Steam. Steel & Belonging Bytown 200
My Unsinkable Heart
Mixed media: paper clay, incense ash, wood
Charles Melville Hays, president of the Grand Trunk Railway and builder of Ottawa’s
Château Laurier, was among those who died aboard the Titanic.
This sculpture turns to a largely overlooked story, the eight Chinese men who travelled aboard the Titanic. Six survived, including Fang Lang, who was rescued from the freezing Atlantic while clinging to a floating wooden door. More than eighty years later, Fang Lang’s survival would inspire one of cinema’s most recognizable scenes. In James Cameron’s 1997 film Titanic, Rose, played by Kate Winslet, clings to floating wreckage while Jack, played by Leonardo DiCaprio, remains in the water. Cameron has acknowledged Fang Lang’s rescue as an inspiration for the scene, however, Fang Lang and the real story behind the scene, continues to remain largely invisible to audiences.
Titanic film . 1997
This erasure echoes the discrimination the six Chinese survivors faced after the disaster. When the Carpathia reached New York City, they were refused entry into the United States, due to the Chinese exclusionary act of the time. The six Chinese survivors were not treated like the other Titanic survivors and were transferred to the Annetta and departed for Cuba the next day.
Win Sun Fong (listed as "Fang Lang")
In My Unsinkable Heart, Fang Lang floats at the centre, reaching for help and, metaphorically, toward Rose. Within the waves are fragments associated with Roses fictional character, her hair, brooch, necklace, bonnet, as well as the anchor of the Titanic. History, fiction, memory and erasure converge in the water.
By placing Fang Lang back at the centre of the conversation, My Unsinkable Heart seeks to bring his story and those of the other Chinese passengers, back into the frame.
With Every Step, We Carry Our Home
Mixed media: paper clay, incense ash, wood, wire
This sculpture depicts the first steps onto unfamiliar ground, recreating the first arrival of Chinese immigrants to the shores of British Columbia in search of opportunity and a better life. Drawn by the Gold Rush, or Gold Mountain, and later by railway work, Chinese labourers became an integral part of Canada’s nation building effort.
Chinese labour helped connect British Columbia to the rest of Canada through the Canadian Pacific Railway. Yet after the railway was completed, Canada introduced the Chinese Head Tax in 1885, followed by increasingly restrictive policies that culminated in the Chinese Exclusion Act. This sculpture also evokes the largely forgotten story of the Chinese Labour Corps during the First World War. An estimated 80,000 Chinese labourers travelled secretly by rail from British Columbia to Halifax, where they were transported overseas to support the Allied war effort in Europe.
David Livingstone Collection.
Many who died during this period were buried along the railway routes across Canada. Among these sites is Petawawa, Ontario, where Chinese labourer Chou Ming Shan is buried and commemorated by a tombstone.
At the centre, one foot steps onto a wooden plank while the other touches the earth. The plank references the exclusionary conditions in which Chinese people were, in some circumstances, prevented from directly touching Canadian soil.
Resting on top the feet are objects associated with labour, nourishment, family and culture - a laundry bundle, dongzi, a peony blossom and a peeled tangerine.
The sculpture reflects on migration, resilience, cultural memory and exclusion. With Every Step, We Carry Our Home asks what we carry with us when we enter a new land, creating new roots, new stories, and a shared future.
Dandelions and Spike
Mixed media: clay, ash, wire, wood
Dandelions and Spike reflects on the contributions of Chinese labourers to the building of Canada and their enduring presence within the country’s cultural fabric and collective history. The work references the completion of the Canadian Pacific Railway and the driving of the Last Spike at Craigellachie, British Columbia, in 1885. Chinese labourers played a significant role in the construction of the railway, yet their presence is largely absent from the photographs and popular visual representations of the Last Spike ceremony.
The Last Spike . Library and Archives Canada
Surrounding the Spike in the sculpture, are dandelions. Dandilions are persistent plants capable of taking root in almost any climate or harsh environment. Here, they become a metaphor for Chinese labour, migration, resilience and endurance, a presence that took root across Canada despite adversity and exclusion.
The dandelions evoke the story of Wing Chung, a Chinese railway worker whose life
was connected to the construction of the Canadian Pacific Railway. Accounts of his life suggest that he was present at Craigellachie when the Last Spike was driven. His story offers a human trace of a Chinese presence that is largely missing from the photographic record of this defining moment.
Wing Chung (Revelstoke Museum and Archives)
Through the Last Spike and the dandelions that surround it, the sculpture asks us to
reconsider whose presence is remembered, whose is overlooked and how the story of Canada might be expanded to include those who helped build it.