Early Chinese in Montreal

An image of the nine retractable banners on display in a nondescript, indoor room with white walls and wood floors.
The retractable banners on display in Montreal, QC.

Early Chinese in Montreal is an exhibit that has both a physical and digital component. Both are inspired by original research conducted by graduate students in one of Dr. Mary Chapman’s UBC English graduate seminars. The digital exhibit attempts to provide more longevity, interaction, and access to this original research.

From September 28-30, 2023, Early Chinese in Montreal was exhibited as a pop-up of nine retractable banners as part of the JIA Foundation’s Chinatown Reimagined Forum II in Montreal, QC. Each banner features archival images, a tri-lingual blurb, and a QR code that corresponds to historical biographies and relevant exhibit pages.

A decorative header of small thumbnails of the banners created for the pop-up exhibit in Montreal
Small thumbnails of the banners created for the pop-up exhibit in Montreal.

Items in this online collection are a combination of primary archival sources like government documents, newspaper articles, photographs, illustrations, and creative works produced by and about some of the historic figures featured in the exhibit. Each historical figure also has a biographical essay that helps contextualize the exhibit objects and shed new light on the people who helped create Montreal’s earliest Chinese community. The historical biographies were converted and translated from an earlier set of blog posts hosted on a class Wordpress site.

While the pop-up exhibit is fully trilingual, the digital exhibit is primarily in English. However, all of the historical bios, the exhibition statement, and credits are fully translated in English, Traditional Chinese, and French so as to make this research more publicly accessible to wider publics and the multilingual communities of Montreal, QC.