On the Menu: Collectors, Collections, and Archives

Guest speaker: Dr. Imogene Lim

Photo courtesy of Dr. Imogene Lim.

When dining out, you are either presented with a menu or view one that is prominently displayed, bulletin-board-style, to allow the selection of items, from appetizers to mains to desserts and beverages. These categories reveal eating behaviours in a time and space, which make menus an interesting topic of research. Chinese restaurant menus in British Columbia will be the focus of this talk. Examples will be drawn from community archives, as well as a personal collection. The latter raises the question of what will find its way into an archive, whether a community or provincial one, as a donation. According to the BC Archives website, it accepts private records that are “provincially significant,” while for a community archive, documents are deemed equally “significant” to its history, or as noted by another site, “establish a sense of community, of family, and of particular times and places.” Join us as we consider the historical and documentary importance of Chinese restaurant menus across the province.

A descendant of Cumberland’s and Vancouver’s Chinatowns, Dr. Imogene Lim is an anthropologist at Vancouver Island University. For the past two decades her research interests have focused on Vancouver Island—primarily, ethnicity in Canada and Asian Canadian history, including food and culture. She co-curated, Dishing Up Memories: Eating Chinese in BC (2022). Actively engaged in her community, locally and regionally, she received a Ruth Master’s Hero Spoon, 2002, and the BC Medal of Good Citizenship, 2020.

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