A CHRONOLOGY OF TECHNOLOGICAL TRIUMPH, ZEALOTRY AND UTOPIANISM IN B.C. EDUCATION

Roger Boshier
University of British Columbia

1730: [Man; Env] Aboriginals living in B.C. educated their children in practical matters. They were taught acceptable social behavior and how to survive in an often harsh environment. Girls were taught, amongst other things, how to use needles for sewing hides. Boys were taught to use tools for hunting. "Technology" was imbued with spiritual significance. (http://www.bcarchives.gov.bc.ca/cgi-bin/www2i/.visual/img_med/dir_80/f_01093.gif)

1792: [Man] Dr. Tadeo Haenke, the first Ph.D. holder to arrive in what is today B.C., uses astronomical and other instruments aboard the vessel Sutil (Captain Galiano) and Mexicana (Captain Valdes) - in the service of the King of Spain - to make observations concerning west coast topography and culture. Aboard the same ships, the youthful Jose Cardero uses chalk, pen and pencil to draw marvelous portraits of the Musqueam chief (the first "mayor" of Vancouver) on the beach directly below the site of today’s University of B.C. (http://www.mala.bc.ca/www/discover/capt/capt.htm)

1849: [Env] Rev. Robert Staines, Anglican clergyman and teacher at the Hudson’s Bay School in Victoria, lays planks across mud so kids could get to school in the fort. (http://www.mala.bc.ca/homeroom/rstaines.htm)

1852: [Env; Ill] At the first colonial school in Victoria the supply of books and "other necessities" was deemed "sadly deficient." Other schools opened in Nanaimo (1853) and Craigflower (1855).

1853: [Ill; Env] Rev. Staines, onetime teacher at the Hudson’s Bay school, is so disgusted by conditions and lack of quipment, he leaves for England to raise hell with executives of the company. But his ship sank, Staines drowned and the Hudson’s Bay executives were spared his litany of complaints about inadequate technology and the indignities of colonial life.

1859: [Ill; Env] The first school on the mainland colony of British Columbia opens at Sapperton in New Westminster and children of the "Royal Engineers" attend. (http://www.mala.bc.ca/homeroom/sapprtn.htm)

1860: [Ill] The Journal of Education of Lower Canada discusses the usefulness and cost of the magic lantern as a teaching aid. (http://www.uclan.ac.uk/library/lantern.htm)

1865: [Ill] On July 6 the Nanaimo school "technology cupboard" contains one globe and maps of Europe, Asia, Africa, America, England, Scotland, Ireland, Palestine, Scripture World, United States, a quantity of books and 12 lead inkwells.

1865: [Ill] On June 30 the Superintendent of Education visited Esquimalt School and, in his report noted, "books are very old and dilapidated and of every kind. One good map of the world and a small blackboard. Slates insufficient."

1865: [Ill] Continuing his visits, the Superintendent of Education took the stagecoach to South Saanich school on July 1 and noted "The books used are Serjeant’s 1st and 2nd Readers. There are no maps and no blackboards."

1865: [Env; Ill] By July 6, the Superintendent of Education was in Nanaimo where teacher Cornelius Bryant was squabbling with the local Anglican preacher. "The children are generally rough and stupid. Little corporal punishment. School opened and closed with a prayer. Only one Catholic family in Nanaimo." "Enough 3rd, 4th and 5th Readers for 50 pupils, Grammars for 40, arithmetic exhausted ... There are 200 slates (their sale goes to buy coal), eleven large maps, and a blackboard and an easel." "The teacher, Mr. Bryant, is from Staffordshire, is a man of little education and bad health, but is very painstaking. There must be some provision for cleaning the school and for coal."

1865: [Ill] During the year, Esquimalt School takes deliveries. On August 25, one Cornell’s Geography, six Town’s Spellers, 24 Chambers Copybooks. On September 4, 1865 the school gets another six Town’s Spellers. (http://www.bcarchives.gov.bc.ca/cgi-bin/visual/img_txt/dir_68/a_01934.txt)

1865: [Env] On September 30 and October 10 Cornelius Bryant, teacher at Nanaimo School, writes to Alfred Waddington, Superintendent of Education, saying a local Minister wants to do adult education at the school. He also asks Waddington to send him a clock. Waddington claims one was sent a fortnight ago. Did it fall off the stagecoach? (http://www.mala.bc.ca/homeroom/alf.htm)

1865: [Con] Telegraph Creek on the Stikine River in northwest B.C. becomes the site for a plan to connect North America with Europe by stretching a telegraph line from the U.S., through B.C., Russian America (as Alaska was known) Siberia and Russia. The project collapsed in 1867 when a rival company laid a cable across the Atlantic Ocean. The Klondike gold rush revived interest in communications and, in 1899, the government of Canada financed a cable that went north through Telegraph Creek, Atlin and into the Yukon. But the chatter of morse code didn’t ease the isolation and, as late as 1957, it was still an event when someone reached Telegraph Creek in a car. In 1971 the residents were debating the wisdom of trying to get electricity and telephone service.

1866: [Env] On November 2nd, the Board of Education awards the following sums of money for equipment - Nanaimo, $100 for a school bell; $200 for gymnasium apparatus; Craigflower, $140 for building a kitchen; South Saanich, $120 for a boarded ceiling, boarding in the basement and a well.

1866: [Ill; Man] On April 17 the Superintendent of Education sends a box of books to W.C. McKenzie, the teacher at Lake District school. The box contains three copies of Sullivan’s Grammar, four of Cornell’s Geography, 12 Copybooks, 12 penholders, 100 slate pencils ("better than the last lot") and some blotting paper. In a separate message the Superintendent tells the needy teacher "the stage leaves tomorrow evening and will take the bundle gratis, if explained."

1866: [Ill] On July 2 the Superintendent of Education asks his assistant to "deliver to Mr. C.N. Young at South Saanich School" six copies of the 4th Reader, six copies of the 3rd Reader, six copies of the Spelling Book (superseded), one box of pens, one bottle of ink, one small notebook (25c), 100 good slate pencils and some pasteboard.

1866: [Ill; Man; Env] Schoolbooks shipped via the Panama Canal and Cape Horn reach Victoria on January 18 and July 20. Those via Panama cost $327 and those that went around the Horn $326. There are 1046 via Panama and 790 from around the Horn. Included are 12 copies of Elements of Geometry, 150 of First Book Arithmetic, 75 of Ince’s History of England, two of Pott’s Euclid¸ 25 of Sullivan’s Spelling - Superseded two sets of abacus measuring 15" x 13" x 20" x 17." In the two shipments that have come from England there are also maps, globes of the world and seventeen dozen lead inkwells. (http://www.carto.com/maps/9903045.htm)

1866: [Env] Turf wars in Nanaimo! On August 27 the Superintendent writes to Cornelius Bryant, teacher in Nanaimo. "A complaint has been lodged with one of the members of the Board of Education by Rev. Mr. Lewis, that you have latterly refused him the use of our school for the evening adult school."

1866: [Ill] On December 11 the Superintendent informs C.N. Young, Teacher at South Saanich School "I regret to say we have no more Cornwall’s Geography on hand, and we are obliged to make use of Cornell’s - though very inferior. As soon as our educational matters are placed on a solid footing I shall propose ordering a quantity of the former."

1871: [Ill; Man; Env] On November 20 the government printer produces An Act for Establishing of Schools in the Province of British Columbia. "Technology" will be incorporated in the new schools. This from a letter to Hon. J. McCreight. "All apparatus required in schools, such as maps, globes, blackboards should be supplied by the Department and paid for out of the fund set apart for the purpose. All textbooks used in schools should be purchased by the Council for Public Instruction and sold to all pupils attending the public schools at cost price .... Your obedient servant, Thos. Nicholson"

1872: [Ill]: Uniform school textbooks are introduced by John Jessop, first Superintendent of Education, student and friend of Egerton Ryerson. The first readers were the Canadian Series of School Books. (http://www.mala.bc.ca/homeroom/jessop.htm)

1872: [Ill; Env] In his first annual report on public schools John Jessop, superintendent of education, noted that Miss Georgina Sweeney has been appointed to teach at $40 a month and in a room provided by a sawmill but that "desks blackboards etc" are required.

1872: [Ill; Env] In his annual report the superintendent notes that "only six schools are properly furnished with maps; four are partially supplied, mostly with very old ones, and for political geography, worse than useless; while six were without maps of any description. In all schools there is a great want of blackboards."

1873: [Ill; Env; Man] The first school in what became Vancouver was formed for the children of workers at Raymur’s sawmill and others living around Carrall and Water Streets. The school was built amongst stumps and slash in a clearing where today’s Dunlevy St meets the harbour. It was a one-room school, 18’ x 40’ big and the six Miller, two Alexander, four Patterson children as well as a couple who had jumped ship, had copy books and slates but no blackboards. But what they lacked in technological sophistication was compensated for by their teacher - "young and pretty" Georgia Sweeney, daughter of a machinist at the mill. There was a wood stove to combat winter chills and, at one point an organ for sing-songs. (http://www.mala.bc.ca/history/homeroom/1870.htm)

1882: [Env] In May, Mr. Teague, Architect, issues specifications for a new Victoria High School. Concerning equipment declares "Blackboard in large room, and classrooms to extend from wainscot, up 5 feet and round the walls, to be made of choice and extra-dry cedar 1" x 12" matched boards, smoothed in clear and even manner and finished on top with a light cap and mould."

1883: [Ill; Env] Miss Agnes Cameron, who has replaced Miss Sweeney as teacher at the Hastings Sawmill School, posted a notice on the schoolhouse door "Irate parents will be received after 3 p.m."

1884: [Env] A second high school opens in New Westminster. Others are established in Nanaimo (1886), Vancouver (1890) and Nelson (1901).

1888: [Ill] The B.C. Stationery Company presents a free blotting tablet to all customers. And, in an adroit marketing move each of them noted that a "full list of authorized textbooks will be found on the back on the tablet." These were the books previously authorized by John Jessop.

1890: [Env] On November 30, T. Hooper, Architect, finishes the specifications for the new Vancouver Public School. In the school there will be a "teachers platform. Build platform 8" high where shown on plans with 2" joists spaced at 16" centres. Make floor of 1" x 4" T & G 1 x 7 risers. Cove and nosings to complete finish." For maps and tackboards "put up 1" x 4" beaded rail around each school-room, six feet below the ceiling, and fit up with 5 spring blind rollers 6’ and 8’ long in each room Blackboards are to extend up four feet above the top of the wainscotting all around the school-rooms. Plaster two coats with black mortar and allow $25.00 in estimate for materials to be supplied for this over and above common mortar. There will be no brown coat behind this portion of the work."

1890: [Ill] Lantern slides regarded as "high fashion" and an extension of photography. They were used by the Vancouver Institute and, on the island by various community, church and social groups. A well-delivered lantern-slide talk attracted large crowds and aroused considerable awe and interest. When the arc light in the lantern misbehaved the projectionist had to move quickly to avert a nasty incident. The light was projected through a class slide that was magnified by a lens,. Lantern slides were the precursor to today’s slide projector. Slides were often hand-painted and were significant works of art. (http://www.uclan.ac.uk/library/lantern.htm)

1896: [Ill] On September 3, during the fourth day of the Vancouver Regatta and Carnival, citizens are invited to the Opera House to witness "Komical Koloured Coons," a show of "whimsicalities, absurdities and specialties" involving 50 people, up-to-date songs, jokes and technological wizardry in the form of "mechanical effects."

1897: [Ill] Motion pictures, invented only two years earlier, were playing in B.C. vaudeville houses. Favourites were newsreels of boxing matches, gold prospectors heading to the Klondike, loggers struggling with trees, trains hurtling through canyons and people at picnic grounds and waving at cameras. The first movies deliberately focused on B.C. were deemed "educational." Hence, the Canadian Pacific Railway produced newsreels extolling the virtues of the B.C. landscape. The first talking movie was not produced until 1927. It featured Al Jolson "The Jazz Singer." (http://www.bcarchives.gov.bc.ca/cgi-bin/www2i/.visual/img_med/dir_76/d_04555.gif)

1899: [Env] Presbyterian Minister Alfred Fitzpatrick goes looking for his brother in remote logging and mining camps, is appalled by the decadent living conditions and founds the Reading Camp Association. This association, which evolved into Frontier College was active in B.C. where tents were erected, books secured and, where possible, kerosene lights and woodstoves provided heat and light. Early photographers captured some wonderful shots of this pioneering movement for adult education. (http://www.nald.ca/naldnews/98winter/frontier.htm)

1900: [Ill; Env] J.G. Hodgins suggested that Canadian historical societies give "national and patriotic pictures" to schools to "exert a silent but constant influence on pupils."

1903: [Env; Man] Harry Dunnell is appointed Inspector of Manual Training. The first tools and manipulative technologies reach schools. (http://www.mala.bc.ca/history/homeroom/1900.htm)

1903: [Man] Margaret Jenkins establishes B.C.’s first "domestic science" education centre at the Girl’s Central School in Victoria. It had a coal-fired stove and gas range - paid for by the local Woman’s Christian Temperance Union (http://www.mala.bc.ca/homeroom/homecon.htm)

1906: [Ill] The Vancouver Trades and Labour Council urged the government to print textbooks locally and distribute them free to children in public schools. The government hesitated but, in 1908 established the "free text-book branch" (although the books were never free). As well as books, stationery, maps, flags and globes were provided. (http://www.mala.bc.ca/homeroom/textbks.htm)

1907: [Ill; Env] In the 36^th Annual Report, the Superintendent of Education notes that, although B.C. schoolhouses were generally well furnished "in nearly all the assisted schools, the blackboard surface is inadequate, consisting in some cases of no more than 10 or 12 square feet. The wall maps in many schools are thrown onto shelves and in corners where they get soiled and torn."

1908: [Ill] The B.C. government starts producing "educational" movies showing "B.C. life" with scenes in downtown Vancouver, in sawmills and on orchards in Interior valleys.

1911: [Ill] A magazine entitled The School urges teachers to use "moving pictures." They will save time and make the lesson "more vivid and concrete." At the time, moving pictures were the magic bullet that would rid education of its problems. But, by 1913, leading citizens in B.C. were concerned about the quality of (almost all American) movies been shown in B.C. and the provincial government got into the censorship business with the Motion Picture Act. Seven years later each theatre would be required to show up to fifteen minutes of government-made or sponsored films. But these weren’t popular because the Liberal government made "fake" films to make themselves look good.

1914: [Man] John Kyle appointed Organizer of Technical Education. This signalled the importance placed on technical education in the public school system. At the federal level, manual arts, home economics and technical education had been the subject of a Royal Commission in 1910. (http://www.bcarchives.gov.bc.ca/cgi-bin/www2i/.visual/img_med/dir_23/i_23970.gif)

1914: [Ma] Rural science and agricultural education introduced into elementary schools throughout B.C. Appropriate tools, devices and kits sent throughout the province. (http://www.mala.bc.ca/homeroom/agred.htm)

1915: [Ill] Perhaps as an act of wartime patriotism British Columbia Readers were introduced into schools. By today’s standards they were dull but not much worse than Dick and Jane who would arrive later.

1918: [Con] On December 30, Sam Spetch, a farmer at Owl Creek in a remote location near Pemberton, gazes at the snowy landscape and listens to the cacophony of his children in the background. He picks up a pen and writes to Premier John Oliver asking for a correspondence school to serve children in "this outlandish place." Unfortunately, ten children were needed to form a school and Spetch could not easily round up another six to add to his four. He could have copied other farmers and signed up his farm animals for school.

1919: [Con] On January 16 farmer Spetch again writes to Victoria saying there has been no reply to his previous letter. I "have four children anxious to learn ..." On February 14 the Superintendent of Education writes to Spetch saying "your proposal cannot be successful." On April 22 Spetch writes again, this time offering to pay for correspondence lessons. On April 24 the Superintendent says "no further progress has been made ... you need ten children for a school."

1919: [Con] In Victoria, the Premier realizes Spetch will not easily take no for an answer and confers with officials. On May 13 the Superintendent offers Spetch assistance. He has referred the problem to the Coal Mines Department that conducts courses for miners in remote locations. On May 20, 14 year old Elizabeth Spetch writes to the Coal Mines Department saying she and her siblings will be very "pleased to have the pleasure of taking lessons and will do my best." On May 23 the instructor sends two parcels by mail. The Spetch children diligently return their completed lessons with Elizabeth writing "thank you" letters on behalf of the younger ones.

1920: [Con] In the last months of 1920 the Spetch family lapse into silence and, in Victoria, the teacher is worried. Finally, a letter dated December 10, 1920 reaches Victoria. 14 year old Elizabeth Spetch has died. "Backward" children were found at B.C. lighthouses and, from June 1, 1919 to June 1, 1920 122 correspondence pupils were enrolled. Elizabeth Spetch has started a B.C. tradition. (http://www.mala.bc.ca/homeroom/corresp.htm)

1919: [Con] Captain Robertson, the Dominion Inspector of Lighthouses, notifies Provincial educational authorities of the "educational neglect" of 90-100 children on the lights (the children at Sherringham and Lucy Point lights are particularly backward), 15 at wireless stations and hundreds in the hinterland - some more than 80 miles from a school. (http://www.bcarchives.gov.bc.ca/cgi-bin/www2i/.visual/img_med/dir_90/pdp07480.gif)

1919: [Ill; Env] While adult education illuminaries of the British Empire produced the epic "1919 Report" for British Prime Minister Lloyd George, in the far reaches of the Empire on Canada’s westcoast, John Kyle, Organizer of the Technical Education Branch of the Ministry of Education, sent notes and textbooks to 86 children in remote locations, including thirteen on lighthouses. (http://www.bcarchives.gov.bc.ca/cgi-bin/www2i/.visual/img_med/dir_23/i_23970.gif)

1919: [Ill; Env] On 8 March the trustees of the Denman Island School were given $6.00 for a new stove. On 2 December trustees of Westbank School got $8.55 to pay cartage on school books.

1919: [Man] The "Courses of Study for Schools" published in Victoria. Regarding needlework, teachers are informed that "accuracy in each step must be the ruling throughout in each grade. Insist on clean hands, keeping material clean and work boxes in good order. Avoid tedious description of, and reasons for, mechanical processes."

Concerning school libraries it said "no book hostile to the Christian religion or of an immoral or sectarian character shall be permitted in the school library ... A book loaned to a member of a family in which infectious disease has broken out should not be returned to the library, but its value should be promptly paid and a new book obtained."

1920: [Ill; Env] With funds exhausted, on January 6 the Minister of Education petitioned the Lieutenant-Governor for a special warrant of $7000 ("urgently and immediately required for the public good") for textbooks, maps and globes. This was a bit of a habit. On January 6, 1921 he requested another $600 for the same purpose and on January 31, 1921 $2000.

1921: [Ill] In the January edition of "School Days," a magazine distributed to B.C. schoolchildren and their parents, Clarke and Stuart Co. Ltd advertise their "Edison-Dick Mimeograph" machine. The precursor of today’s photocopier, the mimeograph machine would become an essential tool for teachers and political activists. In B.C. teachers could learn how to use it as summer schools. Ink was forced through a stencil wrapped around a rotating drum. But, as every teacher over 40 knows, stencils were prone to tear and the ink was intoxicating.

1922: [Man] The Provincial Department of Education assumed responsibility for the School for the Deaf at Jericho Beach. Various devices for the hearing impaired in use. (http://www.bcarchives.gov.bc.ca/cgi-bin/www2i/visual/img_med/dir_22/i_00501.gif)

1923: [Env] On March 17 F.H. Hobson, Teacher at Beaver Cove School (five miles S.E. of Alert Bay on Vancouver Island), returns the Annual "School District Information Form" as follows. This place is "isolated with no roads. No amusements apart from parties held in the schoolhouse. No activity or public spirit apart from Ladies Club Society of Methodist Church .... This school district has no regular method of financing for school purposes. The amount collected occasionally, being grudgingly paid by the residents, who are poorly paid owing to mill not operating. The inhabitants in general are narrow minded. The trustees however are of a good type and well educated." (http://www.bcarchives.gov.bc.ca/cgi-bin/www2i/.visual/img_med/dir_143/g_06407.gif) (http://www.bcarchives.gov.bc.ca/cgi-bin/www2i/.visual/img_med/dir_148/h_02890.gif)

1923: [Ill] On April 1 Sir Michael Sadler, Vice-Chancellor of the University of Leeds and British Workers’ Educational Association illuminary, addresses a mass meeting in the Hotel Vancouver (under the auspices of the National Council of Education). The same organisation sponsored lantern-slide addresses by Sir Henry Newbolt, poet, and Sir Robert Baden-Powell of Boy Scout fame. (http://pinetreeweb.com/B-P.htm)

1923: [Ill; Env] On October 17, Joe Harwood, President of the B.C. School Trustees Association, questions the motives of monopolies in the school book business. Addressing a conference in Duncan he said "For upwards of a year or more, there has been a great deal of dissatisfaction throughout the Province in the matter of school books. It appears there is a considerable combine controlling the supply of school books and supplies like many other very necessary commodities, the result being that we are compelled to pay three times the value of that which we purchase. This is causing a great deal of hardship to parents."

1925: [Env; Man; Ext] J.W. Gibson’s "rural values" program cancelled. Gibson felt rural populations were declining and had attempted to return a morally bankrupt society to "simple values" through his school agriculture program. He attempted to recruit rural specialists to attract people back to the countryside. But rural parents resist. They want "progress" for their children - not a duplication of the life they themselves led. While Gibson was committed to the spiritual values of agriculture, students and parents were more interested in other options.

1925: [Ill] Moving films in general use in schools and phonograph records employed by French and music teachers. (http://www.intertique.com/The%20talk%20of%20Ohio.htm)

1925: [Env] Vancouver School Board creates a "School of Art" at 590 Hamilton Street in downtown Vancouver offering day and evening courses. This "School of Art" was the predecessor of today’s Emily Carr Institute of Art and Design. The School of Art will develop an expertise in animation. (http://www.eciad.bc.ca/)

1926: [Man] Mr. A.J. Drinkell, proud advocate for his local school at Dog Creek (presumably a one-horse or, at least one dog town), boasts that they have more science equipment than "can be found in Williams Lake School."

1926: [Man] Jessie McLenaghen appointed Director of the Home Economics Branch of the Department of Education. To help overcome the disadvantage of people in rural areas home economics "instructional kits" are made available. (http://www.mala.bc.ca/homeroom/homecon.htm)

1927: [Ill; Man] On October 21 the Superintendent of Education writes to the Council of Public Instruction. "I beg to recommend that the book entitled How to Work With Tools and Wood recently published by the Stanley Rule and Level Plant, New Britain, Connecticut, be authorized as a reference book for teachers on Industrial Arts and in the Junior High Schools of the Province."

1928: [Env] On February 27 Kathleen Lockart, teacher at Three Forks School, completes the annual information form. "There is one small store where a few supplies may be procured, but the nearest general store is in Sandon. Present teacher is baching but supplies own furniture, fuel etc. Few supplies can be provided by board as a means of raising funds are wanting. No library other than books supplied by the Department."

1928: [Env] Horse as Technology! On March 1 Rhoda E. Chattell, the teacher at Fort St. John school completes the annual information form. "Boarding is not good. The only nice place for the teacher is rather a long distance from the school. I board three miles away. I have to keep a horse to go to and from school. One must hire a horse or buy one and feed it." (http://www.bcarchives.gov.bc.ca/cgi-bin/www2i/.visual/img_med/dir_75/d_00900.gif)

1928: [Man] In July, W.K. Beech, Principal of the High School of Commerce at 12th and Oak in Vancouver secures permission from the Education Department to "conduct an experimental class in Gregg Shorthand." He is "anxious to see if it is any better than Pitman." The school at 12th and Oak would become a focus for adult education in Vancouver.

1928: [Ill] On August 15 the Superintendent of Education contacts the Council for Public Instruction and begs to recommend that "the Burnaby High School be authorized to use Scudder’s Easy Latin as a supplementary reader in Latin and Stephens Golden Treasury of Canadian Verse (published by Dent & Sons) as a supplementary reader in English literature.

1929: [Ill] On June 17 the B.C. Council of Public Instruction authorizes a list of supplementary readers for elementary schools. "It was pointed out by the Hon. Hinchliffe that in Grade 1, light supplementary readers of American authorship and publication which appeared on the list for 1928-29 were dropped from the list for 1929-30; also six from Grade II and one from Grade III. Readers of Canadian and British authorship were added to the lists."

1929: [Con; Env] John Wesley Gibson, formerly of the elementary agricultural education branch, designed to impart "rural values" amongst citizens, appointed Director of the High School Correspondence Branch. His task was to provide correspondence education to citizens in remote areas. B.C. was the first Province to provide this kind of service. (http://www.mala.bc.ca/homeroom/agred.htm)

1929: [Con] Staff at the Elementary Agricultural Education Branch are busy. On February 21 they are engaged in correspondence about lantern slides on soils and poultry, on March 6 they dispatch lantern slides on landscape gardening, on March 13 "poultry slides" are sent to Miss Seaton; on April 12 a set of lantern slides on astronomy are sent to Rev. Priest (Hollyburn). Rev. Priest has a fortuitous name and will presumably give an illustrated lecture on astronomy.

1929: [Con] The May issue of School Days, a magazine given to schoolchildren and their parents, contains an advertisement from the B.C. Telephone Company. "Where handiness is essential the monophone is unexcelled." A monophone was a telephone with a separate ear and mouth piece.

1930: [Ill] In Victoria the "Free Text Book Branch" issues their price list. For English literature Abraham Lincoln is 30c, Glengarry Schooldays is 85c, Huckleberry Finn is 75c, Ivanhoe 65c, Julius Caesar 30c, Lams Tales From Shakespeare 30c and Westward Ho! 50c. Lead pencils are 10c, a 12" English and metric ruler 10c and wall maps $4.50 each. "This list should be kept in the teacher’s desk for ready reference." (http://www.mala.bc.ca/homeroom/textbks.htm)

1930: [Man; Env] School inspectors are hurrying around the Province administering their new intelligence tests to pupils and visiting teachers, many of whom working in trying circumstances. Most inspectors spent only a few hours in each school and did not explore local problems. Rather, their intent was to assess the degree of "backwardness" among pupils. However, the "rural school problem" was intractable and intelligence tests made teachers vulnerable to blame. According to historian Don Wilson, during the entire decade of the 1920’s, administrators "had little idea of the hardship and frustration experienced by hundreds of isolated teachers." (http://www.mala.bc.ca/history/homeroom/rural/s.htm)

1934: [Env] The Extension and Adult Education division of the Department of Education is established and provides courses to unemployed people - in cooperation with UBC, the B.C. Teachers Federation and other agencies.

1934: [Con] Isabel Bescoby, Director of the Elementary Correspondence School, says a mother wrote that her children had been held back because they had no crayons. Bescoby put 20c in an envelope and sent it to the woman with a note drawing attention to crayons sold in the Eaton’s catalogue. Another mother had written about the lack of a blackboard. "I have tried various articles as a substitute ... including the tops of black gumboots tacked side by side on the wall. But it is makeshift and unsatisfactory." (http://www.mala.bc.ca/homeroom/corresp.htm)

1934: [Env; Man] The ebullient John Kyle, energetic program planner and educational enthusiast, entices teachers to his summer schools held in Victoria and Vancouver. Here they can learn penmanship, typewriters and the other new gadgets. For example, as well as typing, "instruction will also be given on cutting stencils and running them off on the mimeograph." Kyle wanted to promote new technology but also had a good eye for fun and games. Hence, there were dances, picnics and a holiday atmosphere. Moreover, "by special arrangement with the Crystal Gardens, advantageous terms are being offered to Summer School students wishing to visit the pool." (http://www.bcarchives.gov.bc.ca/cgi-bin/www2i/.visual/img_med/dir_23/i_23970.gif)

1934: [Ill; Env] On July 19 the Victoria Press reports "Extramural activities at Victoria’s Summer School this season reached a high point this week, with the regular dance and swimming party at the Crystal Garden yesterday evening, a song recital at the High School tomorrow night and a visit to the museum for a lantern lecture this evening." The lantern lecture was by F. Kermode, Curator of the Provincial Natural History Museum. He used 100 lantern slides "showing some of the famous museums of the world." "John Kyle, Principal of the Teachers’ Summer School, introduced Mr. Kermode."

1935: [Con] On February 5, Isabel Bescoby, the erudite and passionate head of the Elementary Correspondence School made a broadcast on Radio Station CRCV extolling the virtues of correspondence education. Bescoby had no time for pessimists who questioned the standards of correspondence education and, when resources were not available, often reached into her own pocket to get pens, papers or other materials to a needy student. When confronted by critics - harping on about low standards - Bescoby would read from letters received from appreciative students.

1935: [Ill] Kyle’s Victoria Summer School is in full-flight once again with the usual round of swimming, talks and picnics. There is a noteworthy illustrated lantern lecture. "Deploring the pervasive ugliness of man-made things that constitute one’s environment in the New World, Arthur Lismer, one of the noted Toronto Group of Seven, gave a fascinating talk to a big audience ... on the subject ‘Art in a Changing World’." Best of all, he showed lantern slides. These were "very skillfully operated by Mr. Young." (http://www.groupofsevenart.com/)

1935: [Env; Man] On January 1 C.E. McDonald succeeded Mr. Lawrence as Principal of the Jericho School for the Deaf and Blind. There were three major buildings and also "a few old barns for four or five cows, and old white horse, Jack, a large dilapidated chicken house to accommodate 100 or more white chickens and a small greenhouse." Inside, the School had "special tilting-type desks, magna-type textbooks and magnifiers." (http://www.bcarchives.gov.bc.ca/cgi-bin/www2i/.visual/img_med/dir_22/i_00501.gif)

1936: [Env; Man] In July there is a Summer School for Teachers at the Vancouver School of Art, 590 Hamilton Street. Under the direction of C.H. Scott, it covers Drawing and Painting, Design, Colour and School-Room Crafts, Other Crafts and Commercial Art.

1936: [Con] Canadian Broadcasting Corporation founded and begins cooperation with B.C. schools. The Okanagan Valley Teachers’ Association airs six programs on music appreciation on Station CKOV, Kelowna. This sparked considerable interest in radio as an aid to education in B.C. (http://www.mala.bc.ca/history/homeroom/radio.htm)

1936: [Con] Following the success of the Okanagan educational radio broadcasts. The Minister of Education, G.M. Weir, establishes a committee to expand the work.

1938: [Man] The Province assumes responsibility for Captain Norman Young’s Vancouver School of Nautical Navigation. The west coast of B.C. has already acquired its reputation as the "graveyard of the Pacific" and is emerging as one of the major site for tugs, barges and booms. In addition, numerous craft are chugging up and down the coast servicing isolated areas that can only be reached by sea. Supported in part by federal authorities, Captain Young’s school was equipped with the up-to-date navigational aids of the time.

1938: [Con] On March 21 the CBC started broadcasting programs such as "Musical Pathways," "Elementary Science" and "Social Studies" in B.C. In Vancouver this was on Radio Station CBR. (http://www.radio.cbc.ca/index.html)

1938: [Ext; Con] The Elementary Correspondence School, sparked into life by Sam Spetch’s initiative in 1919, is meeting the needs of adults and children in remote locations. "With each set of twelve lessons, pupils are sent a supply of practice paper, ruled lesson paper, drawing paper, four small envelopes (9" x 12") for mailing completed lessons to the school and a sheet of stickers."

1939: [Ext] With children on light stations, other remote coastal and thinly populated forest communities in the centre and north of the Province, the British Columbia Radio School was organized in conjunction with CBC and the Provincial Department of Education. (http://www.mala.bc.ca/history/homeroom/radio.htm)

1939: [Con] The Correspondence School is staffed by skilled writers who go on a public relations offensive. Adults and children enrolled in the Correspondence School "represent a vivid cross-section of B.C. life; children of lighthouse keepers and trappers, of homesteaders and telegraph operators, of ranchers, loggers and miners, of people of all classes ... If the children live more than three miles from a school they may receive lessons by mail"

1940: [Env] From 1927 onwards, pupils in Vancouver schoolrooms gazed at a sepia reproduction of the ‘Fathers of Confederation’ (presented by the Canadian Club). In 1940, courtesy of the Kiwanis Club, this was joined by a coloured picture of the Union Jack. In some classes there were also scenes of British soldiers capturing Quebec, signing the Magna Carta or fighting in the Battle of Trafalgar. Open shelves held atlases and "class-sets" of textbooks. Desks were screwed into the floors and there was a hole for an ink well or, easier to spill, an ink bottle. A pencil trough was carved across the top of the desk. Steam radiators burbled and the bell divided up the day. In Neil Sutherland’s words, technology was not innocent. Rather, it represented the triumph of "formalism." (http://www.canadianclub.ca/cdnpage.htm)

1940: [Env] Children entering classrooms in Vancouver’s schools found them dark and gloomy. According to Neil Sutherland, there were "incandescent bulbs, usually encased in milky glass globes, hung from the ceilings. In a context of ‘constant watchfulness’ these were only turned on when teachers or sometimes even principals made the important decision that artificial, light was really necessary." Such caution could be attributed to the exigencies of war helped, in some cases, by excessively authoritarian teaching styles.

1940: [Ext] Ken Caple appointed Director of School Radio Broadcasts. Under his direction the school produced program guides and manuals for teachers. by 1942 students in more than 500 schools were receiving the broadcasts. Correspondence pupils were urged to listen to the B.C. Radio School Just over 1,012 children and 150 adults were enrolled in the Correspondence School in 1938-39. (http://www.mala.bc.ca/history/homeroom/radio.htm)

1941: [Ext; Con] National Farm Radio Forum launched. This was a cooperative program of the Canadian Association for Adult Education and the CBC. In B.C., as elsewhere, farmers and their families were organized into listening groups. After the broadcast on a relevant topic (such as agricultural policy, international trade, farm life) groups would discuss questions posed and send feedback to the regional and then the national office. Feedback would be summarized and incorporated into a subsequent broadcast. More than 40 countries emulated this Canadian innovation. Today, the only remnant of this broadcasting tradition is CBC Cross Country Checkup, a radio "talk show."

1943: [Ext; Con] Using the Farm Forum as a model, and considering the urgency of wartime conditions, the CBC and CAAE got together and started the Citizens Forum which continued for twenty years. The organizers wanted to build a Canadian consciousness concerning contemporary issues and contribute to dialogue about post-war life in Canada. Older educators steeped in the liberal tradition often look back at these as the halcyon years of adult education in Canada.

1946: [Ill; Env; Man] On May 13th, Dr. G.M. Weir, Minister of Education, gets up to speak to the B.C. Library Association conference in the Malaspina Hotel, Nanaimo and declares that B.C. needs "library extension" to "curb juvenile delinquency" and to "promote adult education." On the latter matter, he looked across the Georgia Strait and called on UBC to establish an Extension Department for 15-20 fulltime Professors and Lecturers. (http://web.ucs.ubc.ca/bcla/)

1947: [Ill] Children in B.C. were given new readers. Fun With Dick and Jane were standard fare from 1947 to 1965. There wasn’t much in the adventures of Dick and Jane that resonated in B.C. and little recognition of the cultural make-up of the province. The books were published by W.J. Gage and Coy.

1948: [Env] After World War II and up to 1950 Vancouver schools continued to depend on blackboards. Blackboards covered two or even three sides of a room. As Neil Sutherland noted, "on one panel of the blackboards the teacher or some favoured pupil had gently tapped chalk brushes on onionskin stencils to etch out a ghostly scene appropriate to the season …. Another panel displayed the list of classroom monitors, whose tasks included cleaning blackboards and chalk brushes (never on the side of the school), operating the pencil sharpener, filling ink wells from copper containers or glass bottles with delicate glass stems, watering plants, and so on. Beneath the monitors came the ‘detention’ list.

1948: [Con] On October 5, Radio Station VE7N1 goes on the air at the Jericho School for the Deaf and Blind. The equipment was supplied by Captain Grant and Captain Purtell of the army. Unfortunately, a few years later, the army decided they wanted the gear back and left a cadre of unhappy deaf and blind ham operators at Jericho. At the time, this was the only "blind" ham station in Canada. In view of the fact the army base was right next to the deaf school one wonders why the equipment didn’t come back over the fence on a rainy Vancouver night.

1948: [Ill] Bertha Rogers issues a Home Economics Bulletin about "special films." The first is entitled FOUR NEW APPLE DISHES, is 11 minutes long, has sound and colour, is made by the National Film Board and is 400 feet long. "A film giving four apple recipes in detail, and showing the choice of apples for different purposes." The second, MAKE IT OVER, 22 minutes with sound, made by the NFB and 800 feet long. "This film deals with the Government Remake Centres across Canada, planned to conserve materials which must go to the armed forces, and to assist the women of Canada in making over old garments of good material into smart new clothes for the family". The third, MAIN DISH "shows the great variety of meat cuts available to the thrifty housewife and the importance of knowing them." Films were available from the provincial Department of Visual Education, 704 Yates St, Victoria.

1949: [Ext] Loretta Parker complains about the impact of educational radio broadcasts on family life. In the Vancouver Sun, December 31, she notes "because my 6-year old takes Correspondence School there are caterpillars in the kitchen ... In a large carton between the table and stove repose ten potential Lepidoptera, bemused and fuzzy ... "Do they have to be so close to the stove? I enquire of my son. With authority he replies "On the radio the man said if a person’s has pets a person’s got to look after his pets" "Yes, but do they have to be so close to the stove? I ask. "They’ve got to be warm" says my son.

1957: [Ill] A 16 mm black and white film entitled The Wall is shot to illustrate the work at the Jericho School for the Deaf and Blind.

1957: [Con] At the height of the Cold War the U.S. is stunned when Russia launches a dog named Laika into space aboard their Sputnik satellite. Somehow the much vaunted "free" market had been duped by communists. In the U.S. the blame (for falling behind) fell on schools and launched an obsession with "competency-based" approaches. But, in B.C., citizens gazed at the blinking ball passing overhead and speculated about how satellites would help get education and other services out of the lower mainland and across the mountains to the interior and the north. The space race would put Americans on the moon a decade later and, in B.C., satellites would alter the nature of education.

1957: [Env] G.D. Kilpatrick, Supervisor of Audio-Visual Education at the Vancouver School Board, complains to the Assistant Superintendent of Education about the volume of audio-visual aids being trucked around the City of Vancouver. "At one school last week, the driver was obliged to deliver 14 large bundles of mimeographed materials, one carton of books and our A-V aids." At the time the driver had to deliver or pick up items "in no less than 33 schools in one day," opined the clearly irritated Supervisor.

1958: [Con; Ext] On May 11 Radio CJVI broadcasts a program about the Correspondence School recalling the Spetch family and the children of light keepers at Sherringham and Lucy Points.

1961: [Ill, Man] During a May conference at the Clover Park Radio and T.V. Centre in Washington State, videotape recording is cited as a "new method of recording pictures and sound on magnetic tape. This replaces the movie kine."

1961: [Env] Coolie Verner appointed UBC’s first Head of the Department of Adult Education and works on his "conceptual schema" which distinguishes educational methods from techniques and devices. Most importantly, he claims "devices cannot teach." They are merely aids to learning. Although Verner was keen on devices he rarely used them - preferring buzz groups and other discussion techniques. However, just before dying of cancer he agreed to a series of audiotaped interviews. These are vintage Verner - theoretically incisive, opinionated, gossipy and fascinating. (http://www.library.ubc.ca/spcoll/ubc_arch/u_arch/verner.html)

1962: [Ill] The man driving the Vancouver School Board "A-V supplies" truck has been challenged by school principals and others when seen on school property. He has requested an "identifying uniform." On May 22, J.E. Robertson, Secretary-Treasurer of the School Board writes a snippy letter to the beleaguered delivery man saying the Board declines his request for a uniform.

1962: [Ill, Man; Env] On December 14, H.O. Hayes, Vancouver School Board Personnel Assistant, recommends hiring a fulltime artist to prepare "picture sets, charts, dioramas, and models for use in the classroom and as T.V. props, movie slides, sub-titles etc for use in the School Board’s public relations program."

1962: [Ill] Bill Orr, Coordinator/Director of the Vancouver Film "Documentary Showcase" offers every citizen of Greater Vancouver "the finest in documentary film, both feature and short length." This series was accompanied by relevant readings and sponsored by the Vancouver Public Library, the Adult Education Department of the Vancouver School Board, Duthie’s Books and the Royal Bank. It was labelled an FAE (Film in Adult Education) project. (http://www.macneill.com/News/Events/index.html)

1967: [Ill; Env] The Province of B.C. School Building Manual suggests record-players shall have a simple three or four-speed player without automatic record-changer, preferably a semi-professional type ... needles shall be of the dual-mode saphire type ... Tape recorder shall be capable of carrying 1,200 foot reels at a double tape speed of 7.5" and 3.75" per second. And, perhaps with a nod to the patriotic fervour being played out at Expo 67 in Montreal, it was suggested that a school flagpole "should be placed so that it can be seen easily. It is generally desirable for a flagpole to be free-standing."

1969: [Ext] The School Broadcasts Directorate was merged with "Visual Education" to form the Audio-Visual Services of the Provincial Ministry of Education. But radio was about to be usurped by television.

1970: [Con] On August 21 J.R. Hinds, Director of the Correspondence School, writes to Susan Ramstead of Armstrong. "You have the distinction of being the 30,000th pupil to be registered in the Elementary Section of the Correspondence Division." He promises a "memento" if her progress is satisfactory. On her file he places a note to instructors "Watch her progress ...." (http://www.bcarchives.gov.bc.ca/cgi-bin/www2i/.visual/img_med/dir_159/i_51578.gif)

1970: [Env] Marshall McLuhan claims Vancouver is more educationally "avant-garde - experimental and otherwise" - than any other part of Canada. "You mention any new educational feature to a Vancouverite and he will say ‘My gosh, we threw that out thirty years ago’." Vancouver "never had a nineteenth century," claimed McLuhan. (http://www.cios.org/encyclopedia/mcluhan/index.html)

1970: [Man] At UBC, Bill Web of the Institute of Animal Resource Ecology develops a word processing program known as FMT. Like the modern-day HTML, FMT required users to "mark up" the manuscript to tell the computer when to turn various features (underline, upper-case etc) on and off. At night, harassed scholars drink putrid coffee and have vehicles towed by over-zealous attendants while awaiting their FMT output in the lobby of the computer centre. After FMT, UBC bought the University of Alberta’s TEXTFORM as well as TEX and LATEX. But, many users, including the author of this chronology, could see desktop word processors on the horizon and continued using Web’s FMT until the arrival of MSWORD and Wordperfect. Knowledge of FMT is a badge of honour worn by senior citizens at UBC. As the owners of bell bottom jeans know, it’s just a matter of waiting for the "new" fashion.

1971: [Env] John Ellis, Head of the Professional Development Centre at SFU, claims there is a "crisis in higher education overtaking B.C. and revolutionary methods of teaching - including home study through electronic media - in the place of obsolete university campuses - will be required to solve it." He further claims there are "too many sacred cows" in B.C. education.

1971: [Ext] University of Victoria Department of University Extension offers a biology course by cable television. At the same time the "Victor Electronic Remote Blackboard System" (VERB) is used in an experiment teaching courses in Nanaimo (from Victoria). Regular use of the VERB is "being considered." Fortunately for those in Nanaimo, this was just a magic bullet that, when fired into the bush, never reappeared. (http://www.uvic.ca/)

1972: [Con] On July 1, Vancouver’s David McTaggart aboard the yacht Vega (renamed Greenpeace III) is rammed by the French minesweeper La Paimpolaise in the nuclear blast zone off Mururoa atoll. McTaggart’s marine radio - a vital part of his public education program - is jammed by French authorities. Despite McTaggart’s presence in the blast zone, the French explode their bombs in the atmosphere. Paralleling McTaggart’s work is that of the New Zealand Peace/Media Research Project lead by Barry Mitcalfe and Roger Boshier and supported by Radio Hauraki and thousands of ordinary New Zealanders. Peace Media launches three boats - Boy Roel, Magic Isle and Tamure - for the blast zone. Boy Roel left Tauranga on July 2 but had engine problems and lost power. Magic Isle carried Matiu Rata, N.Z. Minister of Maori Affairs and maintained communications. Tamure carried N.Z. educator, writer and activist Maurice Shadbolt and a powerful ham radio set. Three books tell the tale of the N.Z. "peace fleet" and it’s connections to the Vancouver activists. Mitcalfe, B. et. al, Boy Roel: Voyage to Nowhere; Shadbolt, M. Danger Zone; Locke, E. Peace People.

1972: [Ill; Con] Patrick McGeer UBC Professor and iconoclast, later (1975) Minister of Education, sought to open access for those typically denied entrance to Lower Mainland universities and, as well, wanted a dramatic expansion of educational television, the "greatest untapped resource of all." (http://www.mrc.gc.ca/communik/2104/mcgeers.html)

1974: [Con] The Ministry of Education Audio-Visual Services was disbanded and radio broadcasts become the responsibility of the newly created Provincial Education Media Centre. Under the direction of Barrie Black, PEMC embarks on serious television productions.

1975: [Ill] On Sunday April 27 Bob Hunter, Paul Watson and other environmentalists leave Vancouver in the 87’ seiner Phyllis McCormack. Their task is to interfere with whaling operations in the Pacific. Sixty days later they are in small inflatable vessels riding bow waves and interfering with whaling operations aboard the Soviet ship Dalniy Vostok. Greenpeace consolidated its reputation as environmental educator. Most importantly, along for the ride with Hunter and Watson are Fred Easton, operating a movie camera and Rex Weyler, whose still photographs of Greenpeace exploits are central to the success of their campaigns. From the very first campaign the plan was to get "scores of still photographs and yard upon yard of sound movie film." (http://www.project21.org/dos7125.htm)

1975: [Env] The New Democratic Party (Dave Barrett) government creates four colleges in remote parts of the Province. One of them - North Island College - eschews conventional face-to-face methodologies for distance education. North Island is often incorrectly cited as B.C.’s first open learning institution. But this honour belongs to the correspondence school evoked by Sam Spetch’s persistence in 1918. However, in the innovative 1970’s, North Island led the way. At this time, the rural colleges were significantly more interesting than those in the cities.

1975: [Ext; Con] The Provincial Educational Media Centre (located at BCIT) commissions UBC’s Roger Boshier to evaluate the impact of its Science and Society program, television series designed to make science intelligible to ordinary citizens and hosted by a more-or-less unknown UBC geneticist - David Suzuki. (http://www.vkool.com/suzuki/biography.html)

1975: [Ext] Left-wing, milk-crate, broadcasting arrives in the form of Vancouver Cooperative Radio. Beginning with a Marx in the Morning style the station evolves into a lively arena for local interest groups - such as the poor, gay, immigrant and non-English-speaking groups. It is run entirely by volunteers and funded by donations. By 1998 it is, appropriately enough, broadcasting from a building previously occupied by a failed bank. Co-Op Radio is on FM mono 102.7 FM.

1975: [Env; Man] The Police Academy moves from the Seaforth Armouries near the Burrard Bridge out to the new Justice Institute of B.C. at Jericho, site of the old school for the deaf and blind. The Police Academy wants to get away from the flat-footed rule-bound cop image and embrace participatory forms of education. An apartment is created where, under video surveillance, trainee police officers attempt to deal with domestic disturbances (staged by actors from professional theatre companies). The JIBC philosophy was progressive and deliberately eschewed excessive "lecturing" and other didactic techniques. (http://www.jibc.bc.ca/)

1976: [Env] Patrick McGeer visits the British Open University. As well as wanting to erect a floating bridge across Georgia Strait, he becomes an enthusiastic advocate of open learning. (http://www.optn.ac.uk/about-us/about.html)

1976: [Con] The Federal Department of Manpower and Immigration requested that the Vancouver School Board cooperate to evaluate a "computer-assisted counseling program - the Guidance Information System." It was a product of the U.S. "Time-Share Corporation." In the end, three Vancouver schools tried the system but, like so many other magic bullets this one exploded with a small pop and then fell flat on its face.

1976: [Con] Remembering the glory days of the Farm Radio and Citizens Forums, and stimulated by the election of a separatist government in Quebec, the Canadian Association For Adult Education and CBC again attempt to animate public discussion about the future of Canada in a program called People Talking Back. In B.C. discussion groups are organised by local Extension workers but achieves mediocre results. Canada is no longer in a wartime emergency and citizens are glued to television sets.

1976: [Ext] McGeer appoints UBC geographer Walter Hardwick as Deputy Minister of Education. Like the Minister, Hardwick had visited the OUUK and was impressed by the extent to which television could build a decentralized system of post-secondary education in B.C. Neither had much patience with naysayers and guardians of standards in universities who regarded distance education as second-best. (http://www.geog.ubc.ca/people/people.cgi/Walter_Hardwick)

1976: [Env] A travelling commission, chaired by adult educator Ron Faris, explores the utility of "lifelong education" in B.C. and, while very much nested in a social democratic ethos of adult education, endorses the use of technology to overcome access difficulties in B.C.

1976: [Ext] Hermes satellite launched. Uses a super high frequency of 14/12 ghz bands. In BC exponents of distance education use Hermes in a series of experiments designed to foster "two-way" classroom interaction between the Lower Mainland and Interior of the Province. Hermes could transmit to small earth stations with dish antennas. The first classes over Hermes were stiff and boring. However, many people were thrilled by the notion of seeing and talking with folk at the other end of the province. (http://www.bcarchives.gov.bc.ca/cgi-bin/www2i/.visual/img_med/dir_25/i_25602.gif)

1975: [Con] The National Film Board Challenge for Change program was entering its last phase. Having started in the late 1960’s most of the action was in Ontario, Eastern or Central Canada where film and video were used to orchestrate dialogue between marginalized groups and those in power. One of the most enduring outcomes of Challenge for Change was the Fogo process designed by the NFB and the Memorial University Department of Extension Services. In B.C. video was used in Surrey where citizens "spoke" their opposition to plans to locate an oil refinery nearby. Challenge for Change sparked production of many beautiful videos and movies but, when it started having an impact the Federal government, growing tired of being criticized by a federal program, withdrew its support. An outstanding Challenge for Change film was Boyce Richardson’s Cree Indians of Misstasani. (http://www.nfb.ca/)

1976: [Env] Alan Clapp and other Vancouver activists create superb outdoor ampitheatres at Jericho Beach for Habitat Forum (the "alternative" to the U.N. Conference on Human Settlements being held in downtown hotels). Using school children and prisoners from nearby institutions, logs retrieved from the beach and other appropriate technologies, Clapp and colleagues create a learning environment that hosts Buckminster Fuller, Barbara Ward and other environmentalists. Margaret Trudeau urges activists to "do it yourself ... don’t depend on politicians." In the summer of 1976 Vancouver begins to approximate the kind of "learning society" envisaged by the architects of lifelong education. (http://www.iisd.ca/linkages/habitat/recent.html)

1976: [Ill; Man] In many schools and on most college and university campuses in B.C., students were making video recordings with the National Panasonic Portapak or the Sony equivalent. The equipment was heavy and reel-to-reel tapes had to be threaded with care. Pointing the camera at the sun invited disaster. Much hilarity and some embarrassment flowed from the fact many students forgot the camera had a built-in microphone. The contest betwen Sony’s betamax and National’s VHS is in full flight. One will prevail.

1977: [Man] B.C. Tel Education Centre using computer-assisted learning programs - TICIT and PLANET. These systems were good at giving feedback but not appropriate for "deep" learning. Moreover, after a while, learners grew bored with the idiot computer that delivered cute feedback but kept cycling through "do loops." However, at the time, the B.C. Tel Education Centre in Burnaby was one of the most technologically-sophisticated in the province. The company knew they stood on the threshold of intensive competition in the tele-communications industry and decided to focus on "learning." (http://www.education.bctel.com/)

1976: [Env] With an astonishing lack of foresight and citing "financial exigency," the UBC Faculty of Education closes its Department of Communications, Media and Technology. Some faculty - including some with tenure - leave the university. Others transfer to different departments. All that remained was an "A-V centre" charged with loaning equipment. To this day, there are rooms full of unused television and other equipment in the UBC Faculty of Education. Later, the lack of a faculty focus on technology would lead to the "lone ranger" approach - where individual faculty members, or small pods of like-minded people, "go it alone." In this metaphor, Tonto is the impoverished graduate student hired to help the overworked faculty member.

1977: [Ext] During the 1977 seal hunt in Newfoundland, Paul Watson and other Vancouver activists charter helicopters to fly them and their guests to the front. On March 15 there is chaos when French actress Brigitte Bardot joins the protest. Her entourage includes a three-man television team making a documentary film of her visit, various still photographers and the pilot of her Lear jet. Vancouver educator-activists flew her to their camp at Belle Isle. Watson complained about "rude reporters snickering and elbowing each other." (http://bcn.boulder.co.us/campuspress/april41996/greenpeace4496.html)

1977: [Ext; Con] In September, Patrick McGeer announces the Satellite Tele-Education Project (STEP). The task was to "bring the educational mountain to Mohammed. Television is one medium that can replace bricks and mortar very effectively, delivering learning right into the living room." McGeer is also thinking of John Ellis’s sacred cows that need a shake-up. However, when the costs are calculated, the obsession with satellites doesn’t last long. Even though seen at a distance a talking-head is still a talking head.

1977: [Ext; Con] Between October and December, about 95 hours of interactive television is broadcast from the B.C. Institute of Technology (in Burnaby in the Lower Mainland) to a network of five other sites. Although interactive, these programs were not very compelling. For many participants the ability to see a talking head in a distant location didn’t represent much of a development.

1977: [Env] In November, Patrick McGeer, frustrated with obduracy and slowness of vested interests in universities, creates controversy by suggesting that the British Open University set up a branch-campus in B.C. In B.C., would Britannia waive the rules? Those in the know knew McGeer liked to conquer mountains and leap fjords and something was about to change.

1977: [Env] In December, Minister of Education Pat McGeer lobbies cabinet colleagues and proposes establishing an Open Learning Institute under the Colleges and Provincial Institutes Act. The proposal unleashes a storm of criticism in universities who feared competition from a "distance" provider. The move was criticized as typical Canadian "branch-plant" thinking. The same arguments (about lowered standards) hurled at Lord Perry, founder of the OUUK, are heard in B.C. Meetings with university Presidents are acrimonious and, in one memorable incident, one stormed out in a huff. Sixty-two years earlier the same kind of venom had accompanied the birth of UBC. McGeer stands his ground.

1978: [Env] University Presidents separately lobby McGeer and try to create an Open Learning Institute senate comprised of officials from the three universities. To their credit, McGeer and Hardwick rebuff these university attempts to grab hold of the new agency. Later, the same universities that condemned the creation of OLI will plea to be let in on the action. Much later (in the late 1990’s) the notion of distributed learning will be used to question the need for a "single-mode" institution like the OLI (later Open Learning Agency).

1978: [Ext] Federal Department of Communications uses four transponders on the Anik B satellite to broadcast into 1.2 and 1.8 metre antennas mounted on B.C. schools and homes in remote areas. (http://www.crc.doc.ca/crc/education/anik.htm;)

1978: [Env] Open Learning Institute established under the B.C. Colleges and Institutes Act. In June, John Ellis took up his position as Head is largely unable to do much about the previously criticized sacred cows. The extensive role accorded television by Hardwick and McGeer was not viable so the new institute largely depends on print-based approaches. For Ellis, the issue was credibility. Television was "not on." It would take enormous resources to produce credible television broadcasts and better to secure a beachead for open learning with print-based approaches, supplemented, where possible, with television. If Ellis had a particular genius it was his ability to start institutions.

1979: [Ill] On March 4 Vancouver environmental activist and public education expert Paul Watson drives his ship Sea Shepherd into ice floes off Newfoundland. Accompanied by Matt Herron, loaded with cameras, he spends the day and night spraying seal pups with a harmless dye. At dawn, six helicopters land and disgorge authorities of all types. But Herron has already taken dozens of pictures for Geo, Penthouse and other magazines. Seal hunts will soon be a thing of the past and Watson’s reputation as an activist-educator is consolidated.

1979: [Ext] On July 16 at 12.30 (noon) Vancouver environmentalist Paul Watson and crewmates Peter Woof and Jerry Doran steam the Sea Shepherd out of Leixoes harbour, Portugal, intending to ram the rogue whaling ship Sierra. As they approach their quarry they see Capt. Arvid Nordengen glowering at the Vancouverities who are arguing about who should steer and who should take the all important photographs. The 779 ton Sea Shepherd plows into the bow section of Sierra just aft of the harpoon. Watson backs off and, in a second run, hits the whaler amidships, chopping into her "like a hatchet." Accosted by the Portuguese navy the Vancouver activists sail back to Leixoes. Coming abeam the Sierra, they bow triumphantly and make hand gestures popularised by the Prime Minister of Canada. Watson’s Vancouver office is besieged by U.S. television networks. The Leixoes port police accuse Watson of being negligent, a charge he denies, having "rammed the Sierra on purpose." Later, he uses photographs and television to orchestrate a worldwide campaign against whaling. (http://www.seashepherd.org/people/watson.html)

1979: [Ext; Con] In November the Hermes satellite stops functioning. However, as it had lasted a year longer than expected, there has been ample opportunity to explore ways to better serve the educational, health and broadcasting needs of people in remote parts of the Province.

1980: [Man] On April 12 B.C. citizen Terry Fox dips his artificial leg in the Atlantic ocean and starts hopping and running across Canada. Fox has lost a leg to cancer. The daily images of his distinctive gait with one running shoe on his good leg and another on his artificial leg grips the imagination of Canadians. His aim is to educate people about and raise funds for cancer. He runs for 143 days, averaging 42k a day. On September 1, just east of Thunder Bay, he is dragged into an accompanying motor home. The cancer has returned. The run is over. He dies tragically in 1981. In 1988 a Trust is established in his name and the Terry Fox run occurs in Canada and 50 other countries around the world. Over the years more than $250 million has been raised. In July, 1999 a survey conducted by Canada’s National Post newspaper, rates Fox as Canada’s most noted hero. Fox is one of B.C.’s best known citizens.

1981: [Ext] The first UBC/Knowledge Network course collaboration involves Special Education 312 with Ron Neufeld. The course involvesa short broadcast followed by a phone-in segment and is deemed "live-interactive."

1982: [Man] UBC producesan up-dated version of Bill Web’s FMT word processor. John Nightingale has taken over what is now FMT BASIC which runs on the MTS (Michigan Terminal System). Unlike the University of Toronto and other major universities, UBC hands out free computer manuals to whoever needs them.

1983: [Con] The Victoria Public library provides courses in Telidon page creation. Videodiscs and videotex were the heart of Telidon which consumed vast federal resources but was overwhelmed in 1991 when Tim Berners-Lee invented the World Wide Web. These days Telidon is variously constructed as a necessary step in the development of connective technology. Others condemn it as a federal boondoggle that consumed too much money - another magic bullet that landed in a swamp. In Canada, some of the leading exponents of Telidon were University of Guelph agricultural extension workers who saw it as a way to reach farmers in distant locations.

1983: [Con] The UBC Graduate Department of Adult Education purchases a Model 1000A "Remote Teleconference Unit" (for "press-to-talk" audio-conferencing) from Vancouver’s Western International Communications. From the Adult Education base at 5760 Toronto Rd, on the fringes of the UBC campus, one of the first audio conferences is with James Botkin, author of the Club of Rome’s No Limits to Learning and then located in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Later there will be audio conferences with Malcom Knowles, Roland Paulston and other illuminaries. People used to marine or air VHF radio like saying "over" when it’s the other party’s turn to speak. Others forget and chaos reigns. In 1999 Boshier phones WIC for information about this unit but they don’t remember making it!

1984: [Con] Vancouver science fiction writer William Gibson coins the term cyberspace in his first novel Neuromancer. Although his first novel it gains cult status as a new genre labelled cyberpunk. This literature is pessimistic and points to the rise of predatory multinational corporations. As well it highlights the negative effects of technology on everyday life. Neuromancer wins three major science fiction awards and is regarded as one of the breakthrough novels of the 20th century. Swedes are particularly taken with Gibson and, in an interview with Stockholm radio, Gibson claims "I don’t even have a modem." (http://www.josefsson.net/gibson/index.html)

1984: [Ext; Con] By using the video cassette recorder, teachers no longer have to organize lessons around set radio broadcasts. Hence, the B.C. School Radio Service is closed. Another consequence of the VCR was the space created for gay-video and creation of images denied space in mainstream broadcast media. Discovery of the AIDS virus in 1982 encourages mass media to turn on gay men with a vengeance. In Vancouver, as in other places, the gay male body was constructed as the ultimate metaphor of death and disease through the propagation of demonstrably false notions nested in discourses such as "gay cancer." However, in Vancouver, places like the Video-Inn cooperative on Main St, provide safe spaces for making gay - as well as various "other" - video productions. Community video was more to do with connection than extension.

1984: [Ext] The UNESCO National Commissions in the European Region and Ontario Educational Communication Authority note that, in B.C., adults can take a course at home by watching a television broadcast by satellite and cable and can also telephone their instructor "on air." In the Fall of 1983 courses delivered in this manner included Exploring Television With Children, Dealing with the Abused Child, Cinema Appreciation, Violence Against Women and Trauma Management.

1984: [Ill] Famed Brazilian adult educator Paulo Freire is interviewed on video in the Nitobe Gardens at UBC. Later, the cameraman from the UBC Faculty of Education cannot find the camera tape and, to this day, only the audiotrack remains. It is included as one of the devices associated with the Guided Independent Studies Course "Adult Education 412." (http://www.ocpe.educ.ubc.ca/islist.html)

1985: [Man] On March 21 B.C. paraplegic athlete Rick Hansen wheeled his chair out of Vancouver’s Oakridge shopping mall to go for a quick spin. Not out to UBC or Surrey. Just a tour around the world! Somewhat reminiscent of Terry Fox’s run across Canada, Hansen’s Man in Motion tour was a public education program designed to raise public awareness about the abilities and needs of disabled people. Hansen pushed his wheelchair nearly 25,000 miles through 34 countries. He is on the road for two years, two months and two days and, in countries like China, huge crowds trail along beside and behind him. He raises nearly $26 million for spinal cord research, wheelchair sport and rehabilitation. Eventually, this work leads to establishment of the Rick Hansen Institute at the University of B.C. In 1999 Hansen is still at UBC directing the work of the Institute. (http://www.publicaffairs.ubc.ca/reprots/99mar4/cnrp.html)

1985: [Ill] A BCTV News helicopter en route to Victoria monitors a mayday call and finds a man overboard from the sailboat Hard Awyck. He is rapidly being overwhelmed by big seas off Sands Heads lightstation. But, with the helicopter hovering above, Coast Guard rescue crews come to the scene and the man survives. Later the dramatic video footage of this incident is used in boating safety courses. It is almost always greeted by stunned silence but shows the importance of wearing proper flotation equipment.

1985: [Man] One-legged B.C. runner Steve Fonyo vows to run across Canada to complete Terry Fox’s mission and raise funds for cancer. Less sophisticated than Fox Fonyo antagonizes various mayors and officials along the way. But, by the time he dipped his artificial leg in the Pacific ocean he had captured public respect, popular imagination and raised $12 million. After his successful run Fonyo had difficulties adjusting to his new found fame. Whereas Fox had a surfeit of cultural capital, Fonyo had none. But, like Fox before him, it was a gutsy performance and he and his metal leg educated an entire population about courage and cancer. To this day, Fonyo has not received the credit he deserves.

1987: [Ill] British Columbia Film established by the provincial government to assist independent film and video production in B.C. Tax incentives, location scouting and other services are offered. B.C. soon becomes "Hollywood North" and newspaper columnists routinely upset big stars like Richard Gere and Madonna when they reveal the location of their temporary abodes on the ritzy West Vancouver waterfront. In Vancouver and at local universities, citizens grow accustomed to the temporary inconvenience of film shoots. Lord Byng school, on the Vancouver west-side, frequently doubles as an American high school. The X-Files, Millennium, McGiver and other television series are shot in B.C. and stimulate development of film catering, set design, lighting and other industries. In 1995, Mina Shum’s film Double Happiness wins the Berlin International Film Festival Wolfgang Staudte prize for the best first feature. Free Willy, the whale who wanted to get away, is filmed in Howe Sound. (http://www.bcfilm.bc.ca/)

1988: [Con] Papers submitted to the B.C. Royal Commission on Education claim that "telecommunications, like no other technology, has the potential to radically change the basic structure and processes of education." In his submission, Kevin Elder quotes from Cetron, M. Schools of the Future. "In the year 2000, nine-tenths of all homes will be wired with new laser technology and many will receive interactive cable and computer online networking. Students will be able to direct dial their encylopedias and other resources for homework, individual research and study." Mostly nonsense. Another magic bullet fired into the bush.

1988: [Env] Open Learning Agency created by combining the Open College and Open University (previously parts of the Open Learning Institute) with the Knowledge Network (television). Distance education has won some respectability but, as subsequent events show, is in danger of being overwhelmed by its own success. The OLA meets a need in B.C. but its television arm, emulating public broadcasters in the U.S., is soon in the business of fund-raising. Moreover, almost all OLA programs concern job preparation or upgrading. The agency has the ability to reach and link learners in parts of the province but does not make any sustained attempt to analyze or orchestrate actions around the contentious issues of the time - forestry, the collapse of the fisheries, the decline of rural life. In this regard the OLA is much like the community colleges where "community" is a label, not a process. (http://www.ola.bc.ca/)

1990: [Con] Showing a fondness for acronyms, SCOET (the Standing Committee on Educational Technology) is established under the direction of CCEO (the Council of Chief Executive Officers - of Colleges and Institutes) and funded by the provincial MAETT (the Ministry of Advanced Education, Training and Technology). Its purpose is to monitor and assess changes in educational technology and to propose policy directions for the college and institute system. It publishes two reports - The 1991 Educational Technology Inventory: An Assessment of the Current Status at B.C. Colleges and Universities (1991) and Electronic Communication Systems: An Assessment of the Current Status at B.C. Colleges and Universities. Both were based on survey methodologies with dodgy sampling plans, low response rates and non-parametric data analysis. The work is largely atheoretical and nested in a techno-rational (functionalist) analysis.

1991: [Env] Vancouver writer and artist Douglas Coupland publishes his first novel Generation X. Coupland graduated from the Emily Carr Institute for Art and Design in 1984 and enjoyed early success as an industrial designer and sculptor. He wins two Canadian National Awards for Excellence in Industrial Design. Generation X is the story of Andy, Clair and Dag, young people living in Palm Springs. They’re overeducated for their jobs and disillusioned by exploitation and corporate greed. On the margin of various pages Coupland incorporates various "Gen-X" sayings (about technology and other things) that find their way into popular culture. Critical reaction is mixed. (http://wysiwyg://41/http://geocities.com)

1991: [Con] Vancouver’s BLT Productions copyright the computer-animated television cartoon Reboot. The world’s first cartoon fully made with computers concerns a bunch of characters like Bob, Dot and Enzo who live in a computer. The first season ended in April, 1995 by which time the program was broadcast in many countries. The characters are nicely nuanced and the program deftly showcases the sophistication of B.C. technology. Having demomnstrated the sophistication of the technology Mainframe executive seek alliances with educational institutions in B.C. (http://www.mainframe.ca/HOME/index.html)

1991: [Ill] On July 7 a blazing pleasure boat drifts into creosote-soaked pilings holding up the Kitsilano Coast Guard base. People on the adjacent gas dock hurriedly shut off fuel supplies. For several anxious minutes it looks like much of downtown Vancouver will go boom. Coast Guard officers back cutters Osprey and Swift away from the dock. Osprey starts fighting the fire but other vessels at the dock (such as the Relite and a rigid hull inflatable) are destroyed. Fifty boating safety videos and cartons loaded with copies of the Safe Boating Guide and other educational materials are incinerated in spectacular fire. Some of the best videos are on fire prevention. Later a new base is built - on concrete pilings - and the Office of Boating Safety is reestablished. (http://www.ccgrser.org/obs/aboutus.htm)

1991: [Ext] Peter Jepson-Jones, a medical doctor, is HIV-positive at a time when there is still considerable hysteria about and ignorance concerning AIDS in B.C. He decides to make a video journal of his life so as to educate the public. His television series is very "low tech" - showing "Dr. Peter" doing his daily tasks, the onset of blindness and, in a particularly poignant moment, going to a tranquil Vancouver Island cemetery with his parents to select a site for his grave. The series is showing on CBC television and hailed as a triumphant moment for public education. Jepson-Jones eroded much of the fear and ignorance surrounding HIV/AIDS. (http://www.aidsvancouver.bc.ca/service.htm)

1992: [Env] The Standing Committee on Educational Technology (SCOET) in colleges and institutes publishes its report on "issues" affecting the implementation and use of technology. In type much larger than that used elsewhere a boxed-announcement - "SCOET is aware of the current economic realities facing the colleges and institutes. Our system simply does not have the funding to do all things that need to be done." SCOET says it intends to foster "an internationally competitive education system for B.C" and concluded there were four perceived issues - critical needs, support, effectiveness and expectations. In the Appendix, the Open Learning Agency complains that it has the capacity to do educational broadcasts but "institutions do not have the funds to generate the programming to fill it." The report recommends that everyone buy laser-disc players and warns that Windows 3.0 "is rapidly becoming a standard for instructor designed software as well as a platform for generic software such as word processing."

1992: [Ill] C.B.C. television debuts an earnest social television drama about a burned-out white RCMP officer transferred to a small Dene town in the Northwest territories. North of 60 deals almost exclusively with Canadian First Nations people. Although it’s a "cop show" it is beautifully nuanced and has no major crime - no stake outs, car chases, bigtime drug mafiosa or serial killers. There are no Starbucks coffee shops. By its third season the lead role has shifted to a native RCMP officer Michele Kenidi (Tina Keeper). Generally speaking, cops defend law and order (the status quo) but in North of 60 the Mounties do not always "get their man" and Constable Kenidi has to continually negotiate culturally-nuanced meanings with her white male partner (Corporal Brian Fletcher, played by Robery Bockstael). On North of 60 the most prevalent crimes - B & E’s, bootlegging, arson, glue-sniffing and parole violation - usually raise broader social issues that evoke alternative solutions (such as elders sentencing). It is a uniquely Canadian, entertaining, and an important instrument for public education. By the year 2000 it is still running.

1992: [Con] UBC opens an expensive video-conferencing facility. However, there is nothing very alluring about seeing heads talking in distant locations and, after a brief flurry of enthusiasm, the theatre is largely dark. Its proponents then highlight the possibilities of doing job interviews by video. A few foreign Ph.D. students explore the possibility of doing their defence by video but the need to treat students equitably largely mitigates against this. By 1999, UBC media specialists are advertising for people to use the largely abandoned video-conference unit.

1993: [Con] At an international symposium, Don Chapman of the University College of the Fraser Valley, pronounces the "death of distance education - long live distributive learning." "Distributive" is presumably a close relative of "distributed" learning. (http://www.ucfv.bc.ca/online/)

1993: [Con] Minister of Education Art Charbonneau christens high-tech "flagship" computer-based schools such as Burnaby South. Costing about $40 million, Burnaby South has state-of-the-art fibre optics and optically controlled water faucets. According to the Georgia Straight newspaper, "silicon envy pulsed through trustee meetings across the Province … The first critics shook their heads as school storerooms filled up with discarded early-generation computers." By 1999, Burnaby South was having to fly in technicians to service their ancient equipment. (http://south.sd41.bc.ca/bshome.web/)

1994: [Ill] David Suzuki hosts Greening Business, a two-part film for schools by David Springbett and produced by CBC’s The Nature of Things. "In nature," said Suzuki, "nothing is wasted. Everything left behind by one organism becomes food for another. It’s the perfect balance sheet; there are no debits or credits. But that’s not how most businesses operate. Typically industry gobbles up natural resources and returns nothing but waste." The film is in two parts (1 hour, 15 mins; two hours, 30 mins) and won several awards. (http://www.econet.org/bullfrog/catalog/144.html)

1994: [Con] Nanaimo activist Kim Goldberg urges activists to get hooked up to the internet. In her various newspaper and magazine columns she shows environmental, union and other activists how to subscribe to Freenets and Usenet. But she has recently discovered something new and writes "One of the newest and niftiest features to hit the Internet is the World Wide Web - a sprawling collection of interconnected documents, images, databases and archives. WWW can take you exactly where you want to go if you know the correct address (called a URL or Uniform Record Locator) for the ‘home page’. They may look formidable, but once you know what to do with a URL it will seem like an old friend." Yea, except for those complex URL’s which, by the year 2000, had got worse, not better.

1994: [Man; Env] Artists from Vancouver’s Grunt Gallery invite citizens to carve a picket for a fence to be erected around the Mt. Pleasant Community Centre (at Fraser St. and 8th Ave). During the spring more than 200 people draw, carve, wood-burn or otherwise decorate a cedar picket. They range in age from 4 to 93 years old. There are pictures of hands, waves, whales and, as an echo of the urban setting, T.V. sets. The project was initiated by Pat Beaton and Merle Addison. To get around complex issues pertaining to installing art in public places, the organisers simply "replaced" the existing wire fence. The project was publicized in seven languages spoken in the area. Interested participants were offered carving and other workshops. Some of the women participants had never used tools before and afterwards, it was generally agreed the fence project had given people in the neighbourhood a sense of power. In 1995 the Grunt Gallery received and "ethics in action" award for this project.

1994: [Env] Citizens in downtown Vancouver see bus benches sprout provocative messages. For example, at the corner of Nelson and Denman a pink and lavender bench asks "Do you remember Aunt Pearl? They never got married you know! Yes, but listen to this ... She’s been sharing accommodation with one Miss Ruthis Bellamore for over twenty years now! Holymoly! Do you think Aunt Pearl and Miss Ruthie are ... ??!!? Well, whadya know! Go Aunt Pearl, Go!!! Bench artist Lizard Jones says "We like to take a site people are already interacting with and interrupt that interaction ... We’re trying to say to people, ‘Don’t just accept information you get without questioning it.’"

1994: [Ill] Gabriola Island folksinger Bob Bossin records Sulphur Passage¸ a music video/mini-documentary set to his song about the need to protect the Clayquout Sound rainforests. Directed by B.C. filmmaker Nettie Wild, Bossin’s video wins five international awards but, more significantly, helped stiffen activist resolve to protect Clayquot Sound. Bossin was one of the founders of Stringband, folk group that toured for 15 years. Over the years Bossin has used his music and film-making for public education purposes. (http://www.island.net/~oldfolk/bio.htm)

1995: [Con] At UBC, Murray Goldberg experiments with his Web Course Tool (WebCT) in a classroom setting. Like other coursewriting tools, WebCT simulates a face-to-face campus with a cafe, bookstore and other familiar elements. Best of all, it is icon-driven and permits threaded discussions. Later, the relationship between Goldberg, the company formed to develop WebCT and UBC would become targets in critique mounted by social historian David Noble of York University. In mid-1996 Goldberg demonstrated WebCT at a conference in Paris and, in a Linux-like gesture, started giving away free copies. Smart move! (http://www.webct.com/)

1995: [Con] B.C. government announces it wants one computer for every six elementary and one for every three secondary students by the year 2000 [By September, 1997 there was one computer for every eight elementary and every six secondary students].

1995: [Ill] Vancouver’s Guerilla Media take a poke at corporate greed with a series of posters displayed at the du Maurier jazz festival. GM orchestrated a "deMurderer" campaign with posters, brochures and billboards modelled on the tobacco company’s advertising materials. In one poster - Children as seen by deMurderer Ltd a child is shown in the crosshairs of gun scope. Text explains that, based on market share, the duMaurier brand is responsible for addicting more than 28,000 under 16 year old children each year.

1995: [Ext] On August 15 the National Film Board library in Vancouver (along with that in other Canadian cities) is closed. Although costing only $1 million a year to administer, NFB libraries were sacrificed on the altar of budgetary cutbacks. By closing the NFB libraries the federal government was creating even more space for the almost total American domination of Canadian film distribution spaces. After the halycon days of 1974 and the Challenge for Change program wherein film-makers worked with marginalized people in trouble, the NFB was now struggling for its own survival. IN the meantime Canadian film-makers continue to find it difficult to have their work screened in American-owned "Canadian" theatres.

1995: [Con] Simon Fraser University and other partners secure a $25 million grant to establish a TeleLearning Network. It involves a collaboration between university researchers, private businesses and members of the public. Two of it’s "beacon" technologies are Virtual-U, software to create a distributed learning environment and WebCSILE (Computer Supported Intentional Learning Environments) developed at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education (OISE). The massive funding behind this project quickly leads to deployment of corporate jargon and embarrassing moments when expensive software (such as that providing online dance lessons) fails to work in demonstration sessions. "Oh well, the same thing happens to Bill Gates," mutter the leaders as they explain what the audience "would have seen" had the thing worked. Just about every project in the Tele-Learning initiative is nested in a techno-rational or fuctionalist discourses. (http://www.telelearn.ca)

1996: [Con] In her book Learning Networks, SFU Professor Linda Harasim and colleagues claim "the convergence of computing and telecommunications represents a paradigm shift" (p. 271). This is questionable because all forms of open learning or distance education involved converging technologies (such as Isaac Pitman’s use of print-materials and Her Majesty’s mail service).

1996: [Con] At UBC, the Distance Education and Technology group and Murray Goldberg offer Computer Science 315, their first online course. The course is written in Goldberg’s WebCT which is being progressively refined. (http://det.cstudies.ubc.ca/)

1996: [Ill] The Eleventh World Aids conference is underway in Vancouver and delegates see a screening of Paul Wong’s video Blending Milk & Water: Sex in the New World. Wong’s AIDS’s videos blur two educational goals. The first is to distribute information about safe sex. The second is to create space for safely asserting erotic desire in support of consensual decision-making around sex in specific locations that embrace race, class and gender. Vancouver has become a major centre for the production of para-normal and fetishized paranoia - as in the X-Files, The Outer Limits and Poltergeist. B.C. is becoming increasingly un-British and this is increasingly at odds with constructing gay and lesbian as well as straight sexual identities in accord with an anglophile view of the world. As a major video geographer and stalwart at Video Inn, Chinese-Canadian Paul Wong is part of the challenge process but also an important AIDS educator. Blending Milk and Water presents several rarely discussed topics in three languages. With the Cantonese sections this is a distinctive west coast AIDS video.

1996: [Con] At UBC Spencer’s Entomology Museum, volunteers build a web site full of bugs. A resting place for more than 600,000 insects www.insecta.com houses the largest bug collection in the world. The museum’s annual budget from the Zoology Department is $2500.

1997: [Ill] The Jesuit Centre for Social Faith and Justice produces a poster entitled "Exposing the Face of Corporate Rule." It becomes an educational tool in B.C. and elsewhere in Canada. It is sub-titled "Here are the men (one woman) who reaped record profits while slashing jobs." The poster is a compilation of information in the public domain. It lists corporations, their assets, profits, number of job layoffs over five years and the compensation paid to the Chief Executive Officer. Hence, for the Royal Bank - $183.7 billion in assets, $1.26 billion annual profit, 49,011 employees "let go" over the last five years. John Cleghorn, CEO, annual salary of $835,000 with a total compensation package of $2,281,192. The poster identifies corporations as the "real special interest group" and tells a savage tale. The head office of the Catholic church banned the poster from church property and, by so doing, ensured it would be displayed from coast to coast. In a letter to the editor of the Catholic Register, one irate parishioner wrote "the only thing scandalous about the poster was the truth it represented."

1997: [Con] UBC Distance Education and Technology first present Educational Studies 565f, Designing, Developing and Delivering Technology-Based Education, an online course offered in collaboration with Mexico’s Monterey Institute of Technology and Science. Certain UBC students question the theoretical foundations of this course - claiming it is too uncritical. But the Mexican and other non-Canadian students, most of whom occupy important positions, welcome the pragmatic focus. Based on feedback from the first course, adjustments are made. (http://det.cstudies.ubc.ca/)

1997: [Ext; Con] On Thursday morning July 24 the Minister of Education Paul Ramsay rises in the provincial legislature to move second reading of the Technical University of British Columbia Act and unleashes a controversy. Tech BC has a corporate governance structure, is based on a "competency" model of education and, like the virtual universities in the U.S., is designed to offer a significant number of programs online . Tech B.C. will have no tenure for staff members and would be closely allied with corporate elites in B.C. The B.C. Council of University Faculty Associations (CUFA) blacklisted Tech B.C. which was later established in a Surrey shopping mall. Education activists in B.C. are irked by the notion Tech B.C. was constructed as a "flagship for innovation" in B.C. higher education. On June 19, 1997 the Executive Committee of the Canadian Association of University Teachers recommends that faculty not seek positions there. The first President of Tech B.C. was Bernie Sheehan, recruited from UBC. Tech B.C. also hires Tom Calvert, SFU creator of the Virtual-U software. Later, CUFA and TechBC iron out their major differences. Tech B.C. is taken off the blacklist.

1997: [Con] Roger Boshier and five UBC students publish the results of a survey of web courses wherein they presented the Madonna Award for the "Best and Worst-Dressed Web Courses." The winner of the "best-dressed" award is delighted. The winner of the "Drab and Nameless" award is furious. This research was forwarded to Madonna and attracted national and international media attention. Later, Madonna rents a house on the West Vancouver waterfront but shows no sign of enrolling in UBC online courses or participating in video-conferences!

1997: [Con] On November 8 James Page, Executive Secretary of the National Literacy Secretariat claims 42 per cent of Canadians don’t have the ability to function effectively at work or home. The "knowledge-based society" and need for improved literacy is a particular problem in B.C. where the old resource-based economy is giving way to a knowledge-based service-oriented economy. (http://www.nald.ca/nls.htm)

1997: [Con] The West Vancouver Teachers’ Association produces a report dubbed "a litany of woes about virtually every aspect of computer use in West Van. Schools - this in what is considered to be the best-heeled district in the province, computerwise."

1998: [Ext; Con] Vancouver-based Commonwealth of Learning sponsors a Pan-Commonwealth Forum on Open Learning in Brunei. The event is planned in the Vancouver offices by Curtin University’s Colin Latchem and COL’s Angela Wong. For the opening ceremony in Brunei the Sultan sends his two sons. Delegates cannot help but notice the sparkling new theme park standing unused near the polluted harbour in Bandar Seri Begawan. At the COL conference, there is a strong sense of Commonwealth solidarity and the organisation is considerably strengthened. COL is the only Commonwealth organisation located outside London. (http://www.col.org/)

1998: [Con] On April 15 Premier Glen Clark announces the government plans to spend $123 million over the next six years on technology that will enable rural schools to secure access to the "information highway." According to the Premier "as of two years ago, 60,000 British Columbians still had a party line. And 20,000 British Columbians don’t have a phone at all."

1998: [Con] The B.C. government hails the computer at the "teaching tool of the new millennium" but, in places they’ve arrived with more of whimper than a bang. At Dixon Elementary School in Richmond, 350 students share 25 computers (1 computer for 14 students). At McMath Secondary there are 137 state-of-the art computers for 584 students (1 computer for 4 students). Despite the $100 million budgeted for computers, profound disparities exist. (http://www.gov.bc.ca/)

1998: [Ill] At 1.30 a.m. on August 2, the tug Swell and her barge run aground at Shah Point, Valdes Island. Gulftow Salvage and Marine Safety Ltd, the first salvors on scene, were accompanied by film cameraman David Harre (Second Blade of Grass). Footage shot by Harre became the basis of The Forgotten Frontier, a educational television documentary aimed at B.C. fishermen. The program includes underwater footage and interviews with the rescuers and survivors of the Pacific Charmer, a fishing vessel that capsized in Pylades Channel on December 2, 1997. (http://www.stormyseas.com/testimonials.html)

1998: [Con] Canarie (the Canadian Network for the Advancement of Research, Industry and Education) announce that CAnet 3, the world’s first optical network, will operate at 40 gigabits a second, fast enough to transfer the entire 2.5 hour move Titanic in one-fifth of a second. (http://www.canarie.ca/)

1998: [Env; Con] In October the U.S.-based University of Phoenix announce their intention to set-up in Vancouver. Having hired a UBC faculty member to run the operation, this for-profit corporation sets about acquiring premises. Although heavily involved with offering courses online , Phoenix also runs face-to-face classes in what are usually rented premises. Of their 50,000 students more than 45,000 study in classroom settings. The University of Phoenix began operating in the 1970’s having carved out a niche market of working adults. It is now the largest university in the U.S. Faculty are all non-tenured. About a third have a Ph.D. degree. Curriculum is centralized, instructors are given the objectives to be attained and they are not expected to do research. Phoenix is an aggressive marketer and specializes in shaking up sacred cows.

1998: [Env] On December 7, David Strangway, recently retired President of UBC, announces his intention to build a private university in Squamish, B.C. The university will be a small liberal arts college, charge substantial fees and make a particular effort to enrol well-heeled foreign students. Although according no particular priority to technology, the announcement is significant because it signals a deepening of interest in constructing education as a commodity to be sold on the "free" market in the "global economy" where technology is the way to reach distant learners. Critics claim Strangway is still on the UBC payroll and in a conflict of interest. But, as the plan is lubricated by a gift of real estate from a developer who, like other enthusiasts in the area, stand to benefit from having a university in town. Whether the well-heeled foreign students enjoy the smell of the Squamish pulp mills remains to be seen.

1999: [Con] On the weekend of January 19th, 95,000 fuming customers of B.C. Tel’s Sympatico e-mail system are without service because of "soft and hardware problems." Manager Michell Gagne said "it had to do with some e-mail server hardware and we were working with the manufacturer Sun Microsystems." Roll on Y2K!

1999: [Ext] At Elphinstone Secondary School in Gibsons parents trash a proposal by Toronto-based Youth News Network. YNN is modelled after the American Channel One which sends schools "free" computers (about $200,000 worth) and a 12.5 minute daily broadcast containing 2.5 minutes of commercials that is required viewing for students. Parents at Elphinstone Secondary watch a promotional video and vote against YNN. One mother says her daughter "is not for sale." Shortly thereafter, Education Minister Paul Ramsay notes that "YNN is not an acceptable use of class time" and not welcome in B.C. See you later! (http://www.sd46.bc.ca/Elphi/Home.html)

1999: [Con] Burnaby software firm Ingenuity sells $6 million worth of educational software and commits itself to "fighting Americanization" of Canadian culture. (http://www.vrsystems.com/pressroom/prov1898.html)

1999: [Man] Using a small grant from the B.C. Workers’ Compensation Board, Captain Barbara Howe, Master Mariner, tours B.C. using a scale model of a west coast fishing vessel and "hands-on" techniques to teach fishermen about stability. It is a brilliant use of technology for education. However, after only one iteration of the program funds are withdrawn and its future is in doubt. (http://www.wcb.bc.ca/)

1999: [Con] Bryan Strome, 43 year old Kamloops geographer, creates a web site with links to 900 search engines around the world. His "search engine colossus" links users to search systems in the Ukraine, Turkey, China and other "far flung" places. His favourite enemy - "dead links." (http://www.searchenginecolossus.com/)

1999: [Ext; Ill] UBC publishes it’s academic plan for the years 2000 to 2010. The University hopes that, by 2010, "our learning community has state-of-the-art access to information resources." "New educational technology, based largely on expanding IT initiatives, will complement the social interaction so important to effective instruction." The report has arisen from a consultative process that began in 1997. Everyone notices that IT is supposed to complement, not replace, learning face-to-face. The term "distributed learning" does not appear in the report which is printed on green paper.

1999: [Con] On February 24 the director of Vancouver’s Emerge Online told a "new media" conference at the University of Victoria that, with 6.49 million internet users, Canada comes second to the U.S. (for internet use). She claims net users view 959 web pages a month, spend an average of 16 hours a month on line and take an average of one minute to view a web page. (http://www.emerge-inc.com/copyright.html)

1999: [Ext; Con] On April 29th the Georgia Straight newspaper sarcastically notes that Canfor (a B.C. forestry company) has created an online "Tree School" complete with hopping bunnies and chattering raccoons. Children reaching this site learn that "the decision to clear-cut or selectively harvest depends on what kind of forest is planted for the future" and that "habitat concerns are a key element influencing the planning process." The Sierra Legal Defence Fund claims Canfor gets failing grades in harvesting, conservation and stream protection. (http://www.canfor.com/black.html)

1999: [Con] In April the B.C. legislature passes the historic Nisga Treaty and, in 58 of 59 school districts, children watch Carving the Future, an educational video produced by Skeena Broadcasting of Terrace. Earlier, opposition politicians had condemned the video as "government propaganda" designed to build a consensus around passing the Nisga Treaty. But, at the CanPro Awards held in Ottawa on March 22 it won the "News Magazine Special, Small Market Category Award." The video attempts to educate viewers about the First Nations (Native-Canadian) Nisga people, their land, culture and traditions. (http://www.aaf.gov.bc.ca/aaf/treaty/nisgaa/nisgaa.htm)

1999: [Con] On April 14 students from Vancouver’s Prince of Wales high school joined others cycling across Canada. Their task is to explore the culture of each province and territory and relay their findings via digital cameras and a laptop computer to a website at www.chij.com. Students in 1,100 schools are in daily contact with the cyclists. How would Sam Spetch react to kids peering through digital cameras, munching burgers and pounding laptops on picnic tables at "cultural" sites? (http://stargate.vsb.bc.ca/princeofwales/main/right.htm)

1999: [Ext] On April 11, former UBC faculty member and geneticist David Suzuki starts a new educational radio series broadcast (From Naked Ape to Super Species) on Sunday mornings at 11 a.m. The right-wing National Post newspaper and its columnist Terence Corcoran is firing on eight cylinders. He’s not impressed. "During the first three segments ... CBC Radio One managed to air statements that compared modern genetic research to Nazi experiments during the Second World War, described bovine growth hormone as equivalent to "crack for cows", and suggested scientists ... were following in the footsteps of the mad geniuses who developed the first nuclear fission atomic bombs in Los Alamos ... When it comes to the media and science, the media is the leading disseminator of promoter of junk science, and the CBC is emerging as a world-class competitor in the field." Did Corcoran blow a gasket after this outburst?

1999: [Env] On May 6 the Vancouver Sun slams report cards as a "legacy of an age that has little relevance in the modern world." Adopting a Foucaultian perspective, Grade 7 teacher Ross Buchart condemned student reports as a waste of time. "Schooling today takes place in a factory fashioned to serve the needs of the Industrial revolution. The factory (school) is divided for administrative and productive efficiency into departments (classrooms). Under the supervision of a foreman (teacher) workers (students) mould the raw materials (knowledge and skills) into a usable product as they pass along a conveyor belt (grade system) ... As a product of this archaic model, report cards are nothing more than obsolete appraisal instruments that would better serve as museum artifacts. ... The report card is the perfect educational equivalent of the personnel performance review used by industry."

1999: [Env] In the May 1999 issue of Shift magazine, Yuri Doric of Victoria writes "Any course with the words ‘multimedia’ ‘computer animation’ ‘digital’ and/or ‘film’ has a tuition about five times higher than other courses that could just as easily lead you to an equally if not better paying career - plus better conditions and benefits. Can you say ‘cash cows?’" In the same issue a letter writer comments on the fact "new-media" workers live on doughnuts and sleep in their offices. "This whole new spin on the Protestant work ethic - ‘Your work is your life and your life is your work’ - is right out of Stalinist Russia. It sucks." (http://www.shift.com/)

1999: [Ext; Con] Canada is part of the NATO Alliance at war with Yugoslavia with B.C. citizens involved. When the bombing begins in March there is a broad national consensus in favour. But, by May 12, after the bombing of various civilian sites and the Chinese embassy, the Federal New Democratic Party abandons support for the bombing, historian Michael Bliss, conservative politician David Orchard, Serb-Canadians and many others protest and there are misgivings about media propaganda. In a bold move on May 12, CBC Radio One suspend their normal morning program to bring a public education forum Truth, The Media and the War in Yugoslavia. Moderated by Michael Enright, it involved a critical and tenacious audience and six panelists. Shortly thereafter Vancouver NDP Member of Parliament Svend Robinson leaves for Kosovo to check out the situation there. (http://www.radio.cbc.ca/)

1999: [Ill] On Wednesday May 12 the B.C. Institute Against Family Violence launched a public education campaign featuring a video entitled The Person Within. The video features Jeff Moulin who has cerebral palsy and difficulty communicating. The campaign and video are designed to prevent the abuse of children and youth with disabilities. The video was used in the context of a workshop aimed at service providers, physicians, teachers and others who work with disabled people. The video is shot by Chris Carter who has a 22 year old son with Downs syndrome. (http://www.bcifv.org/noframeindex.html)

1999: [Con] On May 13 Tim Berners Lee, a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and credited with creating the World Wide Web, tells an audience of 800 in Toronto (including B.C.’ers) that he feels frustrated because "the Web is now used largely for reading and only a few use it for creating." He was also disappointed that necessary infrastructure hasn’t appeared but wonders how this could happen in a place like Canada which is "still trying to figure out how to modify 19th century political structures to regulate the borderless technology of the 21st century."

1999: [Con] On May 14 Burnaby educational technology teacher Peter Sol received a "Prime Ministers Award for Teaching Excellence." Sol was one of 19 Canadian teachers to get the award from P.M. Jean Chretien during a ceremony on Parliament Hill. Sol’s talent is "his ability to engage students with simulations, role-playing and creative projects. His goal is to take students beyond the classroom walls."

1999: [Con] On May 17 WebCT, Murray Goldberg’s course writing software, is sold to the U.S-based Educational Technologies Coporation of Peabody, Massachusetts. The company would remain in Vancouver and an additional 35 employees hired to boost the total complement to 70. WebCT is being used by 700 universities and colleges in 36 countries to deliver online courses to about two million students. At the time of the sale faculty could download WebCT for no charge but fees are payable once used with students. Asked if this deal would make him rich, Goldberg laughed and said "It’s a little more money than I had before." Goldberg had been a graduate student in Computer Science and, at the time he developed WebCT and later, an instructor without tenure at UBC. (http://www.webct.ulpgc.es/)

1999: [Ill] In late June, Ian Waddell, B.C. Minister of Tourism and Culture announces that spending on film and television production will top $1 billion in 1999- up from $808 million in 1998. The industry employed about 25,000 B.C. residents - mostly in the Lower Mainland. Most of these were young people in their 20’s or 30’s. The $808 million spent in B.C. in 1998 compared with $750 million spent in Ontario. Who in their right mind would want to go to Toronto when they can come to Vancouver?

1999: [Con] In B.C. Rogers Cable is trying to persuade Internet users that, for Web access, phone lines are inadequate. Their newspaper advertisement (May 17) says ‘Remember when they used to call the Internet "The Information Highway.’ That was back in the days when everyone was looking for, well, information! Lame name. Lame way to get around. At least by today’s standards. Because now, we can get the Internet on Cable. Which, of course, is infinitely faster than a scrawny, little phone line. We’re talking big, bold full colour images, chunky sound, cool sites. Hey, if you only wanted information, just try the encyclopedia. If you want it all, try Rogers@Home (the Internet on Cable)’ Another advertisement in the series shows three kids looked horrified as they gaze at the phone line "Dad used to use to access the Internet." (http://www.rogers.com/)

1999: [Con] In May members of the Makah Nation from Neah Bay, Washington, harpoon a large gray whale and then shoot it with a 50 mm. rifle. They claim to be exercising their cultural rights and reviving a tradition. Paul Watson has spent months trailing the whalers in his new Sea Shepherd, an ex U.S. Coast Guard boat. But, at the precise moment of the kill, Watson is not on scene. News media, radio hotline shows and internet sites bristle with information about the whale hunt. Many people are adamantly opposed to First Nations whale hunts. Others claim that grizzly bear shooting (largely a "white" activity) is worse because it is not culturally significant. Even with Watson’s cameras absent, aerial footage of the whale in its death throes arouses passions on both sides of the argument. (http://www.seashepherd.org/home.html)

1999: [Con] By July, 1999 there are 800 million pages on the World Wide Web but search engines are able to guide people to only half of them. At UBC, the Technology and Research Network demonstrates that search engines favour U.S. sites when asked to search terms like "United Nations" or "Sports Heroes." Steve Lawrence at Princeton (in an article in Nature) showed that, of the leading search engines, Northern Light could reach about one-sixth of all web pages. It was closely followed by Snap and Altavista. Hotbot had reached 34 percent of the web in a 1997 study but was down to 11 percent in this one. Lawrence also found it takes an average of six months for a new web page to make it into a search engine’s listing. Moreover, in case anyone was thinking the web was really "world wide" it was salutary to note that, at this time, it had 6 trillion bytes of information. In contrast the U.S. Library of Congress had 23 trillion bytes. "Dear God, please do not send me any more information."

1999: [Env; Con] The Japanese family that founded Sony builds a $3 million dollar fishing lodge for use in a remote inlet of Princes Royal Island in Northern B.C. It has 17 suites, a steam room, floor-to-ceiling stone fireplaces, slate floors, cedar-panelled walls and a wrap-around porch where well-heeled guests can relax in Adirondack chairs. Billed as "one of the most exclusive floating resorts in the world" it can only be reached by floatplane. However, most importantly, it deploys the latest wireless technology and has e-mail, web access, and education programs for adults and kids. Guests not wanting to look at 800 million web pages but who catch and then let go their fish get a 10% discount - after paying $(US) 3000 for a 4-night stay in a regular room. "We’ve come a long way from McBarge," said Ian Waddell, B.C.’s Minister of Tourism, referring to the odd-looking McDonalds barge that finagled its way onto the Expo ’86 site in False Creek.

1999: [Con] After years of tolerating spotty telephone and others services, the 350 inhabitants of Telegraph Creek in the far north of B.C. are chosen for a project wherein they are linked to the internet with wireless technology. The U.S. company Lucent Technologies chose Telegraph Creek for the project for a variety of reasons - amongst which is the publicity value of the location. It was the promise of new communications technology that first put Telegraph Creek on the map in the 1860’s. before B.C. was even in the Canadian confederation. Telegraph Creek is on the Stikine River and, since spring of 1999, local computers could pull the Internet out of the air, much like a radio signal. There was no need to plug into phones or cable outlets.

1999: [Ill] New Society Publishers is on Petersen road, a bushy part of Gabriola Island, B.C. They publish books on bioregionalism, sustainable development and ecology. They have a large list and are one of growing number of small businesses located in the Gulf Islands that use information technology to reach all parts of the world. The principals are Chris and Judy Plant. Around June 25th their son picked up the phone at the New Society office and heard a voice saying "this is the White House." Young Will called "Hey mum ... it’s the White House, it must be for you." Judith Plant took the phone - being fairly sure it would be the White Hart pub. at the other end of Gabriola Island. Instead, Al Gore said he wanted some books. He’d heard that New Society were the publishers of materials on sustainability. The White House was mostly interested in the "conscientious commerce" series. Judith Plant gave the books to the White House, saying she "didn’t have the nerve to ask for Gore’s credit card number." When Al calls TERN for our occasional papers he won’t be so lucky!

1999: [Con] After founding Microsoft, Bill Gates moved to Seattle to be closer to his mother. In July, 1999, the UBC Education Computing Services circulated an e-mail advising faculty and students that Windows 2000 didn’t constitute enough of an improvement to justify the money needed to purchase. But Vancouver doubts didn’t faze our Seattle neighbour. In July, the market value of Microsoft topped $USD500 billion - more than the economy of the Netherlands. Microsoft’s $500 billion value was 32% higher than the gross domestic product of the Netherlands, estimated at $378 billion. Gates own holdings were worth $100 billion.

1999: [Con] In June a weather monitoring station was installed on the roof of the Steveston secondary school. Students monitored weather and collected data fed into the school’s "multi-purpose computer room." The hardware and software was provided by BCTV whom, from time to time, used the school data in the weather segment of their evening news programs.

1999: [Ill] In July Mainframe Entertainment, Canada’s largest computer animation firms signed a $16 million deal with IMAX Corporation. Together they will make feature films for showing in IMAX theatres. The first, Gulliver’s Travels, will be released in the summer of 2001. Mainframe established its reputation in 1993 when it produced Reboot, the first fully computer-animated cartoon - followed by Beasties, Shadow Raiders and Weird-Ohs. Founded in 1967 IMAX has about 180 permanent theatres in 25 countries with another 80 to be opened in 15 countries over the next few years.

1999: [Man] Vancouver resident Kamaljit Grewal decides he can overwlelm technology. He goes up against a computer-run arm wrestling machine in a video arcade. He lost and, in the process, the electronic game breaks his arm. The 24 year old parking attendant then announces he would sue the machine and its owners. He claims to be suffering "nervous shock" and "anxiety." "I was just pushing and pushing and then I heard this snap. I looked down and my arm was hanging down limp," said Mr. Grewal. "When I told my friends ... everyone was just laughing at me so I decided to sue." About a week later 21 year old Colin Chow broke his arm on the same machine.

1999: [Ext] WhaleLink has microphones planted in Johnstone Strait which pick up the calls and songs of whales. These are broadcast on CJKW 88.5 FM and converted into a digital format for retrieval on www.whalelink.org. The Vancouver Aquarium and several corporate sponsors are behind the project. This is not the first B.C. attempt to educate citizens about whales. For several years the Vancouver Aquarium has held sleepovers with whales in the aquarium. Children and adults curl up in their sleeping bags and a flashlight while the big mammals plays just a few feet away behind glass.