Community is Never Neutral: Placemaking in Chinatowns Across Canada

n the basement of the Chinese Cultural Centre in Calgary’s Chinatown, there is a hidden museum. A sign on a stand and an arrow pointing downward, a thin metal chain blocking the stairs that curious visitors can remove and replace on their own. There’s no fee to enter and the lights are turned on as needed, revealing, “white ghosts,” so opposite from the colourful traditional Chinese style. In dusty glass cases, items have been collected: a washboard, tin cups, embroidered slippers, red envelopes. Newspaper clippings have been pasted to the walls: headlines about the Chinese head tax, the Chinese Exclusion Act, destroyed storefronts, and the establishment of a new Chinatown location in 1910 due to pressure from city officials to move.