By John Mackie
Dr. Wallace Chung inside Chung/Lind Gallery at Irving K Barber Centre UBC in Vancouver, BC, April 19, 2024.
Dr. Wallace Chung is Canada’s foremost collector of historic Chinese and Canadian Pacific Railway artifacts and memorabilia.
Phil Lind was Canada’s top collector of artifacts and memorabilia from the Klondike Gold Rush.
Both donated their collections to the University of B.C. UBC’s Katherine Kalsbeek thought the collections worked well together, so made a proposal — to display them side by side in a new museum.
“I introduced Phil and Dr. Chung to each other over lunch and pitched this idea,” said Kalsbeek, the head of Rare Books and Special Collections at UBC. “They liked it, thankfully. And five years later, here we stand.”
The new Chung/Lind Gallery will open to the public May 1 on the second floor of the Irving K. Barber Learning Centre at UBC.
Sadly, Lind passed away last year. But about 40 members of his family made it to the official opening of the 3,100-sq.-ft. space on April 19.
Dr. Chung made it to the opening, but at 98, declined to give a speech. Both Chung and Lind’s voices can be heard in the gallery, relating taped stories about their collections.
The Chung collection was previously displayed in a smaller space on the first floor of the Barber Centre. The new gallery is in a much higher profile location, right off the main entrance to the building.
Visitors are greeted with one of Dr. Chung’s most cherished objects — an unbelievably detailed scale model of the Canadian Pacific luxury liner the Empress of Asia.
But the display in the new gallery adds a wrinkle — the model seems to be float atop an aquarium simulating the ocean, with porcelain cups and saucers dotting the bottom. There even seems to be live fish.
“We really wanted to bring to life a story by Dr. Chung,” Kalsbeek explains. “He tells the story of how you could trace the path of the (CP) ships on the ocean floor, because a lot of dishwashing staff on the ships would throw the dishes overboard rather than clean them.”
The water and fish in the aquarium aren’t real, though. They’re an illusion created by Dutch Igloo , a company in Amsterdam that creates “holographic experiences” and dioramas to bring museum displays to life.
A second Dutch Igloo piece recreates Phil Lind’s grandfather’s log cabin in the Klondike, complete with Johnny Lind and his pet husky inside. The details are amazing — Johnny’s cooking two eggs is a cast-iron pan on top of a wood stove.
Johnny Lind had gone prospecting in Yukon and Alaska in 1894, and when gold was discovered in Bonanza Creek in the Klondike in 1896, he climbed the infamous Chilkoot Trail to make his fortune.
Phil Lind’s grandfather Johnny in the Klondike.
It was a tough time, freezing and physically exhausting.
“When we asked Phil what do you want the items in the space to reflect, he said ‘I want this exhibition to reflect how hard, how difficult it was for these men and women, working in this environment to do this work,” said Kalsbeek.
This starts when you turn into the main exhibition hall, where a wall is covered by blow-up of a photo of hundreds of miners tramping up the Chilkoot Trail in winter.
It looks impossibly grueling, particularly when you consider miners were greeted by Mounties at the top of the trail that insisted the miners have 2,000 pounds of provisions and gear with them. Miners would go back and forth 20 or 30 times to drag up all their gear.
Phil Lind was inspired by his grandfather’s time in the Klondike to assemble a massive collection with over 500 books, 1,800 photographs and 74 maps.
The Chung collection of 25,000 items began with Dr. Chung’s childhood infatuation with a Canadian Pacific poster that used to hang in his father’s tailor shop in Victoria.
Both collections strike a balance between artifacts and ephemera. There’s a Klondike miner’s equipment on the Lind side, and an “opium chest” in the Chung collection with a genuine opium pipe, bowl and needle.
On the Lind side, there’s colourful posters luring people to the Klondike, and early Hollywood movie posters about the Klondike’s characters. On the Chung side, there is an astonishing collection of Canadian Pacific travel posters, collected round the globe for their beauty.
UBC has mounted both collections on its Open Collections website, which has 288,998 “unique digital objects.”
Wallace Chung’s scale model of the Canadian Pacific steamship the Empress of Asia “floats” above a new display at the Chung/Lind Gallery that looks like the ocean floor. UBC photo.
An innovative display at the Chung/Lind Gallery at the University of British Columbia looks like the ocean floor littered with porcelain from Canadian Pacific steamships. UBC photo.
A model of Phil Lind’s grandfather’s log cabin in the Klondike at the new Chung/Lind gallery at UBC. Made by the company Dutch Igloo, it shows a holographic image of Johnny Lind and his pet husky inside.
Members of the Chung and Lind family mark the official opening of the Chung/Lind Gallery April 19, 2024.
Dr. Wallace Chung with some of his Canadian Pacific collection inside the Chung/Lind Gallery at the Irving K Barber Centre UBC in Vancouver, BC, April 19, 2024.
A photo of a Dawson City fireman covered in icycles after fighting a winter fire in 1899. From the Phil Lind Klondike Gold Rush Collection at the University of British Columbia.
Phil Lind donated his Klondike gold rush collection to UBC, his alma mater. Lind was a top executive at Rogers Communications for decades. He died on his 80th birthday, Aug. 20, 2023.
Dr. Wallace Chung and his late wife Dr. Madeline Chung in 2010.
- The article was first published by the Vancouver Sun.
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