Community group hopes to revitalize Saskatoon's historic Chinatown
Plans include public art installations, community programming and archival research
A grassroots project in Saskatoon is looking to shine a light on the city's forgotten Chinatown history through art and stories from its past and present.
The initiative, called Project Riversdale Chinatown, wants to revitalize the area with a combination of public art installations, community programming and archival preservation.
Saskatoon's original Chinatown dated back to the early 20th century, when the area currently known as River Landing was populated by many Chinese immigrants and various businesses.
In 1930, the city decided to make way for a technical collegiate and relocated many of the businesses to the Riversdale area, scattering them on and around 20th Street and Avenue C.
"Unfortunately nowadays there isn't much Chinese business there [in Riversdale]," said project-lead and urban planner Hermes Chung.
"We're trying to reconnect with this part of history and to reimagine Riversdale as an area of the town that is very central, but also having this connection with the history."
Chung moved from Hong Kong to Saskatoon when he was in high school.
"I was still in high school, Grade 10, and I heard there used to be a Chinatown and I was like, 'Oh, why is it not here anymore?'"
Saskatoon's Chinatown history
Saskatoon's first Chinese community started to form in 1904 with the opening of the B.C. Restaurant on 20th street, according to Saskatoon archivist Jeff O'Brien.
He said Canada's immigration policy at the time worked to keep Chinese numbers very limited, with the majority being men. In a 1911 consensus, there were 250 men to one woman.
The first mention of "Chinatown" appeared in a 1909 newspaper, but O'Brien contends it wasn't until later there was a physical entity resembling a Chinatown.
"[In] 1911 you get your first Chinese entry in city directories," said O'Brien. "On 19th Street was a grocery store, and by 1912, there's three of them there and then by 1917, you could legitimately say that Saskatoon had a Chinatown."
In 1919 there were around 40 Chinese owned businesses in the city. Chinatown was comprised of restaurants, grocery stores, boarding houses and the offices of the Chinese Nationalist League.
When the city decided to find a place for the Saskatoon Technical Collegiate in early 1930, there were around four potential sites, but O'Brien said from the beginning the Saskatoon's downtown business community was very much in favour of the area where the Chinatown was located.
"A group of downtown merchants offered to pay the the value of the taxes on the Chinatown buildings if the city would hurry up and move them out, right, because they said 'our property values will increase if these buildings are gone.'"
"You have to understand too, that there is a considerable amount of racism with respect to Chinese in Saskatoon in those days."
O'Brien said they didn't demolish the Chinatown, but rather moved most of the buildings by picking them up and placing them across the tracks into the Riversdale area.
3 project pillars
As an urban planner, Chung said he believes in the concept of placemaking, or making an area more attractive to people. He said public art installations paired with community events are some of the ways to achieve that.
One idea from the group is a two-storey Chinatown gate — similar to ones seen at the entrances to Chinatowns around the world — that could be temporary or permanent.
"A gate is important because it tells people this is a different place, right, and we are playing with that concept," Chung said.
"In some other cities they are having 200 years of [Chinatown] history continuously, but in Saskatoon [we] kind of see that faded away, and I think it's a good chance to reimagine it and to reconnect with the previous part and to think about how we could go forward in the future."
Community engagement and programming is the next phase of the plan. Project co-lead Kehan Fu envisions it could take the form of a street or area being closed, with coloured arrows connecting people to businesses or locations in the neighbourhood along with other art installations, activities, or games like mahjong.
The last phase centres around archival recording, and preservation of unheard or forgotten stories from the Chinese community in the city.
Community feedback
Looking for community input, the group kicked off the project at the Dragon Emperor Restaurant in the Riversdale neighbourhood.
Ava Dulos, co-lead specializing in community engagement, said around 100 people came to the open house.
"Most of the feedback that we received is an interest in learning more. As this was new to me, this history, it's new to a lot of people as well," Dulos said.
The project aims to get a location in the Riversdale area to operate out of beginning sometime in the spring.
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With files from Saskatoon Morning