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Wallace B. and Madeline H.
Chung and the Chung Collection
By Sarah Romkey
Wallace Bakfu
Chung began assembling what would become one of British Columbia's
most important research collections at the age of six, when he
was inspired by a poster hanging in his father's Victoria, B.C.
tailor shop. The poster depicted the Canadian Pacific ship, the
Empress of Asia, the ship that his mother immigrated to Canada
on in 1919. Starting with newspaper clippings and scrapbooks,
Chung began collecting items pertaining to the immigration experience
of Chinese people to Canada, the Canadian Pacific Railway Company,
and early B.C. history.
Dr. Chung's grandfather left
China for the California goldfields, eventually settling in Victoria
in 1887. In 1897, Chung's father immigrated to Victoria. Wallace
was born in Victoria, and was educated at Victoria College, University
of British Columbia and McGill University, where he studied medicine.
He returned to Vancouver in 1953 and married Dr. Madeline Chung
(née Huang), who was born in Shanghai and raised in Hong
Kong. Wallace and Madeline were among the first Chinese Canadians
to pursue careers in medicine. Wallace Chung specialized in vascular
surgery, and became a professor of surgery at the University
of British Columbia and Head of the Department of Surgery at
the UBC Hospital. He retired in 1991. Madeline was one of the
first female doctors in Canada to specialize in obstetrics and
gynaecology. For a time, as the only Chinese speaking OB/GYN
in Vancouver, she was called upon to deliver many of the Chinese-Canadian
children born in the Lower Mainland, totalling over 6,500 babies
in the span of her career.
In addition to their impressive
medical careers, Wallace and Madeline made names for themselves
in the Vancouver Chinese community as philanthropists and active
participants in cultural, historical and social issues. Wallace
was a member of numerous boards, including the British Columbia
Heritage Trust, the Vancouver Chinese Cultural Centre, and the
Maritime Museum. He was also a member of the Canadian Multiculturalism
Council, which drafted the Multiculturalism Act in 1987. Madeline
is a founding member of the True Light Chinese School. Madeline
and Wallace are the namesakes of the Vancouver Maritime Museum
Library, which was built in 1993 thanks to their donations. Wallace
received the Order of Canada in 2005 and the Order of British
Columbia in 2006.
The Wallace B. Chung and Madeline
H. Chung Collection was donated to the University of British
Columbia Library in 1999. Housed in the Rare Books and Special
Collections branch, the collection numbers over 25,000 items
and has been valued at over five million dollars. Described as
a national treasure, the collection covers three broad themes:
early B.C. history, immigration and settlement, and the Canadian
Pacific Railway Company.
The early B.C. history theme
consists of books, maps, photographs, documents and artefacts,
relating to all aspects of B.C. history. This area of the collection
is particularly rich in material that describes the discovery
of British Columbia by European explorers, as described in first-hand
accounts of their voyages of discovery. Highlights include first
editions of the narratives of eighteenth-century explorers such
as James Cook, George Vancouver, Dionisio Galiano, Ivan Kruzenshtern
and Etienne Marchand. Several important early B.C. monographs
and broadsides are included, such as Order in council constituting
the Supreme Court of Civil Justice of Vancouver Island (1858),
thought to be the first book published in B.C. Material published
more recently includes ephemeral items such as tourism brochures
and souvenirs from B.C.'s centenary in 1958, as well as a large
collection of secondary sources on all aspects of B.C. history.
The immigration and settlement
theme is perhaps best known for its material on the experience
of Chinese Canadians. Photographs, documents and artifacts tell
stories of the struggles and eventual successes of Chinese immigrants
and their descendants in fields such as business, politics and
the arts. The collection holds a portion of the Yip family and
Yip Sang Company (PDF
document / 11KB download) fonds, the remainder being held by
the City of Vancouver Archives. This archival material documents
the way in which Yip Sang rose from selling coal door-to-door
to being a highly respected businessman and the "unofficial
mayor" of Vancouver's Chinatown. Archival material of the
Dart Coon Club and Chinese Freemasons of Victoria is also held
in the collection. Anti-Asian ephemera are present and serve
as a grim reminder that Canada was not always welcoming to Asian
immigrants. In addition to material related to Chinese Canadians,
the collection also holds a significant aggregation of material
related to Chinese immigration to the United States. The collection
also holds a portion of the A. MacDonnel fonds, the archival
material of a Scottish reverend responsible for the immigration
of several hundred families from the Scottish Hebrides and Northern
Ireland to Alberta.
In addition to the archival
material, the Chung Collection holds an impressively thorough
library collection related to immigration and settlement. Searchers
will find primary and secondary sources on the immigration and
Diaspora of people from many different countries. Popular writings
and fiction from the nineteenth and twentieth centuries reflect
white attitudes toward immigrants. Highlights include government
documents regarding Chinese immigration to Canada, the United
States, and New South Wales, Australia. The collection also holds
fiction and non-fiction by Asian Canadian and American authors
such as Paul Yee, Wayson Choy and David Ishii.
Finally, the collection holds
one of the largest research collections on the Canadian Pacific
Railway Company. Dovetailing into the collection's documents
on Asian immigration and the Chinese experience in North America,
the CPR section of the Chung Collection tells the story of the
building of the railway, the CPR steamship services, and the
experiences of travelers on CPR ships, trains and planes. The
collection is rich not only in archival materials originating
from the CPR and publications about the CPR, but also in artifacts
and graphic material, reflecting travel and tourism in a bygone
era. The collection came full circle when Dr. Chung acquired
a model of the ship that brought his mother to Canada, the Empress
of Asia. Dr. Chung has said that this is his favorite item in
the collection, and for good reason: after purchasing it in a
dilapidated condition, he spent some four thousand hours over
six years restoring it to its current pristine condition.
Wallace and Madeline's gift
to the University of British Columbia Library is truly a gift
to all British Columbians and Canadians. Upon donating the collection
in 1999, Wallace said, "we are giving the collection to
UBC so as many people as possible can have the opportunity to
understand and appreciate the struggles and joys of those who
have come before them."
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Department
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