Riot Walk tour recounts dark moment in Vancouver's history - Action News
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British Columbia

Riot Walk tour recounts dark moment in Vancouver's history

For people curious about Vancouver's history, an immersive, self-guided walking tour will reveal details of one of the city's darkest episodes: The 1907 race riot in which whites targeted Chinese and Japanese Canadians.

The self-guided walking tour depicts Vancouver's 1907 anti-Asian race riot

Henry Tsang, creator of 360 Riot Walk, shows the tour on a tablet while standing at one of the stops in Shanghai Alley, the centre of the city's original Chinatown.
Henry Tsang, creator of 360 Riot Walk, shows the tour on a tablet while standing at one of the stops in Shanghai Alley, the centre of the city's original Chinatown. (Rafferty Baker/CBC)

Vancouver is known for its multiculturalism, and dating all the way back to when the city was founded on the unceded land of the Musqueam, Squamish and Tsleil-WaututhNationsin 1886, there have been people from amix of cultures calling the place home.

But many Vancouveritesmay not be aware of the racist aspects of the city's history. That's why Henry Tsang, artist and associate professor at Emily Carr University of Art and Design, created an immersive, self-guided walking tour of the oldest parts of the city, focusing on the details of the 1907 race riot.

It takes a couple of hours to complete the360 Riot Walk, whichis freeand requires only amobile device connected to the internet. It leads people through 13 stops beginning in Gastown, and continuing through Chinatown, the Downtown Eastside, and into what was known at the time as Japantown.

The anti-Asian riot of 1907 involved amob of about 9,000 people,according to Canadian Encyclopedia. Whipped up by the Asiatic Exclusion League, rioterssmashed windows and destroyed the shops and homes of Asian Canadians in Chinatown and Japantown.

"I think anyone who's interested in the place that they'reliving should take the tour," said Tsang."This is where Vancouver began, right? This part of town."

While the race riot is central to the tour, it also offers context and other historical details of the early days of Vancouver. It can be taken by anybody, anywhere on a computer. But people walking the tour are invited to begin at Maple Tree Square in Gastown, where Carrall, Alexander, Powell, and Water streets intersect.

The 360 Riot Walk uses archival images overlaid onto 360 photographs taken at each stop. At Maple Tree Square in Gastown, images of Vancouver's founding are shown. (360 Riot Walk)

There, surrounded by today'sbustle of the touristy square with its streets paved with bricks, people are introduced to howthe land would have looked before European settlement.

The narrator, Michael Barnholden, describes the area as a canoe portage between Burrard Inlet and False Creek, with a canal that filled at high tide, allowing Indigenous people to paddle between the bodies of water.

Standing in the square with mobile device in hand, one can swivel around, looking at archival images overlaid on the 360 photos that make up the immersive tour experience.

Henry Tsang holds a tablet in the 100-block of Powell Street. Though the facade has changed in the 112 years since the 1907 riot, a building that was targeted still stands. The tour has a photo of the building with windows smashed and boarded up. (Rafferty Baker/CBC)

The tour quickly builds toward the race riot, which lasted two days and nights.

"Over a third of Vancouver's population came out to this anti-Asian demonstration," said Tsang. "Well, there were inflammatoryspeeches that were made. Some folks got really excited, and they decided to go attack the Chinese Canadians in Chinatown."

According to Tsang, the riot wasn't part of the plan and took everybody by surprise. At a stop at Main Street and Pender,Barnholdendescribes the scene.

"This was the entrance to Chinatown, into which the mob stormed," he says in the narration to the English version of the tour."The riotersidentified which businesses were run by Chinese, and smashed their windows and vandalized their buildings."

The 360 Riot Walk experience includes multiple stops in which archival images from the Vancouver Public Library, Vancouver Archives, and other sources, are overlaid on modern 360 images captured at each of the 13 stops. (Rafferty Baker/CBC)

Eventually, the riot movedtoward Japantown on Powell Street. There, the rioters were driven away byJapanese Canadians who had a day's warning of the threat, and armed themselves.

Henry Tsang, associate professor at Emily Carr University of Art and Design, stands in Shanghai Alley, one of the 360 Riot Walk tour stops. (Rafferty Baker/CBC)

The tour was made with $17,000 in funding from the Vancouver Park Board and Emily Carr University. It's available in English, Cantonese and Japanese. According to Tsang, the Punjabi version will soon be online.

For some, the tour will serve as a reminder of the city's dark history. For others, it may come as a shock.

"A surprising number of people that were born here also don't know the white nationalist and very racist history of, specifically, Vancouver, British Columbia and overall, Canada," said Tsang.


Do you have more to add to this story? Email rafferty.baker@cbc.ca

Follow Rafferty Baker on Twitter: @raffertybaker