Research

 A professional librarian with a Masters of Library Science from the University of Western Ontario and an Art History degree from U.B.C., Kate worked as a news research librarian at The Vancouver Sun and The Province for twenty-five years, where she conducted research for reporters and helped manage their large photograph and digital image collection. In 2002, Kate was included in a Vancouver Sun nomination for the National Newspaper Awards.

Kate has been the researcher for several books, including Making Headlines: 100 Years of The Vancouver Sun by Shelley Fralic, which won the 2013 BC Book Prizes Bill Duthie Booksellers’ Choice Award.

“Without Kate Bird’s patient humour, unflinching attention to detail and exacting standards, this book would not have been possible.”   Shelley Fralic

In Stephen Hume’s book Simon Fraser: In Search of Modern British Columbia, Hume wrote in the Foreword that “Research librarian Kate Bird demonstrated her skill as a document sleuth nonpareil, locating amazing things in the most obscure places.”

Bird was the photo researcher for Hume’s 2004 book Lilies & Fireweed: Frontier Women of British Columbia.

“I’m indebted to Kate Bird, who tracked down photographs and etchings as far afield as Yukon, in Alberta’s Glenbow Museum, in the provincial archives at Victoria, in university archives, in public libraries, municipal collections and obscure, out-of-print books. Without her energy, intelligence and skill, the series couldn’t have been what it was.”   Stephen Hume

  • photo research of 1970s Vancouver filming locations for Dennis Hopper’s Out of the Blue for a video essay produced for the 2022 DVD re-release
  • The Age of Walter Gage: How One Canadian Shaped The Lives Of Thousands by Shelley Fralic
  • Wildfire: British Columbia Burns
  • The Chuck Davis History of Metropolitan Vancouver
  • The Way We Were: B.C’s Amazing Journey to the Millennium
  • The Encyclopedia of British Columbia
  • Canada Coast To Coast
  • The Secret Lives of Saints: Child Brides and Lost Boys in Canada’s Polygamous Mormon Sect by Daphne Bramham
  • Canada’s Top 100:  The Greatest Athletes of All Time by Maggie Mooney
  • A Thrilling Ride: The Vancouver Canucks’ 40th Anniversary