I spent much of August 2018 in Canada, attending a conference and undertaking more of my DECRA research on Chinese naturalisation in British Columbia.

9–12 August, Vancouver: I presented a paper ‘White women, Chinese men: Interracial intimacies in colonial New South Wales’ at the International Federation for Research on Women’s History conference at Simon Fraser University in Vancouver. My paper was part of a panel called ‘Struggles for marriage: Race and indentity’, alongside Karen Hughes from Swinburne University, Rui Kohiyama from Tokyo Women’s Christian University and Junko Akamatsu from Bunkyo Gakuin University in Japan; the panel was chaired by Kristin Celello from Queen’s College CUNY.

On the last day of the conference I went on a Chinatown walking tour run by Judy Lam Maxwell – it was, to be honest, somewhat of a disappointment. The conference program had stated that the tour would be about the women of Vancouver Chinatown, but there wasn’t any particular focus on women and some of the historical information Judy provided about Australia (in the context of White Canada/White Australia) was just plain wrong. I did, however, independently go and eat some delicious dauh fuh fa (豆腐花) at the Chinatown Pop-up Market, part of the Vancouver Chinatown Summer Events program.

13–14 August, Vancouver to Ottawa: Travel, email and life admin.

15–17 August, Ottawa: Research at Library and Archives Canada. I began looking at Canadian Government archival material relating to Chinese naturalisation (LAC only permits you to order 10 archival boxes per day, and they take 24–48 hours to be delivered to the reading room), as well as books, theses and historical writings on the Chinese in Canada, citizenship and so on. I also caught up with the lovely Laura Madokoro (McGill University) and Shawn Graham (Carleton University).

18–19 August, Ottawa and Gatineau: Weekend! I went to the Canadian Museum of History to see how Chinese Canadians figure in the museum’s telling of Canadian history. Having always approached the history of Canada from the Pacific, in the Canadian History Hall it took an unexpectedly long time (and a long walk) to finally get from east to west, to the part where British Columbia enters the national story. Exhibits that included information about Chinese Canadians were:

• ‘From Sea to Sea’ (1867–1885) – building the Canadian Pacific Railway
• ‘Transforming a Dominion’ (1885–1914) – early twentieth-century migration, Chinese head tax and the 1907 Vancouver riot
• ‘Diversity and Human Rights’ (1914–today) – Chinese Immigration Act 1923, the Head Tax Apology and Redress, and the introduction of Canadian citizenship in 1947.

This blog post by curator James Trepanier reflects on telling Asian Canadian histories in the Canadian History Hall.

The Canadian History Hall was big and impressive and busy, but the exhibition I enjoyed most was quietly tucked away on the lower ground floor in a gallery for exhibitions from the collections of Library and Archives Canada. The exhibition, ‘A Little History: The Hidden Stories of Children’, featured paintings, photographs, letters and documents by and about children, including the 1922 head tax certificate of ten-year-old Chong Do Dang from Chew Yung Lee in Hoiping.

20–24 August, Ottawa: More research at Library and Archives Canada.

25–26 August, Ottawa to Victoria BC: Travel and a day off.

27–28 August, Victoria: Research at the British Columbia Archives, following up on material that I didn’t get to see when I was in Victoria two years ago.

29–31 August, Victoria to Canberra: I watched Crazy Rich Asians, then flew out of Victoria International Airport, to Vancouver, to Melbourne, and then finally home to Canberra!