminster to help us understand how people eat in our community.
The exhibition ran from Thursday May 16, 2019 to December 1, 2019.
See below for exhibit links, associated programs and more.
VIDEOS
EXHIBIT LINKS
This exhibition has QR codes with information if you want to find out more. The links are also listed below, under each section:
Introduction
Some common food terms you’ll see in this exhibition.
What is Food Security?
“Poor people are lazy and don’t want to work.” Do you believe these myths? Check out these New West poverty myth busters and what you can do to help pull people out of poverty.
Like and follow New Westminster Community Food Action.
The Official Community Plan provides the vision and goals for the city to 2041, including policies related to food.
The Community Poverty Reduction Strategy identifies specific actions to enhance the quality of life of those people living in poverty and to provide opportunities to assist them to move out of poverty.
Two of the 14 goals in the Environmental Strategy and Action Plan relate to the environmental impacts of food.
New Westminster Food Security Action Plan
Food Sovereignty
Starting in 2007 and lasting about five years, the Fraserside Community Services Society’s Biggest Little Garden in Town project helped apartment residents start gardens on their balconies with tiered cedar boxes that were accessible for all people. With seed and garden workshops, this social enterprise helped people access fresh produce that they themselves grew, even if they didn’t have a backyard or a plot. Watch this video about the project.
Community Gardens
Find out about getting a plot at one of the community gardens.
Keeping certain farm animals to supplement diets is legal in New West.
For the laws on raising chickens in New Westminster, see 1967’s Public Health Bylaw No. 4271.
If you meet the requirements, you can also keep a beehive in New West. See the bylaw.
Food Systems: Farming and Fishing
The Choi Guide
Vancouver’s Hua Foundation put together a seasonal guide for the Chinese vegetables grown in the Lower Mainland. You can read it in English with pronunciations in Cantonese and Mandarin. Here’s the Cantonese version to help you on your next shopping trip.
Food Systems: Distribution and Access
The Food Costing in BC report provides data about the affordability of food. It tells us how much income families and individuals need in order to eat healthy meals. The report is done every two years by the BC Centre for Disease Control (BCCDC), with the last one completed in 2017. The report informs calculations for living wage numbers.
Fuel Up
A 2017 UNICEF report ranked Canada 37th out of 41 countries for children’s access to healthy food.
In February 2019, after two years of planning, the New Westminster School District launched a cost-shared universally accessible school lunch program, the first of its kind in Canada. Starting in three schools (Qayqayt Elementary, Queen Elizabeth Elementary and Queensborough Middle Schools), it will eventually be available to all schools in the district.
Read more and order a meal for your kids.
Things Were So Cheap Back Then!
Or were they? Compare the prices in the ads below to what they would be in today’s money. Use an inflation calculator
Food Systems: Consumption
$40 a Week @ the Market
In 2016, blogger Katie Bartel wrote about her summer market challenge: to stretch out $40 every week at the New West Farmers Market. Read about it.
Food Literacy
Canada Food Guide
The new Canada Food Guide, released this year, recommends a shift to a more plant-based diet, with water as the drink of choice. The aim is to have a plate that is half vegetables, one-quarter protein (such as nuts, meat and tofu), and one-quarter whole grains (like bread, rice and quinoa). It also recommends reducing sugary drinks (including juice), sweets and pastries, salt and saturated fat, and alcohol.
New West Cookbookery
There is a cookbook lending library at the River Market. Share the cookbooks you love for a while or forever, or take out what you need for a month.
To borrow a book, register here.
Our City’s Food Culture
Helping You Celebrate
Did you know that the Family Services of Greater Vancouver has grants for community celebrations through the Vancouver Foundation’s Neighbourhood Small Grant program?
Neighbours around New West have found unique ways to get to know each other through food. At the Glenbrooke Salad and Pie days, residents brought their home-cooked meals to share with one another. A Roma Hall chef got a grant to teach Italian cooking at Thompson’s Landing Park in Queensborough. The Fraser Fraser River Food Buying Club received seed funding to establish. Many have received grants to start new community gardens or have multicultural meals.
Diverse Eating in New West
New West has many good international restaurants.
Explore Downtown’s shops and restaurants with this map.
Or check out the diversity along Twelfth Street.
Opening Reception
Thursday, October 25, 2018, 6 pm - 8 pm
Exhibit dates: October 26, 2018 - April 28, 2019
From the first cumbersome printing press dragged over the stumps and hills of the budding city, this exhibit shows New Westminster’s past of fake news, clickbait and alternative facts.
MEDIA LITERACY LINKS
Click on the links below to learn more about disinformation, misinformation and how to be a better social media citizen.
We’ll also be updating the museum’s Facebook page regularly to share other articles that helped us in developing the exhibit: follow us for more information on media literacy.
Guides
- A Field Guide to “Fake News” and Other Information Disorders
- Emergency Journalism
- How Do I Spot Fake News?
- How to Identify Fake News
- The News Literacy Project
- Verification Handbook: A Definitive Guide to Verifying Digital Content for Emergency Coverage
Verifying the News
- FactCheck.org (for US news stories)
- Politifact (for US news stories)
- Retraction Watch
- Snopes
November 7, 2019 - May 2, 2021
“Keeping warm was something you worked at in the old days,” as local historian Evelyn Benson put it.
The Long Hours: Art in the BC Penitentiary
August 2018 - July 2019
People Gotta Move
July 5, 2018 - November 16, 2018
#MOCGottaMove
Be/Longing
February 17, 2018 - October 7, 2018
The Cultures of Drink in the Royal City
November 4, 2017 – May 27, 2018
Planning New West:
A History and Future of Urban Development in New Westminster
June 1, 2017 – January 21, 2017
Witness Blanket
December 5, 2016 - April 28, 2017
Ornamenting the Ordinary: Crafts of South Asia
September 10, 2016 – January 2, 2017
Branching Out: Plants in New Westminster's History
June 2 – November 20, 2016
The Living Archive
June 23 - August 21, 2016
Architectural Gems in the Royal City
September 17, 2015 - May 8, 2016
Our Working Waterfront, 1945-2015
July 9 - October 27, 2015
Hair Apparent: A Hairy History of New Westminster
April 23 - June 21, 2015
Baskets for Barter
November 29, 2014 - January 24, 2015
October 4, 2014 - August 16, 2015
Be/Longing
February 17, 2018 - October 7, 2018