The free public Culture, Coffee & Cookies (C3) at The Reach Gallery Museum kicks off its April series on Wednesday, April 5, 2017 at 10:30am with Vaisakhi in Abbotsford. Presented by Satwinder Bains, Director of the Centre for Indo-Canadian Studies at UFV, the Vaisakhi festival, also spelled Baisakhi, celebrates the Sikh New Year and the founding of the Sikh community, known as the Khalsa, in 1699. It is celebrated on April 13 or 14 and was originally a harvest festival in the Punjab before it became the Sikh’s most important festivity. Bains will share her knowledge on Vaisakhi and its role in the local community.
On April 12th at 10:30am, Jim McQueen will take you through, We Fought at Vimy: A Journey in the Their Footsteps. Utilizing vintage and contemporary photos, video, personal war files, regimental war diaries and battlefield maps, McQueen will follow the journeys of the three Windram brothers. He will start from their birth place in Eyemouth Scotland in the 1880’s, and follow their immigration to Fraser Mill’s, Coquitlam in the early 1900’s, enlistment in the Canadian Expeditionary Force, fighting through France and the deaths of all three at Vimy in 1917. McQueen has personally made this journey to Eyemouth, traced the brothers fighting in France, and visited their memorials and grave.
On the morning of April 19th, you’ll discover with Molly Ungar, Associate Professor at the University of the Fraser Valley, that It’s a Long Way to Tipperary: Canada’s Great War. One hundred years ago, Canadians had already been at war for three years. Called the Great War, it affected every aspect of life in Canada: the men who volunteered to fight, the women who entered the workforce for the first time in their lives, and the children who listened to stories of Canadian bravery at Vimy. The Great War changed our country in ways that no one could have ever predicted.
The Reach’s Curator of Historical Collections, Kris Foulds, completes the month on April 26th at 10:30am with the important historic milestone, The Draining of Sumas Lake. What began as a strategy to manage the spring freshets that inundated Sumas Prairie annually, resulted in a plan to drain Sumas Lake completely. The drainage still ranks among the largest earth moving projects in Canada’s history, and Foulds will share the history of the project and the multiple perspectives of its lasting impact.
The free Wednesday morning C3s will stimulate and provide learning opportunities for people of all ages in a social coffee-style setting. For more information or to pre-register for Culture, Coffee & Cookies at The Reach, 32388 Veterans Way, go online at thereach.ca/events calendar and click the link, or phone: 604 864 8087 (dial “0”).