by Kim Minkus

In this yellowing photograph dated 1911, a serious group of Chinese businessmen are grouped around a central figure.
The figure, a man wearing a black bowler hat and a fur-trimmed overcoat, is staring straight into the camera. He possesses both an air of authority and something else that, today, we might call “class.”

That figure was Dr. Sun Yat-Sen on one of three visits that he made to Canada; on this particular visit to Vancouver in 1911 he was photographed with the Chinese Freemasons Society. In the same year that this photo was taken, he was to play a key role in the revolution in China that overthrew the Qing Dynasty. His visits to Canada had two purposes: to raise support for his democratic vision of China and to raise funds.

In Vancouver, when many of us hear the name Sun Yat-Sen, we think more of the Dr. Sun Yat-Sen Classical Chinese Garden than the important revolutionary behind the name. We also don’t
think of the Chinese Times, a publication started by the Chinese Freemasons Society of Vancouver in support of Sun Yat-Sen’s democratic reforms in China. Owned by the Freemasons Society until it closed in 1992, the Chinese Times was published in the Chinese language and was, until the 1980s, painstakingly typeset using more than 7,000 Chinese characters. For the Canadian Chinese community of the early 20th century it was also their lifeline to the Chinese community and the homeland.

Eventually other communities with non-Roman-based languages will benefit.

Ray Lee, president of Calgary’s Sien Lok Society, recalls his father receiving two Chinese papers daily, one from Vancouver – the Chinese Times – and the other from Victoria. Ray relates, “In the small towns in Alberta there were only one or two Chinese families per town and the white people would not communicate with them. It was often an isolated and lonely existence. The newspapers were their main form of communication with the Chinese community and their only source of news about China.”

The Chinese Times also contained advertisements, photographs, and creative writing. Over the years, many researchers have viewed the paper as a key historical resource for tracking the development of the Chinese community in Vancouver, but accessing the contents of this newspaper, and many like it, has been a problem. The newspapers are not represented in indexes and many are written in local dialects.

Linda Joe is the former head of the University of British Columbia’s Asian Library, which owns a run of the Chinese Times from 1914 to 1992. She states, “Newspapers are temporary media. People don’t keep them and they eventually physically disintegrate. Often, only the people that live where the physical collection is held have access to the contents.”

The Canadian Multicultural Heritage Project plans to change that by expanding access to the Chinese Times and other important cultural resources. The project is spearheaded by Simon Fraser University librarian Lynn Copeland in partnership with the University of Calgary Information Resources headed by Frits Pannekoek, the Chinese Freemasons Society of Canada, the Sien Lok Society of Calgary, the Multicultural Heritage Society of Ontario, and others. Its goal is to fill the gap between the resource and the public by making the broad multicultural historical record of Canada searchable and available online in a digital format. This record includes newspapers, oral histories, and family and community records.

“This is a really challenging project and an incredibly important one,” states Copeland. “The information in newspapers, such as the Chinese Times and other materials, is invaluable to community members, to students, and to researchers.”

The digitization of historical Chinese newspapers in Canada, beginning with the Chinese Times, will be the first stage of the project. The Vancouver branch of the Chinese Freemasons Society of Canada has given copyright clearance for the project, and a key resource for accessing the collection will be the digitized version of the index created by Edgar Wickberg, professor emeritus of the University of British Columbia, as part of his research for the book From China to Canada: A History of the Chinese Communities in Canada.

The Sien Lok Society of Calgary has been particularly supportive of the project. Ray Lee says that the Canadian Multicultural Heritage Project does nothing less than “ensure that Chinese history in Canada is not forgotten. Canadians need to know what a struggle it was for members of the Chinese community to come and live here.” Lee adds that the fact that some newspapers, including the Chinese Times, go back to the turn of the century is of particular interest and importance.

“The information in newspapers, such as the Chinese Times and other materials, is invaluable to community members, to students, and to researchers.” Lynn Copeland

Copeland believes it is crucial to work with the societies and associations that are rooted in the communities that the Canadian Multicultural Heritage Project will represent. “This is in essence their project. They will identify the resources that best reflect Canada’s print, oral, and visual heritage online.”

As the project is completed, it is hoped that search engines can be developed that give information about the collection as a whole and that can point to individual articles or topics. This would make the project highly beneficial to any similar digitization effort through the development and distribution of software used for indexing, digitization, and character recognition.

Eventually other communities with non–Roman-based languages will benefit; plans include the eventual inclusion of many of Canada’s immigrant groups such as the Greek, Ukrainian, Russian, Persian, and Indic communities. Canada’s Doukhobor community is already reflected in SFU’s online resources (see aq, June ’01). A portion of a large collection of materials on the Doukhobors donated by Vancouver collector John Keenlyside has already been digitized.

Copeland envisions that as it develops, the Canadian Multicultural Heritage Project will be an online searchable resource that gathers together newspapers, local histories, and oral histories in the original language, made accessible through the use of translation engines and interactive educational tools.

“Students will be able to explore their own histories and the histories of other communities,” she states. “Imagine being able to access the historical records online through both English and Chinese indexes, and then viewing the original online. I really think this project will show that SFU is a leader in the area of local histories and immigrant heritage.”

In the end, Canadian citizens will acquire a greater understanding of their multicultural heritage; Chinese Canadians and other immigrant groups will be able to explore the history of their ancestors’ experience; students will be able to use the online collection for class projects; teachers will be able to use the resources for building programs; and scholars will be able to use it as a resource for research work related to Canadian heritage.

The Canadian Multicultural Heritage Project is already supported through generous donations from a number of interested groups including the Sien Lok Society of Calgary, but the need for funds will be ongoing. “The support of the communities from which material for the project originates is invaluable,” says Copeland. aq

Please contact Lynn Copeland, university librarian of Simon Fraser University, at <copeland@sfu.ca> with questions or to support this project. http://multiculturalcanada.ca

Photo illustration components: courtesy of SImon Fraser University Library, The Chinese Freemasons Headquarters of Canada, the Chinese Canadian Military Museum, The Vancouver Public Library, the Historical Chinese Language Materials in British Columbia www.hclmbc.org and SFU’s Doukhobor collection database http://edocs.lib.sfu.ca/projects/Doukhobor-Collection/

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