It Pays to Play: British Columbia in Postcards 1950s-1980s

Ann Turner is the financial and budget manager of the University of
British Columbia Library.

The enigmatic title is an advertising message from a commercial postcard
for a company that sold billiard tables. Incongruous as it seems, it is
an apt choice for this collection of 141 glossy full-color postcard
images. They, too, are advertising media, promoting the “good life”
and economic optimism that developed in British Columbia during the
decades following World War II. The cards feature superb photography,
artistically enhanced to depict B.C.’s leisure, sport, and tourism
activities in the most favorable light possible. The images are
organized into broad groups: It Pays To Play (a section that discusses
the postcard as a promotional device), Landscape, Leisure, Urbanism,
Industry, and the Environment. A complete listing of the illustrations,
citing the publisher, photographer, and printer for each, concludes the
album,

which was produced in association with an exhibition at North
Vancouver’s Presentation House Gallery early in 1996. An interesting
and unusual contribution to the study of B.C.’s history.