Catherine Clement is set to launch The Paper Trail to the 1923 Chinese Exclusion Act at the Victoria Chinatown Museum on Wednesday.
An award-winning exhibition on the Chinese Exclusion Act, presented in Victoria and Vancouver, is finding a new lease on life after its curator wrote a book on the same topic.
Historian Catherine Clement is launching her new book,The Paper Trail to the 1923 Chinese Exclusion Act, at the Victoria Chinatown Museum on Wednesday, where an exhibition based on her research is still on display.
Grace Wong Sneddon, chair of the Victoria Chinatown Museum Society, called Clement’s book a “thorough and comprehensive” look at the paper certificates or identity cards that Chinese in Canada were forced to get regardless of citizenship under the federal Chinese Exclusion Act, which were used exclusively to keep track of Chinese Canadians.
Failure to obtain an identity card was punishable by fines, imprisonment or deportation.
Clement amassed tens of thousands of records with the help of descendants of Chinese Canadians who were given the so-called identity cards — including Wong Sneddon herself, whose father was issued a certificate.
“I don’t think any one of us had all the pieces, not even myself,” Wong Sneddon said, adding that she wasn’t aware of just how involved the federal government was in marginalizing Chinese Canadians prior to Clement’s research.
“For a lot of folks of our generation and future generations, this is a really important piece of history,” she said.
Clement’s book expands on her exhibition, which premiered at the Chinese Canadian Museum in Vancouver in 2023.
She will be in Victoria at 10 Fan Tan Alley for two book launch presentations Wednesday at 2 p.m. and 7 p.m.
Registrations and book orders can be made by email at[email protected].
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