In this celebration of the donation of the Jean Baird and George Bowering Collection, an archival clip from circa 1974 or 1975 of Bowering’s daughter Thea Bowering is played alongside readings by live Bowering and Baird. With this generous donation, UBCO becomes one of three archives in Canada to hold a complete set of Bowering’s writing, or as Baird nuances it, it is special to have “a complete Bowering collection in his beloved Okanagan.” This site-specificity is mirrored in UBCO’s Special Collections and Archives’ “mandate to reproduce place,” to focus on acquiring holdings that resonate within the roughly local geographical context of community and practice.
This event brings together multiple key figures that have made the preservation of this archival collection possible. As UBCO SpokenWeb lead, Karis Shearer is pivotal in bringing the collection to UBCO and maintaining a personal connection with Baird and Bowering. Paige Hohmann is the archivist at UBCO. While Baird and Bowering are now married, Baird’s collection (and much of Bowering’s writing, for that matter), precede their union, marking a beautiful gesture of interest that overlaps with and exceeds the personal.—Klara du Plessis
