Welcome to the Vancouver Lexicon. Its purpose is to pin down the patois of the City of Vancouver by recording its toponyms, nicknames, slang terms, personalities, places, and other Van-centric things. Full A-Z here.

Sixties Scoop | historical | Coined by British Columbian social workers in the 1980s, ‘Sixties Scoop’ refers to the government practise of forcibly removing some 20,000 Aboriginal children from their families and putting them up for adoption with mostly white families across Canada and the United States. Some kids were even sent as far away as the UK and New Zealand. The practise has been described as an attempt at cultural genocide, similar to the residential school system.

Usage: “The ‘scooping’ of the Sixties Scoop wasn’t so decade-specific; it actually began in the 1950s and continued through the 1980s.”