Guides: Redpath Book Display: Montreal's Chinatown between Past and Present

BOOKS & VIDEOS

(2022)

(2020)

(2006)

(1991)

(1987)

My Name Is Susan Yee [eVideo]

(1975)

PEER-REVIEWED ARTICLES

Feeling at Home in Chinatown—Voices and Narratives of Chinese Monolingual Seniors in Montreal (2014)
by Professor Yon Hsu, Sociology Department, Marianopolis College.
This article demonstrates how monolingual Chinese seniors claimed Montreal’s Chinatown as home through exercising agency and working out paradoxes concerning their living conditions, familial relations and subjectivities. Chinatown authenticity is primarily created as a tourist spot for ephemeral consumption and circulation, but residents contested it by their rootedness and belonging. Their narratives further challenged the stereotypes of Chinatown residents as sojourners and the stigma of monolingual seniors as monocultural fixtures. These ground a theoretical discussion and policy suggestions by emphasising the importance of subjective integration and by identifying concrete areas of improvement for a better living quality in Montreal’s Chinatown.
The Impact of External Pressures on an Ethnic Community: The Case of Montréal's Quartier Chinois and Muslim-French Immigrants (2006)
by Professor Stephen M Croucher, School of Communication, Journalism, and Marketing, Massey University.
This article examines how a community responds to external pressures to adapt culturally to a dominant cultural/political paradigm. Interviews were conducted in Montreal, Canada in 2003 and in France in 2005. In Montreal interviews were conducted among Chinese shopkeepers residing in Montreal's Chinatown, or Quartier Chinois. In France interviews were conducted with Muslims in various ummahs, or Muslim communities in France. The results of the interviews demonstrate that when a minority group is pressured to linguistically, politically, culturally, religiously, and economically adapt to a dominant paradigm that the minority community will respond by closing itself from the dominant culture.

MCGILL STUDENT PROJECTS

Imprints of Immigration : The Shifting Chinatown Dynamics in Montreal & How Language Illuminates Interesting Discoveries
by Kimberly Yang and Jingru Chen
Undergraduate research project (website), Department of East Asian Studies (Supervisor: Guojun Wang)
Perception, conception and experience : Henri Lefebvre's production of space and Montréal's Chinatown (2007)
by Lindsay Frances Anderson.
Undergraduate research paper, Department of Geography.
Urban design plan for Chinatown (1993)
by Guan Zhuangwei.
Supervised research project, School of Urban Planning.
Montreal Chinese property ownership and occupational change, 1881-1981 (1984)
by Rebecca B Aiken.
Ph.D. Dissertation, Department of Anthropology.

About Chinatowns in Other Parts of Canada

BOOKS

Denison Avenue [Print Book | eBook2023]
A moving story told in visual art and fiction about gentrification, aging in place, grief, and vulnerable Chinese Canadian elders. Bringing together ink artwork and fiction, Denison Avenue by Daniel Innes (illustrations) and Christina Wong (text) follows the elderly Wong Cho Sum, who, living in Toronto's gentrifying Chinatown-Kensington Market, begins to collect bottles and cans after the sudden loss of her husband as a way to fill her days and keep grief and loneliness at bay. In her long walks around the city, Cho Sum meets new friends, confronts classism and racism, and learns how to build a life as a widow in a neighborhood that is being destroyed and rebuilt, leaving elders like her behind.
Vancouver's Chinatown : Racial Discourse in Canada, 1875-1980 [eBook 2014]
Anderson charts the construction of Chinatown in the minds and streets of the white community of Vancouver over a hundred year period. She shows that Chinatown -- from the negative stereotyping of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries to its current status as an "ethnic neighbourhood" -- has been stamped by changing European ideologies of race and the hegemonic policies those ideas have shaped. The very existence of the district is the result of a regime of cultural domination that continues to exist today.
Inside Chinatown : Ancient Culture in a New World [eBook2009]
Victoria's Chinatown is Canada's oldest Chinese neighbourhood and has a lineage unbroken since 1858. With large-format colour photos and photocollages, Robert Amos and Kileasa Wong take you behind the doors of the 29 private clubs that make up the Chinese Consolidated Benevolent Association. You'll see the gilded altars, antique art and ornate furniture that grace these meeting halls. Through stunning pictures and text in both Chinese and English, you will meet the club members and take an inside look at the culture of this complex community. Inside Chinatown is sure to become a landmark publication chronicling the vibrant heritage of Chinese Canadians.
Chinatown : an illustrated history of the Chinese communities of Victoria, Vancouver, Calgary, Winnipeg, Toronto, Ottawa, Montréal, and Halifax [eBook©2005]
In this book, extensively illustrated with contemporary and archival images, author Paul Yee tells the stories of eight Canadian Chinatowns -- Vancouver, Victoria, Calgary, Winnipeg, Toronto, Ottawa, Montreal, and Halifax -- and explores the unique culture and heritage of each. He outlines the challenges that Chinatown's have overcome in the face of urban redevelopment and profiles the many ways Chinese Canadians dealt with the hostility they encountered from their fellow citizens. Chinese artists, politicians, and other intriguing personalities also make appearances throughout this rich narrative.
Paper shadows : a Chinatown childhood [Print Book1999]
Inspired by the startling realization that, like many children of Chinatown, he had been adopted, Choy constructs a vivid and moving memoir that reveals uncanny similarities between his award-winning first novel and the newly discovered secrets of his Vancouver childhood.
The forbidden city within Victoria : myth, symbol and streetscape of Canada's earliest Chinatown [Print Book1991]
"The Forbidden City is a popular piece. It addresses non-specialist and non-Chinese readers who are curious about Victoria's Chinatown. Lai assumes most non-Chinese readers harbour a sense of mystery about China-town—an assumption not necessarily always valid for those under the age of forty. The author's attitude is friendly and reassuring:mysteries can be explained. Some are creations of popular imagination and lore; others exist but with a different meaning than what readers might presume."--Book Review by Edgar Wickberg
Chinatowns : towns within cities in Canada [Print Book | eBook1988]
This book is a definitive history of Chinatowns in Canada. From instant Chinatowns in gold- and coal-mining communities to new Chinatowns which have sprung up in city neighbourhoods and suburbs since World War II, it portrays the changing landscapes and images of Chinatowns from the late nineteenth century to the present. It also includes a detailed case study of Victoria's Chinatown, the earliest such settlement in Canada.

VIDEOS

Everything Will Be 順其自然 [eVideo2022]
Everything Will Be, from Sundance award-winning director Julia Kwan, captures this fascinating transformation through the intimate perspectives of the neighbourhood's residents, diverse merchants and new entrepreneurs, who offer their poignant reflections on change, memory and legacy. Night and day, a neon sign--an art installation--that reads "EVERYTHING IS GOING TO BE ALRIGHT" looms over Chinatown. Everything is going to be alright. The big question is--for whom?
The Forbidden City [eVideo2018]
North America's second oldest Chinatown in Victoria, BC, was once considered a "Forbidden City" by citizens of European descent. Fan Tan Alley, the narrowest street in Canada, was famous for its opium dens and gambling houses. Chinese immigration is woven into our history; Chinese labourers built the fort at Nootka Sound in 1788, and Chinese tradespeople, merchants and labourers came by the thousands during the Fraser Canyon gold rush in 1858 establishing Victoria’s Chinatown.
Alone in Chinatown [eVideo2006]
Albert Leong is the self-professed last Chinese man in Chinatown in Lethbridge, Alberta. This film explores the rich past of the original Chinese immigrants. It examines the present-day situation and explores what lies ahead for this and other small communities.
唐人街 : 凤凰卫视的全球华人之旅 = ChinaTown : Phoenix's global tour to Chinese communities [DVD Video2001]
This 30-part series (10 DVDs) was produced by Phoenix Television for Chinese audiences in the People’s Republic of China. It gives a kaleidoscopic overview of the history and life of the ethnic Chinese communities in Africa, Asia, Europe, North America, and Oceania. No English/French subtitles.
Victoria's Chinatown, BC [eVideo1998]
Today, Victoria's Chinatown is an intriguing and colourful mix of old and new. But behind the restored facades are the remains of secret passageways and alleys built by a community trying to escape from racism. In recent years, Canada's first Chinatown was restored, and new life was breathed into an area of the city that was in a state of decline. The once-thriving centre of Chinese culture has seen many of its inhabitants move on, integrating into the larger community. Even today, the secret Chinatown is known only to a select few. The history and mystery of Chinatown still fascinate.
Bamboo, lions and dragons [DVD Video1981]
Two families, the Changs and the Lims, tell the story of the Chinese community in Vancouver from widely different perspectives. Chang Yun Ho arrived in Canada in 1908. His generation never integrated into the Canadian mainstream, partly because of the passage of the Asiatic Exclusion Act that fostered racism. By contrast, Liz and Herb Lim were born in Canada and grew up in Chinatown. They now live in the suburbs, totally acculturated to Canadian ways.