Chinese immigrants began settling in Canada in the 1780s. The major periods of Chinese immigration took place from 1858 to 1923, and indefinitely from 1947, reflecting changes in the Canada's immigration policy.
Chinese immigrants were initially sought after by Canadian employers as a source of cheap labour due to Canada's relative wealth at the time and the difficult economic conditions in China. Between 1880 and 1885, the primary work for Chinese labourers in Canada was on the Canadian Pacific Railway (CPR), but records of Chinese immigration start more than a century earlier.
Nootka Sound, 1780s
In 1788, some 120 Chinese contract labourers arrived at Nootka Sound, Vancouver Island. British fur trader John Meares recruited an initial group of 50 sailors and artisans from Canton (Guangzhou) and Macao, China, hoping to build a trading post and encourage trade in sea otter pelts between Nootka Sound and Canton. At Nootka Sound the Chinese workers built a dockyard, a fort, and a sailing ship named the North West America. Regarding this journey and the future prospects of Chinese settlement in colonial North America, Meares wrote:
The next year, Meares had another 70 Chinese brought in from Canton. However, shortly after the arrival of this second group, the settlement was seized by the Spanish in what became known as the Nootka Crisis. Seeking to establish a trade monopoly on the West Coast, the Spanish imprisoned the Chinese men. It is unclear what became of them, but some probably returned to China while others were put to work in a nearby mine and later taken to Mexico. No other Chinese people are known to have arrived in western North America until the gold rush of the 1850s.
Gold Rush, 1858 The Chinese first appeared in large numbers in the Colony of Vancouver Island in 1858 as part of a huge migration from California during the Fraser Canyon Gold Rush in the newly declared Colony of British Columbia. Although the first wave arrived in May from California, news of the gold rush eventually attracted many people from China. As a result, Barkerville, British Columbia—located in the Cariboo—became Canada's first Chinese community, where more than half of the town's population was estimated to be Chinese. Several other BC towns also had significant Chinatowns, including Richfield, Stanley, Van Winkle, Quesnellemouthe (modern-day Quesnel), Antler, and Quesnelle Forks.
In the goldfields, Chinese mining techniques and knowledge turned out to be better than those of other miners. They employed hydraulic techniques, such as the use of 'rockers', and a technique whereby blankets were used to filter alluvial sand and then burned, causing the trapped gold to melt into lumps in the fire. In the Fraser Canyon, Chinese miners stayed on long after all others had left for the Cariboo Gold Rush or other goldfields elsewhere in BC or the United States. They continued hydraulic mining and farming, and owned the majority of land in the Fraser and Thompson canyons for many years afterward.
There was no shortage of successful Chinese miners: by 1860, the Chinese population of Vancouver Island and British Columbia was estimated to be 7,000. Lillooet's Chinatown lasted until the 1930s.
Immigration for the railway, 1871–82 When British Columbia (BC) agreed to join Confederation in 1871, one of its conditions was that the Government of Canada build a railway linking BC to Eastern Canada within 10 years. British Columbian politicians and their electorate agitated for a settlement-immigration program for workers from the British Isles to provide this railway labour; however, Prime Minister John A. Macdonald, along with investors and other Canadian politicians, said this would be too expensive.
In opposition, however, the Workingmen's Protective Association was established in 1878 in Victoria with the following purpose:The objects of this society shall be the mutual protection of the working classes of British Columbia against the great influx of Chinese; to use all legitimate means for the suppression of their immigration; to assist each other in the obtaining of employment, and to devise means for the amelioration of the condition of the working classes of the Province in general.Insisting that the project cut costs by employing Chinese workers to build the railway, Prime Minister MacDonald told Parliament in 1882: "It is simply a question of alternatives: either you must have this labour or you can't have the railway."
In 1880, Andrew Onderdonk — an American who was one of the main construction contractors in British Columbia for the Canadian Pacific Railway (CPR) — originally recruited Chinese labourers from California. When most of them deserted the railway workings for the more lucrative goldfields, Onderdonk and his agents signed several agreements with Chinese contractors in China's Guangdong province and Taiwan, as well as via Chinese companies in Victoria. These Chinese railway workers were hired for the of the CPR considered to be among the more difficult segments of the projected railway, particularly the area that goes through the Fraser Canyon.
Chinese-Canadian labour was characterized by low wages (usually less than 50% of what Caucasian workers were paid for the same work) and high levels of volatility. Through Onderdonk's contracts, more than 5,000 labourers were sent as "guest workers" from China by ship, and Onderdonk also recruited over 7,000 Chinese railway workers from California. These two groups of workers, who were willing to accept a day for their labour, were the main force for the building of Onderdonk's 7% of the railway's mileage.
Between 1880 and 1885, 17,000 Chinese labourers completed the British Columbia section of the CPR, with more than 700 perishing due to appalling working conditions. As was the case with non-Chinese workers, some of the labourers fell ill during construction, or died while planting explosives or in other construction accidents.
As with railway workers on other parts of the line in the Prairies and Northern Ontario, most of the Chinese workers lived in canvas tents which were unsafe, and did not provide adequate protection against falling rocks or severe weather in mountainous areas. Such tents were typical of working-class accommodation on the frontier for all immigrant workers, although (non-Chinese) foremen, shift bosses, and trained railwaymen recruited from the UK were housed in sleeping cars and railway-built houses in Yale and the other railway towns. Chinese railway workers also established transient Chinatowns along the rail line, with housing at the largest consisting of log-houses half dug into the ground, which was a common housing style for natives as well as other frontier settlers, because of the insulating effect of the ground in an area of very low temperatures.
Largely because of the Trans-Canada railway, Chinese communities developed across the nation, with the vast majority of Chinese Canadians living in British Columbia during the 1880s.
Clan associations, community structure and support For much of the 19th and 20th century most Chinese people in Canada were a part of clan associations (based on the tsung-tsu system), which provided a strong community support network. Membership in these associations was mostly based on surnames, assuming that people with the same surname shared a remote common ancestor. In the early 1880s, there were about 129 small clans in Canada whose members mostly came from just one or two counties in China. This reveals streams of migration from certain villages in China to locations in British Columbia, lasting through generations. There were also clan associations that limited membership based on village or county rather than surname, and two prominent associations that were free for anyone to join, the Chinese Freemasons and Kuomintang. They extend from political groups in China, but in Canada their function was not necessarily related to political activities, focusing more on economic or other activity in the local community. Many of these associations were connected in larger community networks such as the Chinese Benevolent Association (CBA). CBA represented its member associations and acted as a political body that could interact with non-affiliated non-Chinese groups. Although there was a lot of community solidarity, the clan system was sometimes a divisive force that fostered conflict or cross-association feuds. Other immigrant groups in Canada also organized mutual-aid and cultural societies and associations, but none as extensive or cross-cutting as the Chinese. The Chinese associations were organized not just as a response to discrimination but also reflected the socio-cultural peculiarities of southeastern China.
After completion of the CPR 1885–1947 From the completion of the CPR to the end of the Exclusion Era (1923–1947) which banned most Chinese immigration, Chinese in Canada lived mainly in a "bachelors of the backpack society", since most Chinese families could not pay the expensive head tax to send their daughters to Canada.
As with many other groups of immigrants, the Chinese initially found it hard to adjust and assimilate into life in Canada. In response they formed ethnic enclaves known as "Chinatowns" where they could live alongside fellow Chinese immigrants, where the vast majority of Chinese Canadians in BC lived during the 1880s.CBC television reporter, Eve Savory: "The National Magazine", 27 June 1997. Originally, the Chinese were often stereotyped as —temporary. Especially during the 19th century, white society in British Columbia perceived the Chinese as people who could not be assimilated. In 1885, the Qing Dynasty Consul General Huang Zunxian told a Royal Commission on Chinese Immigration:[I]t is charged that the Chinese do not emigrate to foreign countries to remain, but only to earn a sum of money and return to their homes in China. It is only about thirty years since our people commenced emigrating to other lands. A large number have gone to the Straits' Settlements, Manila, Cochin China, and the West India Islands, and are permanently settled there with their families. In Cuba, fully seventy-five percent have married native women and adopted those Islands as their future homes. Many of those living in the Sandwich Islands have done the same... You must recollect that the Chinese immigrant coming to this country is denied all the rights and privileges extended to others in the way of citizenship; the laws compel them to remain aliens. I know a great many Chinese will be glad to remain here permanently with their families if they are allowed to be naturalized and can enjoy privileges and rights.By 1886, the population of Victoria Chinatown had increased tenfold from the completion of the CPR to over 17,000; and at the turn of the 20th century there were 17,312 Chinese settlers in Canada. By the 1940s almost 50% of the Chinese-Canadian population lived on the West Coast.
Immigration Acts and Exclusion Era, 1885–1947 In 1885, the Government of Canada passed the Chinese Immigration Act, 1885, levying a 'Head Tax' of $50 on any Chinese—but no other ethnic group—coming to Canada. Well before the 1885 Act a series of Chinese tax acts had been passed in British Columbia. After the 1885 legislation failed to deter Chinese immigration, the Canadian government passed the Chinese Immigration Act, 1900 to increase the tax to $100. The Chinese had no choice but to pay it, although it was two years' salary for a railway worker.
Chinese Consolidated Benevolent Association, 1885