Mosaics: Understanding White Rock in the Context of Canada

The exhibition explores the development of White Rock as a Canadian city, but emphasizes little known local stories about several communities present in White Rock over the last 150 years.

These stories include the large the Japanese community living near East Beach until 1941, the development of the Semiahmoo reservation, Great Northern Railway as a major silk distributor from Asia, and the challenge facing Chinese Canadians living in the area until the late 1940s. The exhibition features the Campbell River Lumber Company, as one of White Rock’s largest industrial outfits, and the important role it played in bringing a culturally diverse workforce to the Peninsula in the 1920s.

The exhibition draws on new photos from the Japanese (Nikkei National Museum) and South Asian (Centre for Indo-Canadian Studies) community, a host of archival photos from the museum’s collection, and images from the Surrey Museum and the Great Northern Railway Historical Society collections also.

This summer’s show also features an interactive “speaker’s corner” where visitors will have the opportunity to create photo or video to share their experience at the museum with the larger community via social media.