Event: Chinese Canadian Stories multimedia project launch
Date/time: Saturday, October 13, 12 p.m. – 4 p.m.
Location: Vancouver Public Library (VPL), 350 West Georgia St., Concourse Level
[EDITORS: UBC History Prof. Henry Yu will be available for interviews: 778.895.5088; henry.yu@ubc.ca]
UBC is unveiling interactive kiosks that offer compelling stories of Chinese Canadian communities. Users will find visually powerful narratives in three languages ((English, French, Chinese), including poignant stories of Chinese Canadian sports heroes, the Miss Chinatown beauty pageant, the history of Chinese-First Nations marriages and families, and Chinese Canadian veterans whose bravery helped win the right to vote.
“The stories celebrate the history of Chinese Canadians without glossing over the discrimination and racism they struggled to overcome in Canada,” says UBC History Prof. Henry Yu, who led the Chinese Canadian Stories (CCS) multimedia project.
The kiosk project was organized through the UBC Community Learning Initiative and included work by UBC students from architecture, mechanical engineering, integrated engineering, sociology and the arts,.
After being unveiled at the VPL, this kiosk will be moved to other library branches to be displayed for six months. A second kiosk will be on display at the Ottawa Public Library Main Library and the Nepean Centrepointe branch beginning December 2012 for six months. A third kiosk is currently at UBC’s Museum of Anthropology.
UBC Library and Simon Fraser University Library collaborated on the CCS project (chinesecanadian.ubc.ca), providing in-kind contributions of almost $320,000. As well, the initiative received a $900,000 grant from Citizenship and Immigration Canada’s Community Historical Recognition Program (CHRP) in 2010.
The CCS project also showcases the work of 29 community groups from across Canada that received CHRP funding to tell their stories.
All the CCS multimedia resources seen on the kiosks are also available online at: http://ccs.library.ubc.ca/trim/s/en/index.html
Background
Highlights of the CCS multimedia project include:
Chinese Head Tax Register database
A searchable database provides access to more than 97,000 digitized records of Chinese immigrants in the Chinese Head Tax Register. Details of their names, age, height, villages and counties of origin shed light on who they were, where they left and where they were going in Canada.
Two interactive modules, developed in partnership with Stanford University’s Spatial History Project, allow users to view the 1885-1923 Chinese Head Tax data as animated graphics: http://bit.ly/RixnrG
Gold Mountain Quest video game and more
Users can play the Gold Mountain Quest videogame about early Chinese Canadian immigrants or delve into Pages from the Past, an interactive learning module for Grades 5-7. These multimedia materials were developed by CCS, interactive designers and the Critical Thinking Consortium (TC2) – a Canada-wide non-profit network of teachers – and are available to teachers in B.C., Alberta, Manitoba and Ontario.
Oral histories on YouTube
The CCS project has a dedicated YouTube channel featuring interviews with Chinese Canadians such as Senator Lillian Dyck, Musqueam Elder Larry Grant, owners of a Jewish-Chinese restaurant in Montreal, and descendants of Chow Dong Hoy (C.D. Hoy): http://bit.ly/Riy6sE