History retold: Heritage Park exhibit fills in the gaps with stories from early Chinatown yyc
Unbeknownst to her, Kwong’s father Jack had donated some traditional Mandarin-style clothing from the family to Heritage Park in the 1990s. Until now, they have never been displayed. Jack has his own place in Calgary’s history. He owned and operated Calgary’s Food-Vale Stores in Mission and Britannia and was later joined by his brother, Larry, who was the first player of Asian descent to play in the NHL as a New York Ranger in 1948.
This anecdote is amusing, albeit a bit outside the historical parameters of the exhibit. But it does show the sort of racism and profound cultural ignorance that flourished in the city toward Chinese-Canadians who have a long but largely undocumented history in Calgary. The heart of We Were Here remains the work of five local writers and Calgary artist Jarrett Sitter. Lougheed House put out a call to the community for writers, who were tasked with writing fictional accounts of some of the key figures and events in the early history of Chinatown. Sitter then used the stories as a basis for colourful illustrations.
The story certainly has flights of pure fiction. It focuses on a relationship between a character Kwong names Jackie Dunn, who is based on Smith, and a woman named Yin. Kwong says her story is probably the “happiest” of the five, which are offered as both pamphlets and audio readings by the author as part of the exhibit. Mormei Zanke’s Dry, for instance, chronicles the hardscrabble life of a homesick immigrant in the first Chinatown circa 1887 and paints a grim picture of a disillusioned man drawn to Canada by the promise of gold but ended up working the railway before landing a dead-end job at a laundry.
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