Faculty of ArtUBC INSTRCC has partnered with the Chinese Canadian Historical Society of British Columbia since 2010 to co-publish books that support the work of local community historians and researchers.
An exciting and groundbreaking series, Gold Mountain Stories boldly reimagines North America’s engagement with the Pacific world by bringing to light the long ignored and untold stories of Chinese migrant experiences through their interactions and relationship with other Asian migrants, Indigenous peoples, and European migrants.
They have co-published the following titles:
This publication was launched in May and June 2019 in Vancouver, Victoria, and Toronto.
The book is now available for purchase ($30.00) at the following vendors in Vancouver, and online here through the Chinese Canadian Historical Society of BC:
Dr. Sun Yat-Sen Classical Chinese Garden, Eight Treasures Shop: 578 Carrall St.
UBC Bookstore: 6200 University Boulevard
Ten years in the making, Searching for Dr. Victoria Chung: A Woman in Between finally brings together the complex and intriguing story of Dr. Victoria Chung, the first Asian Canadian, man or woman, to earn a medical degree in Canada. She went to China as a medical missionary in 1923. An eye-witness to China’s independence struggle, she provided urgent medical care during the Second World War, stayed on after the 1949 revolution, and became a legend in her own right until the Cultural Revolution. This book shines the light on a story long forgotten in both China and Canada.
Authors: Dr. John Price with Dr. Ningping Yu
This recollection of an important historical event, the CPR Construction which employed thousands of Chinese labourers to build the transcontinental railway linking this country from coast to coast. In her writing, Lily Chow reveals the reasons for constructing the railway and why and how the Chinese labourers were recruited and transported from Guangdong to the various construction sites in British Columbia. She illustrates the difficult and dangerous tasks that the Chinese labourers had to perform bearing testimonies to the challenges, hardship, struggle, and endurance of these workers. Despite the hard labour these men displayed an excellent work ethic, and were diligent and dependable people. Included are some poems and verses by a couple of Chinese labourers and their family members to show their anguish, anxiety, and longing—human feelings and emotions that had been repressed.
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In a vivid look at Chinatowns nearly lost to the past, historian Chad Reimer follows dual trails of arson in 1921 and 1934 Chilliwack to discover a slew of historical characters and stories. Chinese, Whites, and Natives intermingle before and after these unexpected fires: their lives of success, labour, leisure, and family animate Chinatown North and Chinatown South. Chilliwack’s Chinatowns: A History demonstrates the power of a historian-detective’s determined sleuthing to uncover a forgotten history and restore our common past.
Written by Larry Wong, a local historian and past president of the Chinese Canadian Historical Society, is about his 1940s-1960s childhood in Vancouver's Chinatown. A close friend of Wayson Choy, author of The Jade Peony, Wong's personal short stories reveal a world filled with people from diverse ethnic backgrounds. This is a totally engaging memoir, filled with childhood memories of life in a Chinese Canadian family whose father came to Vancouver in 1911. But it is more than a personal memoir; it is also a social and cultural history of Vancouver's Chinatown and its denizens in their homes, shops, restaurants, hotels, schoolrooms and social clubs, told up-close-and-personal, by a master storyteller.
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Rebeca Lau invites us along as she returns to what is still home after almost two decades away. In Tapachula, on the west coast of Mexico bordering Guatemala, Mami reminisces about a family history going back to 1919. As Mami tells stories, she cooks up familiar Chinese and Mexican delicacies, and the complexities of belonging and not belonging to China, Mexico, and Canada become clearer to Rebeca. As Rebeca explores the multigenerational family compound built around a general store, talks with longtime Chinese families clustered nearby, and visits childhood haunts, the result is a unique journey of discovery. Highly readable even as it embodies deeper meanings, this book narrates the experiences of three generations of Chinese, tying together their lives around the Pacific.
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