‘I found a gun’: Artifacts found in Chinatown backyard tie past to present in new exhibit

What started as routine gardening turned into an archaeological adventure for the owner of a heritage building in Montreal's Chinatown.

Some routine gardening turned into an archaeological adventure for Jean-Philippe Riopel when he discovered a long-lost rusty revolver buried in his backyard.

“I was digging and I found a gun,” he recalled in an interview with CTV News.

It’s a mystery how it got there, but newspaper clippings offer a clue.

Chinatown was the backdrop for a gun battle 90 years ago that spilled over into the building on de la Gauchetière Street.

Police searched the premises for a missing revolver, with no luck. Then, Riopel dug this one up decades later, along with some bullets and a bottle of painkillers.

But that’s not all he found.

“There are more than 200 years of history in that courtyard,” he said.

Riopel unearthed some 600 artifacts, several of them displayed in an exhibit organized by the JIA Foundation which is working to preserve Chinatown’s history.

The artifacts include vials of vaccines from the Montreal Chinese Hospital and personal items from families who lived in the building, like a toy soldier that Sandy Yep played with when he was younger.

“I was kind of born and raised on the third floor right above us,” says Yep, sitting in a unit in the building.

Generations of Yeps lived there between 1912 to 2012 but the building was almost demolished. Back in 2021, real estate development threatened to erase centuries of the neighbourhood’s history, but the community mobilized and got Chinatown its heritage designation.

Last year, Riopel’s dad died leaving him with enough money to buy the building from developers. Several members of the Yep family flew in from across the country for the exhibit, a special occasion.

“I’m so grateful and so happy,” Yep said. ”I can’t believe the day has come where my family has come back to this house.”

Today, it’s the Yep-Riopel building, and the home of the JIA Foundation.

“This building really stands at the intersection of the building’s past and its future,” said Karen Cho, the exhibit’s curator and a member of the Jia Foundation.

A clock Yep inherited is on the wall in what used to be his grandfather’s living room, each tick tying the past to the present, as Chinatown’s legacy continues to unfold.