Excavating Royal Jubilee: A Pop-Up Exhibit

The Royal Jubilee Hospital archaeological collection housed at the Royal BC Museum captures a rare glimpse into the dynamic world of 1890s Victoria. Planned to be the jewel of the burgeoning city, the hospital combined cutting-edge healthcare with the first nursing school west of Winnipeg. With paid and unpaid wards, it also came to serve a diverse community. This history is captured in the artifacts that were excavated from the site in the 1990s, from ‘modern’ medical equipment like opium bottles and mercury syringes to children’s toys and fine porcelain from Japan.

Students from the Department of Anthropology at the University of Victoria will present interactive and hands-on activities as part of this pop-up exhibit to engage audiences of all ages in thinking about where in the world medicines, food and belongings came from and how they got to Victoria, while contrasting seemingly familiar products like toothpaste with their very foreign historic recipes. 

This exhibit aims to demonstrate the value of historical archaeology by telling the stories of nurses, doctors and patients through objects.