History of Chinese immigration to Canada

This is the history of Chinese immigration to Canada.

Early history

While the first Chinese in British North America (the area that has become Canada) could be traced back in 1788, the first major wave of Chinese immigration started after the Opium War. Most of this first group came from the Taishan County of Guangdong Province to escape from poverty and political instability during the mid-19th century. Most of those rural Cantonese made their way into Canada via the crown colony of Hong Kong and China itself.

Chinese appeared in large numbers in the colony of British Columbia in 1858, when there was a gold rush in the Fraser Valley. This attracted many Chinese from China itself, and also some who had originally arrived in California.

Immigration in the mid-19th century

Chinese railway workers made a significant contribution to the building of the Canadian Pacific Railway in British Columbia. When British Columbia agreed to join Confederation in 1871, one of the conditions was that the Dominion government build a railway linking B.C. with eastern Canada within 10 years. Canada's first Prime Minister, Sir John A. Macdonald, wanted to cut costs by employing Chinese to build the railway, and summarized the situation this way to Parliament in 1882: "It is simply a question of alternatives: either you must have this labour or you can't have the railway."Pierre Berton, The Last Spike, Penguin, ISBN 0-14-011763-6, pp249-250. In 1880, Andrew Onderdonk, the Canadian Pacific Railway construction contractor in British Columbia, signed several agreements with Chinese gangs in China's Guangdong province. Through those contracts more than 5000 labourers were sent from China by ship. Onderdonk also recruited over 7000 Chinese railway workers from California. These two groups of workers were the main force for the building of the railway. Many of them fell ill during construction or died while planting explosives. Many others were injured or died , because of construction accidents. By the end of 1881, the first group of Chinese labourers, which was previously numbered at 5000, had less than 1500 remaining. Onderdonk needed more workers, so he directly contracted some large Chinese firms to send many more workers to Canada.

Most of the Chinese workers lived in tents. These canvas tents were often unsafe, and rocks fell during the night. Onderdonk paid Chinese workers only $1 a day while white workers were paid five or six times that amount. Even though Chinese railway workers were only responsible for 500 kilometres of the entire Canadian Pacific Railway, they were given the most dangerous section of the railway, notably the section that goes through the Fraser Canyon. test

Chinese in Canada after the completion of the CPR

Once the Canadian Pacific Railway had been completed in 1885, Canada no longer needed Chinese labourers. As a result, the government of Canada passed The Chinese Immigration Act, 1885 levying a "Head Tax" of $50 on any Chinese coming to Canada. After the 1885 legislation failed to deter Chinese immigration to Canada, the government of Canada passed The Chinese Immigration Act, 1900 to increase the tax to $100, and The Chinese Immigration Act, 1904 furthered increased the landing fees to $500 (equivalent to $8000 in 2003). The Chinese Immigration Act, 1923, better known as the Chinese Exclusion Act, banned Chinese immigration to Canada with the exceptions of merchants, diplomats, students, and "special circumstances". The Chinese that entered Canada before 1923 had to register with the local authorities and could leave Canada only for two years or less. Since the Exclusion Act went into effect on July 1, 1923, the Chinese at the time referred to Dominion Day as "Humiliation Day" and refused to celebrate Dominion Day until after the act was repealed in 1947.

From the completion of the CPR to the end of the Exclusion Era (1923-1947), Chinese in Canada lived in mainly a "bachelor's of the backpack society" since most Chinese families could not pay the expensive head tax to send their daughters to Canada. Also, since most Chinese in Canada could speak only pidgin English, they had to hide in "Chinatowns" . With resentment of Chinese growing in British Columbia, Chinese settlers began moving eastward after the completion of the CPR {{fact)) . With legislation banning Chinese from many professions, Chinese entered professions that European Canadians did not want to do, like laundry shops or salmon processing - . These Chinese opened grocery stores and restaurants that catered to the local Chinese population .

After legislation in 1896 that stripped Chinese of voting rights in municipal elections in B.C., the Chinese in B.C. became completely disenfranchised. The electors list in federal elections came from the provincial electors list, and the provincial ones came from the municipal one. As a way to counter the racist environment, Chinese merchants began forming the Chinese Consolidated Benevolent Association, with the first branch in Victoria in 1885 and the second one in Vancouver in 1895. The Association was mandatory for all Chinese in the area to join, and it did everything from representing members in legal disputes to sending the remains of a members who died back to their ancestral homelands in China.

After Canada entered World War II on September 10, 1939, Chinese communities greatly contributed to Canada's war effort, mainly in an attempt to persuade Canada to intervene against Japan in the Second Sino-Japanese War, which had started in 1937 (although Canada did not declare war on Japan until the attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941). The Chinese Consolidated Benevolent Association requested its members to purchase Canadian and Chinese war bonds and to boycott Japanese goods. Also, many Chinese enlisted in the Canadian forces. But Ottawa and the B.C. government were unwilling to send Chinese-Canadian recruits into action, since they did not want Chinese to ask for enfranchisement after the war. However, with 100,000 British troops captured in British Malaya in February 1942, Ottawa decided to send Chinese-Canadian forces in as spies to train the local guerrillas to resist the Japanese Imperial Forces in 1944. However, these spies were little more than a token gesture, as the outcome of World War II had been more or less decided by that time.

Strife during the post-war period

The experiences of the Holocaust made racial discrimination unacceptable in Canada, at least from the government policy standpoint. Also, with the war aim of defeating Nazism in terms of discrimination, Canada's racial legislation made it look hypocritical. Moreover, with Chinese-Canadian contributions in World War II, and also because some of the anti-Chinese legislation violated the UN Charter, the government of Canada repealed the Chinese Exclusion Act and gave Chinese Canadians full citizenship rights in 1947. However, Chinese immigration was limited only to the spouse of a Chinese who had Canadian citizenship and his dependents. However, after the founding of the People's Republic of China in October 1949 and its support for the communist North in the Korean War, Chinese in Canada faced another wave of resentment, as Chinese were viewed as communist agents from the PRC (although most Chinese-Canadians at the time were strongly pro-Nationalist).

In 1959, the Department of Immigration discovered an abuse of immigration papers by some Chinese immigrants; the Royal Canadian Mounted Police were brought in to investigate. It turned out that some Chinese had been entering Canada by purchasing real or fake birth certificates of Chinese Canadian children bought and sold in Hong Kong. These children carrying false identity papers were referred to as "paper sons". In response, Douglas Jung (the first Chinese MP in Canadian history) introduced a private member's bill in 1962 called the "'Chinese Adjustment Program". The bill granted amnesty for paper sons or daughters if they confessed to the government. As a result about 12,000 paper sons came forward, until the amnesty period ended in October 1973.

Independent Chinese immigration in Canada came after Canada eliminated race and the "place of origin" section from its immigration policy in 1967. From 1947 to the early 1970s, Chinese immigrants to Canada came mostly from Hong Kong, Taiwan, or Southeast Asia. Chinese from the mainland who were eligible in the family reunification program had to visit the Canadian High Commission in Hong Kong, since Canada and the PRC did not have diplomatic relations until 1970. Institutional racism was completely eliminated in 1971 with the implementation of the multicultural policy. After the implementation of the policy, Chinese finally felt that they were no longer institutionally discriminated in the mainstream of Canadian society.

Despite the new multicultural policy, it would be naïve to say that social discrimination against ethnic Chinese ended. Unlike other ethnicities, Chinese are perceived as incapable of blending into mainstream Canadian society because they tend to associate only with the local Chinese communities and make very little effort to blend into mainstream Canada. For example, in 1995 the deputy mayor of Markham, Ontario Carole Bell expressed that the overwhelming Chinese presence in the city was causing other residents to move out of Markham. Also, the local communities in Toronto and Vancouver have accused the Chinese immigrants for hyperinflating property prices during the 1980s.

The incident involving a W-FIVE feature report in 1979 was a turning point for Chinese in Canada in that it united the Chinese communities nationwide to fight anti-Chinese sentiments. The feature report stated that foreign Chinese were taking away Canadian citizens' opportunities for university educations. However, it was discovered that the data used in the report were inaccurate, and the pictures of Chinese people in the feature were Canadians of Chinese origin. Chinese communities nationwide staged protests against Canadian Television (CTV), the network that airs W5. The network was forced to issue an apology for the inaccuate report. The protesters met in Toronto in 1980 and agreed to form the Chinese Canadian National Council to better represent Chinese-Canadian on a national level.

During the mid-1980s and early 1990s, the Canadian economy was in the worst recession since the end of World War II, and the Greater China (a term used to mean the PRC itself, Taiwan, Hong Kong, and sometimes Singapore) area was experiencing economic growth. Many Chinese-Canadians chose to return to the Greater China area to work, leaving their family behind in Canada. The Chinese-Canadian family, then, could earn better income working in Asia while the rest of the family could enjoy the better welfare and education system of Canada. The impending return of Hong Kong to PRC control in 1997 created a desire for families to establish the right to live in Canada (and elsewhere) without giving up economic opportunities in (Greater) China.

This mindset created the phenomenon of astronaut families. In an astronaut family, the husband (the money-earner) would only visit Canada once or twice a year, usually during December or the summer months, but his family would live in Vancouver, Toronto, Sydney, or elsewhere.

In recent years, fatal auto accidents involving expensive (powerful) cars driven by Chinese-Canadian teenagers have received press coverage with racist overtones.

Heading into the new millennium

With the political uncertainties as Hong Kong headed towards 1997, many residents of Hong Kong chose to emigrate to Canada. It was easy for them to enter Canada due to their Commonwealth of Nations connections. According to statistics compiled by the Canadian Consulate in Hong Kong, from 1991 to 1996, "about 30,000 Hong Kongers emigrated annually to Canada, comprising over half of all Hong Kong emigration and about 20 percent of the total number of immigrants to Canada." The great majority of these people settled in the Toronto and Vancouver areas, as there are well-established Chinese communities in those cities. Interestingly, after the Handover there was a sharp decline in immigration numbers, possibly indicating a smooth transition towards political stability (also people who intended to leave would plan to do so before 1997). In the years to come, the unemployment and underemployment of many Hong Kong immigrants in Canada prompted a stream of returning migrants.

Today, mainland China has taken over from Hong Kong and Taiwan as the largest source of ethnic Chinese immigration. The PRC has also taken over from all countries and regions as the country sending the most immigrants to Canada. According to the 2002 statistics from the Citizenship and Immigration Canada, the PRC has supplied the biggest number of Canadian immigrants since 2000, averaging well over 30,000 immigrants per year, totaling an average of 15% of all immigrants to Canada. This wave, however, dropped to only 8,000 a year in 2004.

Also, many Chinese-Canadians are becoming more involved in politics, both provincially and federally. Those Chinese candidates, however, are running in districts where significant Chinese populations exist. However, it marked a sharp contrast from the past where Chinese was a group traditionally uninterested, if not discouraged, in getting involved in politics. In federal politics, Raymond Chan became the first ethnic Chinese to be appointed into the cabinet in 1993, after winning the riding of Richmond in the 1993 federal election. Many Chinese-Canadians have ran for office in subsequent federal elections. After 2 failed attempts, New Democratic Party candidate Olivia Chow (wife of NDP leader Jack Layton), was elected in the 2006 federal election, representing the riding of Trinity—Spadina. Even the Bloc Québécois had an ethnic Chinese candidate, May Chiu, running in the riding of LaSalle—Émard against Liberal Party leader Paul Martin during the 2006 election.

In addition, the Chinese community also sought to redress past injustice done against them. Since the early 1980s, there has been a campaign to redress the Head Tax paid by Chinese entering Canada from 1885 to 1923, led by the CCNC. However, the movement did not gather enough support to be noticed by the government until the 1990s. However, the government has largely been unsympatheic to the calls of apologizing and refunding the head tax to the payers or their descendants because the government felt that apolozing would expose itself to unlimited legal liability. Canadian courts also ruled that the government had not legal obligation to redress the head tax, but it had a moral obligation to do so. The Liberal governments of the 1990s have adopted the position of "no apology, no compensation" as the basis of negotiating with the Chinese groups. The Liberals have been criticized for stonewalling the Chinese community..

But as the nature of parliament headed towards a minority situation, all political parties needed votes from all sectors of the Canadian electorates. During the 2004 federal election campaign, NDP leader Jack Layton pledge to issue an apology and compensation for the head tax.

After the 2006 election, the newly elected Conservative Party indicated in its Throne Speech that it would provide a formal apology and appropriate redress to families affected by policies of the past. It concluded a series of National Consultations across Canada, April 21-30, 2006, in Halifax, Vancouver, Toronto, Edmonton, Montreal and Winnipeg.

Members of Canada's Liberal Party, who lost the 2006 Election (as the outgoing government) have attempted to change their positions, and have been accused of "flip-flopping" on the issue during the election campaign as well as being questioned about their sincerity. Many Chinese, particularly the surviving head tax payers and their descendants have criticized Raymond Chan, the Chinese-Canadian cabinet minister who was left in charge of settling the matter, for compromising the Chinese community in favour of the government. Recent published articles, in fact, indicate that he deliberately misled the public regarding a number of facts and issues.

On June 22 2006, Prime Minister Stephen Harper delivered a message of redress in the House of Commons, offering an apology in Cantonese and compensation for the head tax once paid by Chinese immigrants. Survivors or their spouses will be paid approximately $20,000 CAD in compensation. Their children will not be offered this payment, some Chinese-Canadian leaders like Dr. Joseph Wong regarded it as an important and significant move in Chinese Canadian history. There are about 20 people whom paid the tax still alive in 2006. ^* (19 to 34 seconds)

External links

Great migrations | History of Canada | Immigration to Canada

加拿大華人歷史

Early history

Immigration in the mid-19th century

Chinese in Canada after the completion of the CPR

Strife during the post-war period

Heading into the new millennium

Further reading

See also

External links

Gourt Home::Gourt :: History of Chinese immigration to Canada

Early history

Immigration in the mid-19th century

Chinese in Canada after the completion of the CPR

Strife during the post-war period

Heading into the new millennium

Further reading

See also

External links