A group of architecture students from the University of Waterloo in Ontario, Canada, have painstakingly recreated miniature models of seven iconic businesses and restaurants that once thrived in Toronto’s Chinatown. The project draws from archival materials and oral histories collected from community elders, aiming to preserve the rapidly disappearing cultural heritage of one of the city’s most historically significant neighbourhoods.
Among the recreated establishments are Sai Woo, a two-storey restaurant dating back to the 1950s known for its traditional Chinese banquet hall, and Charlie’s Meat and Seafood, a white-tiled butcher shop that opened in 1971. These models are part of an exhibition titled “Let’s Build a Collective Memory of Chinatown,” hosted at the City of Toronto Archives until February. The initiative reflects ongoing concerns about the vulnerability of Chinatown to redevelopment pressures given the neighbourhood’s valuable downtown location.
The project was led by Linda Zhang, an associate professor at the University of Waterloo’s School of Architecture and a longtime advocate for Toronto’s Chinatown preservation. Zhang, trained as an architect and artist, highlighted that many Chinese-Canadian communities face similar threats across North America due to their prime real estate. Her team’s work seeks to document and raise awareness of the cultural and historical value of these spaces, which often remain undocumented or overlooked.
Toronto's original Chinatown was largely displaced in the mid-1950s when two-thirds of the neighbourhood was expropriated for the construction of the new City Hall and Nathan Phillips Square, a move executed without consultation or compensation to residents and business owners. This forced the community to reorganize into new areas now known as Chinatown East and Chinatown West. Zhang noted that both continue to face redevelopment threats.
Researching Chinatown’s history proved challenging due to scarce archival records. Despite searching city archives, Zhang found little more than basic documentation such as business registries and a handful of photographs, reflecting a time when Chinese-Canadian contributions were often excluded from the city’s official narratives. To supplement these gaps, she employed 3D scanning technologies, using drones licensed for advanced aerial mapping to create digital archives of the neighbourhood.
During the early months of the COVID-19 pandemic, Zhang compiled these digital scans with documents into a virtual reality repository accessible to the public. She also developed an interactive game based on 99 miniature Chinatown buildings called Build Your Own Chinatown, designed to engage people in discussions about what heritage and community spaces are worth preserving.
Beyond documentation, the project extended into creative realms. In 2020, alongside the advocacy group Friends of Chinatown Toronto, Zhang facilitated a speculative-fiction workshop called “Chinatown 2050,” inviting participants to imagine the future of the neighbourhood decades from now. Some stories from the workshop were later published in an anthology and adapted into virtual-reality vignettes presented at film festivals.
Most recently, Zhang returned from a residency in Jingdezhen, China, known as the “porcelain capital,” where she honed ceramic techniques to create artworks blending tradition with activism. She produced ceramic lucky cats and ancestral tablets bearing the message “Help Save Chinatown,” which were sold to raise funds for the Toronto Chinatown Land Trust Stewardship Fund, supporting affordable housing, education, and community programs.
While acknowledging the continued challenges facing Chinatown, Zhang emphasized the importance of incremental progress. She cited Chinese-Canadian historian Arlene Chan’s reminder that despite setbacks, the neighbourhood’s preservation efforts have yielded meaningful improvements over time. Through these artistic and archival endeavors, Zhang and her collaborators seek to sustain Toronto’s Chinatown not only as a cultural landmark but as a living, evolving community.