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Duncan’s Chinatown:
A Living Legacy
In the heart of downtown Duncan, there once stood a small but vibrant Chinatown filled with grocery stores, cafés, produce markets, boarding houses, laundries, meeting halls, and family-run businesses. Children played in alleyways behind storefronts. Merchants greeted customers by name. Families cooked, worked, and raised generations in buildings that blended home and livelihood into one.
Today, almost none of those buildings remain.
But the people, stories, and memories still do.
This project exists to preserve and share the stories of the Chinese families who helped shape Duncan through resilience, entrepreneurship, cultural connection, and community leadership.
Through photographs, archival articles, oral histories, maps, and family memories, the Chinatown Heritage Project reconnects today’s community with a neighbourhood that once stood at the heart of downtown life.
A flowing narrative about immigration, settlement, businesses, daily life, and the eventual loss of Chinatown.
This section explores the many layers of life in Duncan’s historic Chinatown through stories of hardship, resilience, culture, and community memory.
Explore the families who built businesses, raised generations, and helped shape the community.
An interactive map experience connecting present-day locations to historic Chinatown buildings and stories.
From laundries and cafés to grocers, and restaurants, these stories explore the entrepreneurs and businesses that helped shape Chinatown’s identity.