June Chow This post is a sequel to The right to remember the past: Opening Chinese immigration records in Canada’s national archives published on March 27, 2025. It is adapted from a presentation made on June 11, 2025 at the Association of Canadian Archivists conference held at Carleton University (Ottawa, Ontario) to an audience that included Librarian and Archivist of Canada, Leslie… Read more »
Laura Ishiguro, Nicole Yakashiro and Ayaka Yoshimizu What can one racialized migrant woman’s life teach us about resistance and community-building in today’s context of rising conservatism, nationalism, and securitization? The open educational resource (OER) we’ve created centres on the life of Kiyo Tanaka-Goto, a Japanese woman who lived much of her adult life in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside (DTES), especially during the interwar… Read more »
June Chow The right to know through Canada’s Access to Information Act and the right to personal privacy under the Privacy Act hang in perpetual balance at our national archives. In 2021, an ATIP request submitted to Library and Archives Canada (LAC) sought to open a set of historical government records that remained Restricted within its Chinese Immigration records series, namely, C.I. 44 forms and… Read more »
By Madhulagna Halder I almost stumbled upon the account of the shahid bedis by accident in 2023, during an archival field trip. While working at the 114-year-old Rammohun Library, in Kolkata, India, I met Sunish Deb, a social worker and a former activist, who was a regular in the Library’s reading room. As we continued our chanced conversation about my… Read more »
Active History is delighted to launch our digital history initiative, Active History on Display (en français: Expositions d’Active History). The project features two exhibits. The first, More Than a Face, engages with nine storytellers to challenge dominant narratives of what it means to be Asian Canadian – and indeed to challenge the very idea that such a capacious category can… Read more »
By Timothy J. Stanley Until its 1947 repeal, the Chinese Immigration Act of 1923, also known as the Chinese Exclusion Act, effectively barred Chinese people from immigrating to Canada and required all Chinese, including the Canadian-born, to register with the government. Failure to register made them liable to fines, imprisonment and deportation. The Chinese are the only group to which… Read more »
Daniel Ross 2021 has been a difficult year for Chinatowns across Canada. In mid-April, a coalition of community leaders from six cities released a statement calling on the federal government to make it a “national priority” to support Chinatowns struggling with the fallout of the COVID-19 lockdown and a new spike in anti-Asian racism. In both Montreal and Toronto, local… Read more »
The Graphic History Collective recently released RRR #30 by erica hiroko isomura and Kaitlyn Fung that highlights intergenerational resistance and community organizing in Vancouver’s Chinatown. In particular, the poster emphasizes the role of women in preventing the building of a freeway through the community in the 1960s as well as ongoing efforts to resist displacement and gentrification. We hope that… Read more »
Yukari Takai More than a century before the global outbreak of Covid-19, another deadly disease struck Honolulu, one that ignited the tragic unfolding of many stories about public health, urban fires and social inequalities, particularly racism. The bubonic plague, also known as the Black Death, hit Honolulu’s crowded and throbbing Chinatown in December 1899 when it took the life of… Read more »
Laura Ishiguro and Laura Madokoro In recent weeks, we have seen white supremacist rallies in cities across North America, from Charlottesville to Quebec City. On each occasion, anti-fascist and anti-racist activists, along with other community members, have confronted these rallies with large and diverse counter-demonstrations, largely shutting them down, overwhelming them, or rendering them caricatures of their original plans. On… Read more »
