Digital Collections of Chinese Canadian and Japanese Canadian Communities

The Advisory Group

The group is comprised of 15 individuals from across Canada, who are mainly of Chinese or Japanese descent. The main purpose of the group has been to reflect and make decisions on risk tolerance, and to guide the development of the narrative context for the collections.

Members include individuals of various ages (ranging from 20s to 90s), church and non-church affiliated, archivists, genealogists, and descendants of former Oriental Home and School residents.

The group met to:

• Consider scenarios associated with different types of personal information
• Weigh the benefits and risks of making the information publicly available
• Recommend how to proceed in each case (e.g. withhold/redact/publish as-is)
• Provide direction on preferred terminology

The group chose to handle sensitive information cautiously, testing community tolerance first, with the intention to evaluate decisions around redacted and withheld information after a year or two.

Information redacted or withheld includes:

• Children’s names, post-1923
• Personal information in registers, post-1923
• References to domestic violence
• References to the sale of children
• References to enslaved and enslavers

Additionally, the United Church of Canada's Policy on Baptism, Marriage and Burial Registers requires that entire columns of baptism information be redacted from the registers.