The Hallmark Society honours outstanding achievement in the field of heritage preservation, conservation, restoration, and advocacy at its Annual Awards Night, which will be held on Tuesday, May 2, 2006. Award nominations for projects completed during the past two years are welcome until January 31st. Instructions for submissions may be obtained from the Hallmark Society's website at http://www.hallmarksociety.ca/Awards.html or by contacting the Hallmark office at 382-4755.

The exploration of the North West by Europeans will be examined in a new and perhaps challenging light by John Lutz, of the University of Victoria, who titles his presentation "The Erotics of Exploration". The literature of European discovery of the Pacific Northwest in particular, and the New World in general, is one of exploration and trade. As rich as this literature is, there has been a blindness to the fact that, for the majority of men on board these ships, the most important kinds of exploration and trade which they engaged in were sexual.. This talk examines the importance of sexual contacts between the crews of explorers/traders and the indigenous people in the Pacific Northwest from the first landing by Captain Cook's ship the Endeavour in 1778, through to the Lewis and Clark expedition's departure in 1806. It highlights the erotic nature of exploration for the men involved, interprets the nature of aboriginal participation in these encounters, and examines the historical importance of these sexual relationships.

John Lutz teaches Canadian and British Columbia History at the University of Victoria where he is an associate professor. He is the author of several articles and a forthcoming book on the impact of the capitalist economy on Aboriginal People. He is keenly interested in exploring the affinities between teaching history and the internet. He is the co-founder and co-director of the Great Unsolved Mysteries in Canadian History project, which takes a series of real life historical mysteries and asks students to solve them by looking at the documentary evidence which has been placed on the internet. In this way he hopes to intrigue students and make studying history fun as well as educational. He is also involved in the creation of two websites on the history of Victoria: VictoriasVictoria.ca and viHistory.ca.

The talk will be held on Sunday, March 19, 2006, in the Newcombe Conference Hall, Royal BC Museum, at 2:00 p.m.

Drawing on police court, jail, and city council records, and newspaper reports, Lisa Helps will present a talk, "Through the Street: The History of Homelessness in Victoria, B.C., 1871-1901", which uncovers the embodied fates of those who spent time on the streets in Victoria in the last three decades of the nineteenth century. Surely we cannot understand people arrested for drunkenness, vagrancy, causing obstructions, and so on, as homeless in a twenty-first century sense. However, there are interesting parallels to be drawn between the desires of late-nineteenth century city builders to create specific kinds of public spaces and the Safe Streets Act recently passed by the provincial government. This talk explores the ways in which Victoria was built in the nineteenth century through the regulation of both the bodies and the actions of people who spent much of their time on the public streets of the city.

Lisa Helps has recently completed an M.A. in History at the University of Victoria entitled, "Bodies and Public City Spaces: Becoming Modern Victoria, British Columbia, 1871-1901" and is currently undertaking a Ph.D. at the University of Toronto which seeks to explore when and how "the vagrant" became "the homeless" over the course of the twentieth century.

The talk will be held on Sunday, February 19, 2006, in the Newcombe Conference Hall, Royal BC Museum, at 2:00 p.m.

Ann ten Cate, archivist at the B.C. Archives, will give an illustrated talk about genealogical resources at the B.C. Archives, "Finding Family at the B.C. Archives". She'll be talking about how to use the Archives' website to pinpoint records which will help fill out the branches on your family tree, and solve some of those family mysteries. She will also give the Friends and any other interested genealogists an update on some exciting new family history resources that will soon be available at www.bcarchives.gov.bc.ca and at the Archives. Even if you feel you've reached a dead-end with your B.C. research, Ann may be able to suggest some alternative sources - come with your questions!

Ann will make her presentation on Sunday January 22, 2006, in the Newcombe Conference Hall, Royal BC Museum, at 2:00 p.m.

On Monday, December 12, 2005, Richard Linzey, an architect and heritage planner with the City of Victoria, will give an illustrated talk on "A Career in Ruins", relating his earlier conservation work on historic places in England to his work today. The meeting will be at the James Bay New Horizons Centre, 234 Menzies Street at 7:30pm. Admission by donation. Please contact the Hallmark Society Office at (250) 382-4755 if you have any questions.