Nig
This

ouglas College has helped to make

history—and find some—in a unique

project that started last month in
Vancouver’s Chinatown. As part of a
summer field-school also involving
students and faculty from Kwantlen,
Capilano, Langara and Malaspina,
Douglas College students literally broke
ground at the first urban archeological dig
in BC.

The site, a soon-to-be construction
zone at 34 West Pender, has most recently
been used as a parking lot. “I never
thought a back-hoe and pick-axe would be
part of my excavation equipment,” admits
project coordinator and Malaspina
Instructor Imogene Lim. “But that’s what
we had to use to get at the layers
underneath.”

Now, the race is on to unearth the
site’s archeological secrets before new
condominium construction begins. Once
known as Shanghai Alley, the area was
the original gated home of the city’s
Chinese residents. Lim notes, “People
were legislated into living here, but they
did make a life. Although we may not
have gotten the vote until 1947, Chinese-
Canadians have been a vital part of local
and national history since the last
century.”

Displaying an archival map of the
original site, Lim points out that from
1889, local buildings—many devoted to
legal gambling, opium, and “ill fame”—
were built on pilings above the False
Creek tides and marsh. “This means that
there is probably a lot of archeologically
significant material to be found below,”
says Lim.

Finds so far include copper eyelets and
buttons, Fan Tan gambling markers, and
even a boot or two. “We can make some
very interesting speculations about the
first boot we found,” says Lim. “We know
that this was an area containing mills and
docks. We also know that in 1906

 

Imogene Lim points out a vintage boot unearthed at the archeological
field school’s Chinatown site.

legislation pushed prostitution into
Shanghai Alley, Canton Alley and
Chinatown. This turn-of-the-century
ankle boot was size eight, too big for
most Chinese women at that time. So we
can speculate that it might have belonged
to a Euro-Canadian woman of ‘ill-fame’
who worked in the area.”

With the help of her cousin George
Yip, Lim has been piecing together other
parts of the area’s history. Having once
lived in the area, Yip supplied family
photos containing valuable background
clues. “And although Canton Alley was
demolished in the 1940s,” Lim says, “We

still have some visible clues, such as
wooden paving blocks, brick fill and some
original window placements to tell us
about how things once were.”

Lim herself has a strong connection to
the area, her parents having owned WK
Gardens restaurant on East Pender. But it’s
her passion for the past that keeps her
working to find and preserve our urban
archeological history. ““There’s a lot of
history underground,” she concludes. “It’s
really quite shocking that there hasn’t been
more work of this kind done in BC.” ]