The House On the Lot — Saskatchewan History & Folklore Society

Many towns are passed on the highway that takes you from Saskatoon to Yorkton. Between Kandahar and Mozart, is the town of Wynyard. The town motto is “Growing for tomorrow”, but when I arrived in Wynyard, I found a lot more of the past than of the future.

Peter, my friend and photographer, had come along to photograph as many Chinese restaurants as possible in Saskatchewan. I had wanted to document the Chinese restaurant history of Saskatchewan and to see more of the province we had both grown up in.

When Peter and I arrived in Wynyard to photograph the restaurant, we were surprised to see a newer circa 1990s restaurant along the side of the highway. It was in a strip mall. We proceeded to take our photos of the Panda Express restaurant, not to be confused with the line of American chain restaurants. It had been a long day of driving and the sun was high in the sky, so we took a break in Wynyard.

Walking through the town we came across a bakery. It was an older one-story white building with a green awning and a few green chairs out front. Always on the lookout for good baking, Peter and I decided this would be a great place to take a break.

Walking in, the bakery was full, and everyone turned to look at us. This had become fairly common. In every small town, new strangers always seemed to be a bit of an attraction. We didn’t think anything of it and just grabbed a booth and proceeded to get chocolate milks and some muffins.

Inside the bakery we were transported to a space that had a 1950s feel. The wall behind the counter was lined full of colorful antique radios. A series of photographs lined the rest of the walls. I couldn’t stop staring at the photographs. They caught Peter’s attention as well. Every photo was a static image showing the insides of churches across Saskatchewan with no people present. They were framed images that were poised so perfectly that they reminded me of those miniature dollhouse recreations. I kept staring to make sure that these were actual photographs of churches.

After our chocolate milks and baked goods arrived, a man approached our table. Drawn towards Peter’s large camera, he introduced himself as Ed. His wife, Linda, was the owner of the bakery and he spent his time helping her at the business. He was also the photographer for all the photos in the bakery. Ed told us about travelling around Saskatchewan trying to document the insides of Ukrainian churches before they all disappeared.

We told him about our journey to photograph Chinese restaurants. Ed told us that the bakery we were in was once a Chinese café and that he might have something of interest for us. Like many of our adventures searching for Chinese history in small-town Saskatchewan, it was the people in the communities that had the best stories to share.

He took us to the back of the bakery and showed us around. He explained how Linda’s bakery made the bread for the town and neighbouring communities. The business had grown and the building had been extended to support the growth. Expansion meant taking out the house behind the lot.

This house was more of a shed. It consisted of uninsulated four walls, built with wooden boards. It was the dwelling place of the original restaurant workers. A simple structure sitting steps away from the once Zenith Café. Ignored for decades, it stood as proof of the long-gone Chinese Café. Despite the harsh Saskatchewan winters, stored inside were the memories of the café, undamaged for eighty years.

From the back of the bakery, Ed took us across the way to a house that he had converted to a photo studio. Inside, Ed told us about his love of archeology and history. He showed us photos of his travels around the prairie landscape.

Closeup of a metal and leather-bound menu from the “Box Items” photo (above).

He then presented us with a metal and leather-bound menu that had been in a box in the house behind the lot. Unlike the usual plastic cardboard paper menus, this menu seemed so well crafted with the bound leather and metal nameplate. The other items from the box were packed in Ed’s house, and he promised to email us photos.

Not long after returning home, Ed emailed me images of all the items from the box. Hidden away for decades inside a forgotten dwelling, this box was a time capsule of Chinese prairie history. These images were not in the museum or provincial archives, but stuck inside of that forgotten one-room house behind the bakery.

There were professionally photographed images of Chinese men, a few books, and a waiter’s uniform. This was an incredible find and I cursed myself for not paying attention in the decade of Chinese school I attended. I showed the photographs to my cousin from China. He said the Chinese characters were an older style of writing, that was more formal.

My cousin told me the yellow book looked like a propagandized ode to Mao Zedong’s communist China while the purple book appeared to be a ledger for a branch of the Canadian Chinese Nationalist Party. There was a newsletter booklet as well, which was common during that time. These newsletters were once used to support Chinese immigrants sharing information with one another.

As for the photographs, my cousin suggested that they might have been the restaurant owners themselves or gifts to the restaurant owners. He told me that people had their photos taken only once in their lifetime. It was expensive to get professional pictures and these precious copies would be given as mementos to family and close friends.

The box housed a part of Chinese prairie history that would have been lost forever if Ed had not decided to take down the house on the lot. This was a time capsule showing a snapshot of Canada’s history. A time when Chinese men were separated from their families and the Chinese Exclusion Act was established to keep the Chinese from entering the country. Surviving the elements for almost a hundred years, the contents now became my mystery. Who were the men in the photos? Where did they go after the Zenith Café?

Through the summers of 2014 and 2015, Peter and I drove the backroads of Saskatchewan for the untold stories and histories of Chinese to this province.

Growing up in this province, Chinese Canadian history always seemed to be the stories outside of Saskatchewan. The box in the house has always haunted me, like it was preserved, waiting to be found. My encounter with it cemented that there were more stories out there waiting to be told. A spectral reminder of early Chinese settlers and their experiences with exclusion, mistrust, and isolation.

I hope one day that this box can be returned to the family that it belongs to and that they can hold a piece of their ancestors. Although stories are often lost when the storyteller is no longer with us, this chance encounter showed me there are always more stories to pursue to expand the narrative of life on the prairies.

All photos by Ed Stachyruk.

If you have any information about these photos, or the Zenith Café in Wynyard, please contact the SHFS office at info@shfs.ca or 1-800-919-9437.

Julie Yu resides in Saskatchewan with her family. Her background includes studying and photographing rural Chinese restaurants on the prairies. She works in the healthcare sector and volunteers her time with Chinese seniors.

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