Alston So was born to Chinese immigrants on May 3rd, 1999 in Vancouver, BC. He was an experienced artist, writer, and amateur archivist. At a young age, Alston was interested in drawing and writing, hence why some sketchbooks and journals have survived to this day.
He studied fine arts at Emily Carr University in 2017. He specialized in the ceramic and drawing medium. Through the art community, Alston participated in many student-run art shows that supported queer artists. In 2019, Alston So decided to drop out in order to take a break from academics.
During this break in 2020, Alston was generating a large amount of textual material through creative output. A self inspired project, he created many journals that detailed serious issues, his life, and the mundane. He took on many odd jobs, such as a baker, bartender, library page and a clown at one point.
Alston was accepted into the University of British Columbia in 2020. He obtained his Bachelor’s Degree in Asian Studies and creative writing minor at the University of British Columbia in 2024. Many of his research and publications during this period focused on the Asian Diaspora, through a critical queer lens.
By 2022, Alston relocated to Tokyo University of Foreign Studies to further his academic knowledge. He began exploring Tokyo’s underground art scene, taking in inspiration for his own writing and art. Between 2022-2023, Alston So created hand-bound zines and distributed them between emerging artists across Japan. At Tokyo University of foreign studies, he focused his learning on Japan and Asia as a whole. There, he met Dr. Iris Haukamp, a professor of Asian film and art studies. Under the tutelage of Dr.Haukamp, Alston completed his senior thesis titled “Evolution of Asian Art through the Asian Diaspora”. After, Iris became a close confidante and supported Alston’s studies back in Canada.
In 2023, Alston returned to Vancouver to complete his studies. One of the most significant publication Alston released, is “A Study of Asian Ceramics: 1000 years of history” (2024), commissioned by Keishirou Nakamoto, a professor at the University of British Columbia. The partnership between Keishirou and Alston was fruitful, as his report went on to help in the creation of an exhibit hosted at the Museum of Anthropology. After graduating from UBC, Alston was accepted into the Master of Information program at the University of Toronto. He chose to focus on Archives and Record Management and Library Information Sciences.
Unfortunately, Alston was unable to complete his studies. On March 10th, he was declared missing and was last seen at Crother Woods. Alston So’s body was found on March 17th and declared deceased.
Brittany Taylor Jeans (b. 1998-) is a studying archivist and cultural heritage enthusiast from Lewisporte, Newfoundland. She studied at Memorial University of Newfoundland from 2016 to 2022, obtaining a Bachelor and Master of Arts in English. Her research areas centre around book history and print culture, with special focus on Protestant literature and women’s educational history. Through her academic career, she connected with heritage institutions and adjacent communities in the St. John’s area in the early 2020s. In 2024, she began working towards a Master of Information at the University of Toronto. Brittany has amassed a variety of Newfoundland heritage items and documentation from her studies, work in the heritage sector, and job as a custom framing designer.
Brittany moved from her hometown of Lewisporte to St. John’s to attend Memorial University in 2016. For her Bachelor’s degree, she declared an English major and history minor, deciding to narrow her scholarly focus on book history and print culture. She joined the English honours program in 2018, and convocated in 2020 after submitting her honours essay, titled “The Role of Sixteenth-Century Print Culture and Paratext in Canonizing Chaucer.”
Following completion of her Bachelor’s degree, Brittany joined the Pharmacy Museum of Newfoundland and Labrador as a collections assistant for the 2020 fall season. She was involved in reorganizing artifact storage and developing online and in-person exhibits.
She returned to Memorial University to begin her Master of Arts in January 2021, during which she produced a major research essay titled “The ‘vaine studye’ of ‘vertuous ladies’: Negotiating Female Authorship in the Paratext of Margaret More Roper’s and Lady Anne Cooke Bacon’s Translations.”
Throughout her time at Memorial University, Brittany held several research positions and student assistantships, including at the Queen Elizabeth II Library’s Digital Archives Initiative in 2019.
After convocating from her Master’s degree in 2022, she became a custom framing designer at Newfoundland Canvas, a locally-owned and operated printing and framing shop. Here, she adopted an active role in the local art community, supporting some of St. John’s most recognizable artists in producing their framing orders and art prints. In her capacity as framing designer, she helped plan and implement art installations, and preserved local heritage items and artwork in a variety of mediums for both public and private display.
In 2024, she moved to Toronto, Ontario to pursue a Master of Information from the University of Toronto, with a concentration in Archives and Records Management. She obtained an archival internship at the University of Toronto Archives and Records Management Services (UTARMS) through the Toronto Academic Libraries Internship (TALint) program.
Chloe Thierstein (b. 1999) is a graduate student pursuing her Master of Information in Archives and Records Management at the University of Toronto’s Faculty of Information. Her academic and professional interests involve cultural memory preservation, forgetting, large-scale digitization, information management, and appraisal.
She grew up in Edmonton Alberta, where she attended the Victoria School of the Arts (Formerly known as the Victoria of Performing and Visual Arts) and McNally High School. In these institutions, Chloe gained an appreciation for arts and culture, practicing ceramics, drawing, photography, and other visual arts. In 2017 she enrolled at the University of Alberta, earning a Bachelor of Arts in Sociology. Her coursework focused on a wide ranges of subjects such as demography, secularization, and slavic history. During a study abroad term, Chloe studied in Cortona, Italy where she learned about global iterations of crime and punishments and economic history. Following her graduation, she attended the University of Toronto’s Faculty of Information’s Bachelor of Information program. In this program, she gained an interdisciplinary knowledge of the information field, exploring UX/UI design, GLAM, culture and technology, and data science. This experience broadened her horizons and led her to apply to the Master of Information program following her graduation.
Since joining the program,Chloe has continued to explore the social-cultural impacts of cultural institutions and influence of AI, here she integrates her interdisciplinary background to aid in her studies. She has also continued her artistic pursuits. She has become well integrated into digital ceramics and knitting communities, developing glaze recipes and knitting patterns. She has also continued in her passion for travel and photography, ensuring key moments of her life are preserved.
Shiyang Sun (2002– ) is an archivist and museum collections professional whose interests focus on cultural preservation, curation, and language revitalization within galleries, libraries, archives, and museums (GLAM).
In 2018, Sun enrolled in the Faculty of Arts and Science at the University of Toronto, where she pursued a double major in Linguistics and East Asian Studies. Her undergraduate coursework and research explored intersections between Chinese culture, history, and sociolinguistic changes, particularly emphasizing the adaptation of Chinese languages in North American contexts. In her third year, Sun worked as a research assistant in the Heritage Language Variation and Change (HLVC) Lab under the supervision of Professor Naomi Nagy. In her fourth year, she conducted independent research analyzing linguistic variations within Chinese communities in North America, presenting her findings at national academic conferences. Sun graduated with a Bachelor of Arts in 2023.
In 2024, Sun started her graduate studies at the Faculty of Information (iSchool), University of Toronto, shifting her academic focus toward applied cultural preservation, archival practices, and the management of cultural heritage collections. She continued integrating her linguistic and cultural studies background into her professional objectives, completing her combined Master's degree in Information and Museum Studies in 2027.
After graduation, Sun worked at the Canada Language Museum as an exhibition assistant and later became the Archives and Special Collections Manager there. Her responsibilities encompassed language documentation and collaboration with curators to create and deliver language-focused exhibitions throughout Canada.
Throughout her academic career, Sun was actively involved in volunteering. Between 2020 and 2022, she provided online English tutoring to students in remote regions of China, simultaneously coordinating volunteer recruitment and program administration. From 2025 to 2027, she volunteered at the Multicultural History Society of Ontario, assisting with collections management and improving accessibility for researchers.