Hi everyone,
Hope you had a fantastic time over the holidays and stayed safe. It has been strange getting an extra week off. But hopefully going back to school goes well and we all stay healthy. If you’re reading this post you probably heard about the PLP winter exhibition. Maybe you even went and checked out. Anyways it went quite well and I feel like I learned a lot.
So over the last two months we finally got to go back out on field studies. Even though they were not over night and we just remained in Vancouver it was nice to go back out of the classroom. We got to go to six super interesting places all around Vancouver. We learned quite a lot about three cultures. As well as the hardships and injustices they faced in Canadas past. As the people of China, India, and Japan arrived in Canada they were met with hostility. I was shocked to learn just how many terrible injustices these groups of people faced in the past. One injustice which truly stood out to me was the horrifying conditions Chinese Canadians were subjected to in the late 19th and early 20th century. It began with Chinese Canadians being forced to pay a large tax in order to immigrate to Canada. Then they were forced to live in the worst areas of towns (typically swampy, industrial areas) and faced anti-asian racism. Many of them also were tricked into working on the Canadian Pacific Railway. They were promised good fortune and high wages but ended up being paid extremely low wages and were forced to do the most dangerous jobs.
This brings us to the exhibition. My group which included, Dries, Julien, and Erin was tasked with creating a memorial for the Chinese Canadians. We decided on creating a giant railroad spike. You can see a photo of the model below.
This spike would be placed in across from the Canadian Pacific Railway station in downtown Vancouver. It would be in a park surrounded my vegetation in order to increase public traffic around the spike. At the spike there would be plaques with information about the racism Chinese Canadians faced in the past. There would also be information about how that racism continues to this day. See location below.
If I was to pitch this idea to city council I would probably make some minor safety edits to the spike. As well as change the location because apparently that park will be the site of a hospital in the future. I would likely need to hire an engineer and a city planner to help find a suitable safe location for the spike. The location would also need to hold significance just as the train station did.
We chose a spike for our memorial as we wanted to create a powerful and simple visual piece which memorializes the hardships Chinese Canadians faced in the past. We wanted to show the ugly history of one of our nations greatest triumphs and most important pieces of infrastructures. Even though the railway connected our nations coasts, it drove apart our people.