Fraser River Discovery Centre and the City of New Westminster are teaming for a monumental discussion at the next Fraser River Dialogues.
The upcoming virtual Fraser River Dialogues presentation will take a look at Monuments of the Fraser River. The virtual session is on Tuesday, Jan. 25 from 7 to 8:30 p.m. on Zoom.
"Monuments of the Fraser – like many other kinds of monuments – were created at a different time and had different meanings,” said Stephen Bruyneel, director of external relations and development at Fraser River Discovery Centre. “They also can mean different things today, which is one of the things we look forward to talking about with our panellists."
A notice about the event said the panellists will help inform a discussion reflecting on the original intent of these monuments and what they communicate to residents and visitors to the city today.
The event, hosted by Fraser River Discovery Centre in partnership with the city, features four panellists: Larry Grant; Kamala Todd; Kirsten McAllister; and Madelyn Prevost.
Grant, a Musqueam elder, was born and raised in Musqueam traditional territory by a traditional hən̓q̓əmin̓əm̓-speaking Musqueam family. Grant is an adjunct professor in the First Nations and Endangered Languages Program and a consultant for the Musqueam Language and Culture Department, both at the University of British Columbia.
Todd is a Metis-Cree community planner, educator, curator and filmmaker, who was born and raised in the lands of the hən̓q̓əmin̓əm̓ and Skwxwú7mesh-speaking people (also known as Vancouver). She has a master’s degree in geography from UBC and is the City of Vancouver’s first Indigenous arts and culture planner.
McAllister is a professor in the School of Communication at Simon Fraser University. As a third-generation Japanese Canadian, she has worked closely with members of her community to examine their use of different media to remember the places they lived in the Lower Mainland before 1942 and in the 1940s, after the Canadian government sent them to internment camps as part of a larger plan to remove “all people of Japanese descent” from Canada.
Madelyn Prevost, a doctoral candidate at Simon Fraser University, is studying relationships to place and place-making activities. Since 2019, she has been working as a research assistant on a collaborative project between Simon Fraser University and the New Westminster Museum and Archives on decolonizing New West’s city assets.
This discussion is free, but donations to the Fraser River Discovery Centre are encouraged. To register, go to www.fraserriverdiscovery.org.
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