Catherine Clement is a community curator and designer based in Vancouver’s Chinatown. Her work focuses on uncovering and sharing the lesser-known stories of the community.
She created and curated the centennial project The Paper Trail to the 1923 Chinese Exclusion Act. The project involved a national “crowdsourced” exhibition and major community archive designed to commemorate the 100th-anniversary of this dark period in Canadian history. The exhibition opened July 1, 2023 as the feature exhibition of the new Chinese Canadian Museum in Vancouver. The comprehensive online archive, to which Chinese head tax and related identity certificates continue to be added, is housed at UBC Library – Rare Books and Special Collections.
The Paper Trail project has been recognized with the following awards:
Heritage BC: Outstanding Award in the Education, Communications, & Awareness category (2024)
BC Historical Federation: Cultural Resource Accessibility Award (2024)
Chinese Canadian Historical Society
- The Drs. Wallace B. and Madeline H. Chung Prize in Chinese Canadian Community Archiving (2024)
- The Larry Wong Prize for Chinese Canadian Community and Public History (2024)
Prior to The Paper Trail project, Catherine was best known for her 10-year search uncovering the hidden works of Yucho Chow, Vancouver’s first and most prolific Chinese photographer. That project resulted in an exhibition of crowd-sourced materials in 2019, a book in 2020 and a comprehensive community archive of over 600 private photos taken by Yucho Chow. The book “Chinatown Through a Wide Lens: The Hidden Photographs of Yucho Chow,” was awarded the prestigious 2020 B.C. Lieutenant Governor’s Medal for Historical Writing and the 2020 Vancouver Book Award.
Over the years, Catherine curated and designed a number of exhibitions for the Chinese Canadian Military Museum. She also did content development on the Vancouver Chinatown part of the exhibition A Seat At The Table with the Museum of Vancouver. And in 2017 she developed and art directed the Chinatown History Windows project which brought history to the streets through the installation of 22 large storefront window murals. The project was shortlisted for a 2017 Governor General’s History Award for Excellence in Community Programming.
Catherine has also devoted countless hours volunteering her time supporting community organizations including Chinese Canadian Military Museum; the Youth Collaborative for Chinatown; and the Chinese Canadian Historical Society of British Columbia
She is a recipient of the Governor General’s Sovereign Medal for Volunteers (2016). And in October 2021, was bestowed with an Honorary Doctorate from Simon Fraser University.
