Sunshine Coast resident Catherine Clement has been nominated for the Metro Vancouver YWCA’s 2021 Women of Distinction Awards.
Clement, an independent community curator and exhibition designer, is a nominee in the Arts, Culture & Design category in the awards program, with winners to be announced on June 7.
A native of the Lower Mainland who moved to Wilson Creek five years ago, Clement was nominated by the Pacific Canada Heritage Centre (PCHC) Museum of Migration for her decade-long effort uncovering the work of Yucho Chow, a Chinese immigrant who was a photographer for more than 40 years in Vancouver’s Chinatown before he died in 1949.
Clement’s volunteer work unearthing photographs by Chow and the stories behind the pictures culminated in a Vancouver exhibition in 2019 and in a book published last year, Chinatown Through a Wide Lens: The Hidden Photographs of Yucho Chow.
Also, as the volunteer curator at the Chinese Canadian Military Museum, “Catherine helped share the often-overlooked stories and contributions of Chinese Canadian WWII veterans,” the YWCA said in a release. “Catherine now dedicates her skills and energy full-time to filling the gaps in the public institutions – archives, libraries, schools – where stories of marginalized communities are often missing.”
Clement, who is half-Chinese, told Coast Reporter that she was asked by the PCHC in December if she would accept the nomination. “I feel honoured that they would make the effort, because there's a lot of work that has to go into those applications. And I felt honoured that they felt my contribution was worth recognizing.”
In addition to the 12 nomination categories, the individual nominees are eligible for the Connecting the Community Award, the YWCA release added. “Nominees will select a YWCA program area in which they are interested and use social media channels such as Twitter and Facebook to promote votes.
From March 8 to April 20, the public can cast their votes online and the nominee with the most votes will receive the Connecting the Community Award.
Scotiabank will donate $10,000 to the YWCA program area of the winner’s choice.” Tickets to the online June 7 awards ceremony will go on sale soon on the YWCA website, ywcavan.org.
