Catherine Clement is a community curator and designer based in Vancouver’s Chinatown. Her work focuses on uncovering and sharing the lesser-known stories of the community. 

She developed, curated and designed The Paper Trail to the 1923 Chinese Exclusion Act, a national exhibition and major community archive that commemorates the 100th-anniversary of this dark period in Canadian history. The exhibition opened July 1, 2023 as the feature exhibition of the new Chinese Canadian Museum in Vancouver. The comprehensive online archive, to which head tax and related identity certificates continue to be added, is housed at UBC Library – Rare Books and Special Collections. 

Prior to her most recent show, Catherine was best known for her 10-year search uncovering the hidden works of Yucho Chow, Vancouver’s first and most prolific Chinese photographer. That project resulted in an exhibition of crowd-sourced materials in 2019, a book in 2020 and a comprehensive community archive of over 600 private photos taken by Yucho Chow. The book Chinatown Through a Wide Lens: The Hidden Photographs of Yucho Chow, was awarded the prestigious 2020 B.C. Lieutenant Governor’s Medal for Historical Writing and the 2020 Vancouver Book Award.

Catherine also has curated and designed a number of exhibitions for the Chinese Canadian Military Museum. She has focussed on uncovering the forgotten, personal stories of war.

In 2017, for Canada’s 150, she art directed the Chinatown History Windows project which brought history to the streets through the installation of 22 large storefront window murals. The project was shortlisted for a 2017 Governor General’s History Award for Excellence in Community Programming. 

In 2020, Catherine did content development and interpretive planning for the Chinatown location of A Seat at the Table, an exhibition created by the Museum of Vancouver/Chinese Canadian Museum. 

She has also devoted countless hours volunteering her time supporting community organizations (e.g., the Wong Benevolent Association) and numerous families on ways to preserve their archives. 

Catherine is on the boards of the: Chinese Canadian Historical Society of British Columbia; Chinese Canadian Military Museum; and Youth Collaborative for Chinatown.

She is a recipient of the Governor General’s Sovereign Medal for Volunteers (2016). And in October 2021, was bestowed with an Honorary Doctorate from Simon Fraser University.