In a photograph taken at Craigellachie, British Columbia, Canadian Pacific Railway Director Donald Alexander Smith is shown hammering the final railroad spike into the newly completed railway. In this historic photograph, we see a crowd of white men surrounding the director, and the significant absence of a single Chinese man.

During the late nineteenth century, Chinese labourers became a vital part of completing the Canadian Pacific Railway (CPR). As european settlers continued to colonize western Canada, the CPR aimed to unify the east and west coast due to building pressures from the United States, as well as Britain. At this time it was more efficient and less expensive to employ Chinese workers from Hong Kong than for manual laborours to cross Canada. Therefore, 72% of the railway labourers consisted of Chinese men who reinforced the railway project to completion. 

When discussing the construction of the Canadian Pacfic Rail, accounts of Chinese laborers are vastly underrepresented and excluded in what we know to be the "history" of Canada. The railway tools included in the "Our Chosen Land" exhibition highlight the important connection between Chinese identities and the suffering endured that is overlooked, unacknowledged and undocumented. 

在BC省 Craigellachie 拍攝的照片中可以看見加拿大太平洋鐵路總監，唐納德·亞歷山大·史密斯，正在將最後的鐵路道釘錘入新完工的鐵路軌中。在這張具有歷史意義的照片中，我們看到總監周圍只有一群白人，卻沒有一個中國人。

在19世紀後期，中國勞工成為完成加拿大太平洋鐵路(CPR)重要的一部分。由於當時正值歐洲人口移居加拿大西岸的高峰期，CPR在美國和英國的壓力下仍旨在統一加拿大東西兩岸。在這個時候，僱用來自香港的中國工人比僱用加拿大全國的勞動人口而言效率更高，成本更低。因此，72%的鐵路工人均由中國男子組成。同時，鐵路工程亦是由這些工人合力完成。

然而，當人們談及加拿大太平洋鐵路的建設時，我們認知的加拿大「歷史」中對於中國勞工的描述卻被大大低估及排除在外。本館的《百年滄桑》展覽中所包含的鐵路工具則突出了當時被忽視、未被承認和未被記錄的中國工人的苦難和辛酸史。