Article by: Macy Block

The city’s Chinese cemetery is a great historical site to learn about the history and culture of the early Chinese Canadian population in our community. It is also the city’s effort to reconcile with this demographic of Kamloops as the cemetery’s emergence was due to racial segregation of immigrants who moved to Canada to find solace. What this Tragic Truths of Kamloops story aims to discover is how the TRU community can help to reconcile with this dark past. To find these answers, I sat down with Jane Smith, who is not only formally educated in Chinese history but also a previous TRU student with a Chinese-Canadian background. All of these aspects of Jane’s character help to provide her with in-depth cultural perspectives and knowledge about the history of the cemetery and how we, the TRU community, can help reconcile with this tragic past. 

Through this perspective that Jane has, she was able to provide Tragic Truths of Kamloops with educated insights into the history of the cemetery itself in order to give context to how we can help with reconciliation efforts for the Chinese Canadian community.

DISCLAIMERS: Although as reporters, our goal is to interview candidates with the closest connections to the cemetery as possible, sources have indicated there are no close connections to anyone buried in the cemetery currently living in Kamloops. Our solution to this has been to interview individuals who are a part of our target audience- people in the TRU community who have significant knowledge of Chinese culture and customs. Also, this interview candidate has asked Tragic Truths Kamloops to not disclose her identity, so we have changed her name to Jane Smith and have not provided a photo of her.