Let’s Build a Collective Memory of Chinatown
This community project created a collective oral history of Toronto’s Chinatown West by bridging four generations of community members.
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Let’s Build a Collective Memory of Chinatown, Public History nominee, 2025 Heritage Toronto Awards, January 20, 2025. Image by Fred Hunsberger.
Let’s Build a Collective Memory of Chinatown, Public History nominee, 2025 Heritage Toronto Awards, circa 2024. Image by Fred Hunsberger.
Let’s Build a Collective Memory of Chinatown, Public History nominee, 2025 Heritage Toronto Awards, circa 2024. Image by Yafang Shi.
Let’s Build a Collective Memory of Chinatown, Public History nominee, 2025 Heritage Toronto Awards, circa 2024. Image by Yafang Shi.
Project Lead: Linda Zhang
Date of Release: September 6, 2024
“Let’s Build a Collective Memory of Chinatown” is a community co-design, memory, and storytelling project that took place in Toronto and Cambridge from Fall 2024 to Spring 2025. This project brought over 300 Chinatown community members across over four generations to explore how shared memory and imagination can safeguard Chinatown’s heritage and build community-led stewardship practices.
Toronto’s Chinatowns have a long history of anti-displacement organizing, mutual aid, and placekeeping. Yet, many of these legacies, along with memories of homes, were buried deep under the urban archaeology, and remained absent from official archives. This project centred on the concept of “cold” and “hot” memories: “cold” memories anchor Chinatown’s history of activism, and “hot” memories celebrate it as a vibrant, lived space. While archival research preserves some of the former, Chinatown’s hot everyday memories were held in the lived experiences and are rarely documented. To uncover, share, and honour these layered narratives, community members collaborated with a group of architecture students from the University of Waterloo. Together, they combined archival research, architecture reconstructions (models, drawings, and designs) through a series of public events across Toronto.
By centring marginalized voices and community memories, “Let’s Build a Collective Memory of Chinatown” advances conventional public history practices to honour living heritage and stewardship, while promoting cross-cultural dialogues and intergenerational collaboration. It demonstrates how community-led storytelling can challenge systemic marginalization and build community power.
Additional Project Members:
Student Collaborators: Samira El Badaui, Kayla Estacio, Lana Dang, Cindy He, Jenny Hu, Khadeejah Kazi, Avory Lai, Alisa Lau, Jhony Li Feng, Tina Lin, Nathan Man, Areeba Saleem, Derek Shin, Jacquelyne Jane Villaspin
Community Collaborators: Simon Liao, Eva Chu, Christie Carrière, Bryan Hong, Sharon Hong, Phyllis Lam, Chiyi Tam, Shulan Tien, Beryl Tsang, Julie Wang, Angela Wang, Amy Wang, Eric Wang, Wendy Yang
Community Partners: Planting Imagination, Cecil Community Centre, Scadding Court Community Centre