Chop Suey

Last weekend I visited a neat photography exhibition held by the Alberta Archives at Royal Alberta Museum , called Chop Suey . It detailed the proliferation of Chinese food restaurants across the prairies during the mid-century. Due to language barriers and racial issues, new Chinese immigrants to Alberta at the time turned to the restaurant business as a way to make ends meat. Every small town, no matter how remote, almost always had a Chinese restaurant. In Vermillion, AB, a small town two hours east of Edmonton where my mum is from, Lee's Chinese was the local high school haunt in the 1960s in a town of 3500. If you are from Edmonton, at any Chinese restaurant in...