100 years ago, the first Holland-America Line(HAL) ship arrived at the port of Vancouver. In order to commemorate this century of ship development, the VMM held a photographic exhibition of ships. The entire photography exhibition consists of ten groups of photos, telling the story of HAL ships taken by Walter Frost. Walter Frost is a native of Vancouver. Since he bought the first Kodak camera after World War 1, he has been obsessed with documenting his hometown, and his favourite subjects are ships, docks, and railway scenes.

The photographs have been selected by Floris Van Weelderen. Floris’s father worked on the Holland-American line boat. To explore the story of his father’s life on the ship, he never gave up collecting information and pictures on the ship. The effort paid off. He found this precious set of photos in Vancouver Archives, which was taken by amateur photographer Walter Edwin Frost. Walter took more than 13,000 photos to record the industrial activities in Vancouver in the early 20th century. The ten pictures selected for this exhibition chose from thousands of photos taken by Walter Edwin Frost, representing the changes in naval architecture and design of this route. At the same time, this exhibition will also display a model of a Diemerdyk by Walter Frost, and HAL ephemera from the VMM collection. Looking back, humans have gone from learning to use tools to building boats out of wood with the bare hand. And now it is no surprise that large ships are docked off the coast of Vancouver. This is the development of human society.

If you want to learn more information about the HAL line or this exhibition, please visit https://vanmaritime.com/. Also, this exhibit presents from December 3, 2020, to February 21, 2021. Don’t miss it!