From 1978 to 2018, Perry Giguere (aka "Perry the Poster Man") made a living putting up promotional posters all over Vancouver, always holding on to an extra copy or two at the end of a job. The result was a comprehensive archives of nearly 250,000 posters documenting cultural, social and political activities in Vancouver over the past four decades. Between 2015 and 2018, Special Collections and Rare Books acquired Giguere's collection, which now stands at approximately 35,000 posters.
Giguere was born in Quebec City on December 16, 1950. After spending his early years in Montreal, he moved to Vancouver in 1973. While studying to be an actor at the Firehall Theatre in 1978, he was approached to put up promotional posters for the theatre and postering soon turned into a full-time, forty year career. Giguere passed away in Vancouver on June 17, 2018.
Advertising events and causes from the grassroots level up to more established organizations and cultural groups, the posters range from rather crude DIY pieces to the smooth and glossy. Dating from 1978 to 2016, the posters digitized and made available here represent a wide array of events and subject matter and include posters documenting protests, politics, benefits and causes, local music history, venues no longer existing, labour movements, indigenous and women's rights activism, environmental activism, the LGBTQ community, festivals, dance and theatre. In addition to their informational value, many of the posters have value as artistic works, capturing the aesthetic trends of the time and the work of Vancouver artists such as Joe Average and Jim Cummins.
Posters are ephemeral works that often don't have a life beyond the event that they are advertising. Thanks to Giguere, the posters featured here may be the only surviving copies of many of these works, the rest being damaged by the elements or tossed in the waste bin or recycling once an event was over.
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Attribution
Attribution/citation should be provided as follows: Image [insert image number here, eg. MSC197-0263] courtesy of the Perry Giguere "Perry the Poster Man" Collection, a digital initiative of Simon Fraser University Library. [Please include the website url when images are used in an offline or print-based context].
Acknowledgements
SFU Special Collections and Rare Books gratefully acknowledges the financial support provided by the Irving K. Barber Learning Centre's "B.C. History Digitization Program" to make this collection available online.
Contributed by Special Collections and Rare Books, Simon Fraser University Library.
