by Gillian Chan
The Japanese invasion of China in 1935, and the subsequent war, led to great turmoil in China. Mei-ling came back to Canada in 1939, fearing that she would be trapped in China if she did not. She settled in Toronto to practise medicine. Her father and Tsung Sook joined her there and set up another restaurant, like the one they had previously owned, although this time it was Mei-ling’s father who did most of the cooking. Tsung Sook had gone home to China in 1928 — the same year Wong Bak returned to stay — and married. The restaurant that he continued to run on his return to Vancouver in 1930 enabled him to send money to his wife and the son she bore him.
During the Second World War, communication with China became increasingly difficult. For a period of five years Mei and her father heard nothing from her mother, and did not know where she and Sing-wah were or, indeed, if they were alive. In 1946 they got word from Hong Kong, where Mei’s brother, now twenty-six and married with small children of his own, had found work in a factory.
Mei-ling never gave up hope that the family would be reunited in Canada. At the expense of having much of a personal life, she put her considerable energy and determination into working with other Chinese people to change the hated law which did not allow Chinese to bring their families here. When the act was repealed in 1947 it appeared that her dream would finally be realized; but even then her patience was tested, for although her mother came in January of 1949, it took much longer to bring her brother and his family to Canada. The whole family was finally reunited in 1953. They had five years together before Mei’s father died at the age of seventy-one.
Mei’s brother, having spent most of his life working on the family land, and speaking little English, did not find it easy to adapt to life in Canada. But he worked with his father in the restaurant, taking over his share on his father’s death. His dream was that his children, and their children in turn, would gain an education and make lives for themselves in Canada, just as his sister Mei-ling had done.
Mei-ling did not marry until quite late in her life, since her main goal was to ensure that the family was settled in Canada and financially secure. She married a fellow doctor in 1959, when she was forty-nine. Having no children of her own, she was a devoted and much-loved aunt to all her nieces and nephews, encouraging them and helping them achieve their dreams.
Mei-ling never lost the habit of keeping a diary. Her diaries became family treasures after her death in 1988, when they passed to her great-niece Elly Chin. Elly followed her aunt’s example in many ways. One of those was becoming a doctor. Another was keeping her own diary. Here is an extract from one of Elly’s diaries:
March 2003
It was so cold today, even though the sun was shining. I was really worried about Grandfather. He is getting so frail now, and standing around in the cemetery was not the best thing for his cough. He wouldn’t listen to me, though, just laughed when I suggested that he stay at home. He teases me that ever since I qualified as a doctor, I think I know everything, but I know he is proud of me and doesn’t really mean it. He’s never missed Ching Ming, not since Great-Aunt Mei died. He says that it is the least we can do, on this day of remembering our ancestors. For the first time though, he was not the one to clear the twigs and leaves from her grave — that fell to my father and his sisters.
Grandfather stood nodding, holding my arm. His eyes were wet with tears, and his voice raspy as he turned to me and said, “You know your Great-Aunt Mei came and found me in China, don’t you? Gave my mother and me such hope that we would come here? Always honour her, Elly.” He gripped my hand hard. “Promise me you will. She worked so hard and gave up so much to bring us all together.”
I couldn’t speak for crying, but I squeezed his hand back and nodded.
Historical Note
Canada is a land built on the work of many immigrants, who travelled from all over the world to settle here. Chinese immigrants have been coming to Canada for over two hundred years, and today there are flourishing Chinese communities in most of Canada’s large cities, notably Toronto and Vancouver.
Many thousands of Canadians are descended from those first immigrants, who crossed a wide ocean, often living away from their wives and children for decades, hoping to build a new life in what they called Gold Mountain. In cemeteries all across Canada, Chinese families gather to honour their ancestors when Ching Ming is celebrated, reflecting on their lives and what brought them to Canada, and respectfully sweeping the gravesites clear.
The first record of Chinese immigration to Canada is in 1788, when Captain John Meares anchored two ships in Nootka Sound on the Pacific coast. His task was to build a settlement, and among his crew were fifty Chinese carpenters and craftsmen. Little is known about what happened to those fifty men after the settlement was built. Some records indicate that there was an attack by Spanish forces which resulted in the destruction of buildings and the capture of many of the settlers, who were taken as prisoners to Mexico. Other stories have some of the Chinese carpenters avoiding capture and intermarrying with the native people of Nootka Sound.
The first large-scale immigration of Chinese men to North America came with the discovery of gold, first in California in 1848 and then in the region of Canada’s Fraser River ten years later. They worked as miners or labourers in the gold fields. Most of the immigrants came from Kwangtung (now called Guandong) province in China, and were seeking to make a better life for themselves and their families who, for the most part, stayed in China.
British Columbia was the place where most Chinese immigrants settled. A vast province which was still relatively underdeveloped, it lacked the manpower to undertake the tasks necessary to settle the area. Chinese workers filled that need. By 1863 a thousand Chinese labourers were working on the Cariboo Wagon Road leading to the gold fields. Western Union employed five hundred Chinese labourers to string telegraph wire between Westminster and Quesnel in 1866. Chinese and Japanese immigrants also worked in developing industries, such as the fish canneries that were built on the coast of British Columbia.
The construction of the Canadian Pacific Railway was the event, however, that brought the most Chinese men to Canada. The final section of track through the Rocky Mountains to Vancouver was built during the period 1881–1885, using the labour of as many as seventeen thousand Chinese men. The conditions they worked and lived in were often harsh and primitive. It is said that one Chinese worker died for each mile of track that was laid.
Although the Chinese were needed for their labour, they were often resented by the white population alongside whom they worked. They were seen as alien and very different in their habits. One accusation that was often thrown at them was that they were “sojourners” who had no intention of making their homes in Canada, and who came just to earn money to send home. Unlike immigrants from countries like Great Britain, who were encouraged by the Canadian government to come to Canada, much was done to discourage Chinese workers. Once the railway was completed, no provision was made for the Chinese men, who struggled to find new employment. They were viewed as a problem by the governments of both British Columbia and Canada. In an effort to stop further immigration, a head tax was introduced in 1885. By law, each Chinese immigrant had to pay a tax of fifty dollars in order to come to Canada. This was far more than many Chinese men already in Canada were able to save from their wages, after paying for food and lodging and sending money home to their families.
With no work on the railways, Chinese men looked for other ways to earn money. They found work in the canneries, on the boats that sailed up and down the coast, and as servants in white households or hotels, but they were often paid less for the same work than non-Chinese workers. They set up small businesses such as market gardens, laundries, shops and restaurants. The city of Victoria had once had the largest Chinese settlement in Canada, but by the early part of the twentieth century Vancouver had surpassed it, developing a vibrant Chinatown with shops, theatres, newspapers, restaurants, tea houses and rooming houses, all serving the la
rgely bachelor community of Chinese men in the area around Pender and Keefer Streets. Some Chinese men also left British Columbia, moving eastward across Canada in search of work.
Immigration from China continued, despite the head tax. During the last half of the nineteenth century and the early part of the twentieth century, China was in political turmoil as the Imperial system of government fell and warlords and politicians competed to take its place. Even additional increases in the head tax, and growing prejudice against Chinese, did little to discourage immigration — not even when, in 1903, the tax was raised to the huge sum of five hundred dollars.
An easy way to appreciate how much a burden this was is to realize that this would be the equivalent of nearly five thousand dollars in today’s money. Mei-ling and her father would have had to save nearly ten thousand dollars to bring both her mother and brother to Canada if the head tax existed today. It’s true that North America was regarded as “Gold Mountain” because the Chinese fared far better economically in Canada than they had in China, but they were still hard pressed because of sending money back home to their relatives.
Although Chinese men usually left their families in China, sending money home and visiting occasionally, some Chinese women did come to Canada. In 1861 Won Alexander Cumyow was the first Chinese baby born here. But women and families were always in the minority. The census of 1911 shows that, for every 10 Chinese women in Canada, there were 279 men. It was usually the wealthier merchants who brought their wives to settle in Canada, but for many poorer men this was the dream toward which they were working. Often, men would bring their younger male relatives or their sons first, because the men could work and help raise the money needed to bring over the women and children. Except in family-owned small businesses, there was no respectable work for women. Mei-ling’s father, brought over by his uncle, fell into this category. Mei-ling’s own situation, as a daughter brought to Canada before her mother, is a little unusual, but it is one that did occur occasionally.
As people realized that the Chinese community was here to stay, prejudice grew, often incited by reports in newspapers and pamphlets. In 1907 white rioters rampaged through Chinatown and the nearby Japanese area, breaking the windows of businesses. After the end of the First World War unemployment rose, and so did resentment of Chinese workers. They were accused of taking jobs away from white workers, and of being prepared to work for lower wages.
In response, the provincial government of British Columbia passed many laws which were designed to limit what Chinese workers could do, and how businesses they operated should be run. Chinese workers had not been allowed to vote in British Columbia since 1872. This excluded them from many professions, such as law, medicine and pharmacy, which required the practitioner to be on the electoral roll. In 1919 the Canadian government denied Chinese immigrants the right to vote at a federal level.
In 1922 the school board in Victoria, British Columbia, attempted to remove Chinese students from regular schools and place them in special classes. This was met with organized resistance from the Chinese community in Victoria, which boycotted the schools until this ruling was changed.
The Chinese were the only immigrant group to be targeted so specifically by legislation in this way, although during both world wars immigrants from countries at war with Canada — such as Ukrainians and Germans in World War I, and Japanese in World War II — were forced into internment camps.
In 1923, what had long been feared by Canada’s Chinese community came to pass. An act was introduced into the federal Parliament which would effectively end Chinese immigration, apart from very select groups such as diplomats and some students. The Chinese community rallied to fight this proposed legislation, but in the short time that it took the bill to be hurried through the House of Commons — from March to May of 1923 — their efforts were not successful. After passing through the Senate, the Chinese Immigration Act, commonly known as the Exclusion Act, became law on Dominion Day, July 1, 1923. For years afterward this day was known to many Chinese as Humiliation Day.
The Exclusion Act was a devastating blow for Chinese already living in Canada. Many men chose to return to China rather than face being separated from their families forever. Others remained in Canada, visiting their families when they could. This became more difficult after Japan invaded China in 1935, and even more so during World War II. There were many cases of husbands and wives who did not see each other for twenty years, and of fathers who never saw the children they had fathered on visits home until those children were adults.
The period after the introduction of the Exclusion Act has been described as an era of stagnation for the Chinatowns that had grown up across Canada. During World War II Chinese Canadians were very active in raising money for the war effort, and many young Chinese Canadians served in the armed forces, especially in Asia. After the war, the Chinese community re-doubled its efforts to have the Immigration Act of 1923 repealed, finally succeeding in 1947.
Even after the Exclusion Act was repealed, however, it still took many years for families to be reunited, as the regulations affecting Chinese immigration remained quite strict. Families were forced to prove their relationships, which was difficult to do since many documents had been lost or destroyed during the war. Only in the middle of the 1960s were these constraints relaxed. This freer immigration policy has led to the vibrant Chinese community which is so much a part of Canada today.
Images and Documents
Image 1: Thousands of Chinese men lived in camps such as this while working on the Fraser Canyon section of the Canadian Pacific Railway.
Image 2: Once the railway work was finished in 1885, Andrew Onderdonk, the contractor, dismissed his crews. Many Chinese workers scrambled to find even low-paying jobs.
Image 3: Living conditions for most Chinese men were cramped and meagre.
Image 4: Shops such as laundries and restaurants employed many Chinese workers. Others took positions as houseboys in white households.
Image 5: The largely “bachelor” Chinese community centred around Pender and Keefer Streets. Many men did have families, but these were often back in China.
Image 6: School children at the Kitsilano Public Library, 1922.
Image 7: Chinatowns existed in other North American cities as well. This fish merchant’s daughter lived in San Francisco’s Chinatown in the early 1900s.
Image 8: Though most Chinese students could not afford higher education, Dr. Victoria Cheung graduated from the Faculty of Medicine at the University of Toronto in 1923, her studies having been paid for by the United Church.
Image 9: The daughter of a janitor sweeps the sidewalk outside the Board of Trade Building on Pender Street.
Image 10: Woodward’s Department Store on Hastings Street.
Image 11: Schools such as this one in Victoria had large populations of Chinese students. An attempt in 1922 to put all such students into separate classes met with strong opposition from the Chinese community.
Image 12: Many whites resented Chinese workers and were delighted with the passage of the Exclusion Act.
Image 13: The Head Tax certificate of Rhoda Chow, who came to Canada from Canton in 1913. Under the Chinese Immigration Act, the certificate cost her family $500.
Image 14: Several Canadian cities (see map) had a significant Chinese population in 1923. Chinese men vastly outnumbered women in the 1920s, as shown in the table (above left) from the 1920 census. The Chinese-speaking population has dramatically increased since then, as shown in the table (above, right) from the 2001 census.
Glossary
Ai-yah (i-yuh): all-purpose exclamation, used to express surprise, disgust, even joy
Baba (bah-bah): father
cheong-sam (chong-sam): dress
Ching Ming (ching ming): grave-sweeping day
dim-sum (dim-soom): various small savoury dumplings
donggoo jinggai (don-goo-jin-gai): steamed chicken with mushrooms
Gum Shan (goom-shan): Gold
Mountain, the Chinese term for North America
gwei lo (gway-low): foreign devils
jook: rice gruel or porridge
Kuomintang (kwo-ming-dang): nationalist party in China, now spelled Guomindang
Kwangtung (kwang-toong): now known as Guangdong province in China
mah joong (mah-jong): traditional Chinese game played with domino-like tiles
M’goi (mmm-goy): thank you
muui-jaai (mu-ee-jai): bonded servant
min-naap (meen-nap): padded silk jacket
mau-tin (mao-din): small area of land, about 2/3 of a hectare or 1/6 of an acre
Oong choy: Chinese pea vines
Poon-yue (poon-yoo-i): Mei’s home county
Toong Yuan (toong-yun): rice-ball soup or family reunion
Acknowledgments
Every effort has been made to trace ownership of visual and written material used in this book. Errors and omissions will be corrected in subsequent updates or editions.
Grateful acknowledgment is made for permission to reprint the following:
Cover portrait: Detail (colourized) from black and white photo, DN-0005978, Chicago Daily News negatives collection. Courtesy of the Chicago Historical Society.
