Linda Tracey Yip (葉秀映) was born in Vancouver, BC and grew up in Burnaby and Vancouver. She is the great-granddaughter of Yip Sang (葉生) by ninth son Yip Kew Sheck (葉求鑠) and Chew Wai Ming (趙慧明). Her family home – the Wing Sang Company – is today the site of Canada’s national Chinese Canadian Museum.
Linda’s love of genealogy began in childhood with the discovery of her father’s mysterious Chinese Immigration no. 45 (C.I.45) certificate. Her work stands on the foundations built by memory-keepers who saved documents, recorded stories, and created archives. Struggling with a lack of genealogical resources for Chinese-Canadian ancestry, she relentlessly combed bookstores and libraries, roamed the internet, and amassed a private database of information. She is fortunate to have rich family stories but as a professional, it is her mandate to follow the evidence.
Today, Linda is a genealogist who has traced families in Canada, China, the United Kingdom, and the United States. She approaches her work with these questions: Who created the records? Where are they? How can we use what has survived to build our family history? While Chinese-Canadian genealogy is her speciality, she has worked on Canadian families who originated in England, Iceland, Quebec, Northern Ireland, and the Netherlands. She works with single clients, families, and organizations. She has worked on the documentaries “136 – The Forgotten Heroes,” “Exclusion – Beyond the Silence,” “Everlasting,” “Finding Fred Lee,” “Inheritance of Immortality,” and “Stories of Repeal and Reunion.”
In Nov, 2024, she became an Accredited Genealogist® – Canada Western Provinces.
She is a member of the Ancestry® Canada Advisory Board of Genealogists.
Linda and select community members meet with Library and Archives Canada and its subsidiaries to advise and consult on records and processes important for Chinese Canadian genealogy. She hosts free coffee chats to discuss Chinese Canadian genealogy, sponsored by the BC Genealogical Society and Past-Presence.com.
Chinese Canadian genealogy has been called “impossible.” Linda works to help the community find its own family in available records. Barriers to understanding include lack of records, abstruse laws and anti-Chinese regulations, and generational trauma. Linda started the Facebook group, Genealogy for Asian Canadians (GFAC), in 2018, in recognition of the need for an online community who needed a non-judgemental, private, and welcoming space to learn and share challenging family history. Group members ask for assistance in locating and interpreting documents; discuss complex aspects of history; and share genealogical resources. As group founder, Linda administers and moderates the group, invites select members, starts topics, and teaches by using examples.
GFAC members have identified and undertaken projects relating to Chinese Canadian historical records. One important project is the building of a lookup tool which involves transcribing data from tens of thousands of government records created by the Chinese Immigration Act (1885-1947).
Linda has served on committees including The Paper Trail, The Local History Advisory (Saskatoon Central Library) and The United Church of Canada Digitizing Project, and was privileged to advise the Chinese Canadian Museum regarding the Period Room. She serves as a member of the Board of the Chinese Canadian Military Museum Society.
Find Linda’s work on her great-grandfather Yip Sang (葉生) at Wikitree.
