Document title

Anti-Chinese Sentiment

Anti-Chinese sentiment began to grow during the concluding years of the Fraser Valley gold rush and spread like weed during the province’s recession afterwards. In his article "Gold Rush Days in British Columbia" in The Workingman in the Nineteenth Century, Michael S. Cross selected passages from a book published in 1872 called Very Far West Indeed:A Few Rough Experiences on the North-West Pacific Coast. This passage offers a glimpse at the author's experience with the gold miners in British Columbia when he was visiting the area:

Poor John! he is treated like a dog, bullied, scoffed at, kicked, and cuffed about on all occasions, his very name made a slang term of reproach; and yet, withal, he betrays no sign of meditated revenge, but pursues his labours calmly, and is civil and polite to all. He is close-fisted in his dealings with the whites, as he well may be, considering his treatment, and I really think the balance of honesty is in his favour...¹

After their mining days were over, the Chinese labourers moved to the towns where they joined the established Chinese communities and settled. On the southern tip of Vancouver Island, the men settled in Victoria’s Chinatown which had been built along the Johnson Street Ravine. On the old Cormorant Street (now Pandora Ave), where most of the Chinese businesses were located, a Chinese man or woman could find almost any merchandise or service they needed. Most of the members of the community, therefore, had no need to leave Chinatown on a day to day basis. This troubled Victoria’s residents greatly. If the Chinese remained in Chinatown to complete their shopping and receive their services, they were not contributing to the province’s economy or assimilating into Victorian society.² As well, the Victorians were alarmed by the number of Chinese workers that were employed in unskilled labour positions. They felt that the Chinese workers were taking the positions that were rightfully theirs. This quote from Patricia Roy's A White Man's Province shows how these issues and others were important to some of the white colonists:

When this province entered into the union with Canada we expected that the construction of the Pacific Railway would bring into this country a large immigration of white settlers. Unfortunately this expectation has not been realized. In place of white men and women to the country to fix their homes here, we are daily over-run by hordes of Chinese laborers who can never assimilate with our people, never rank as first-class immigrants, never become useful permanent residents; but who, if some means are not provided to stop their immigration will glut the labor market in competition with the white labor - lower the white man’s wages below a living rate; render his chances of employment precarious, and destroy his hopes of becoming a permanent resident with his family in the country.³

When Andrew Onderdonk, the contractor in charge of the Canadian Pacific Railway, started construction on the railroad, he intended to hire only white labourers.⁴ It soon became obvious that there were not enough white workers in the province to complete such a huge task. He was forced to hire Chinese workers which he later admitted were harder working and “more reliable” than the white workers.⁵ The hiring of Chinese railway workers fortified the anti-Chinese sentiment among white workers in the province. By the time the CPR had been completed, anti-Chinese sentiment had spread and strengthened. In fact, negative feelings toward Chinese immigrants in Victoria had grown so much that in May of 1885, approximately one thousand Victorian’s carrying anti-Chinese banners gathered in protest in Victoria’s streets.⁶

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Endnotes

1.Michael S. Cross, The Workingman in the Nineteenth Century(Toronto: Oxford University Press, 1974), page 66. The book Very Far West Indeed:A Few Rough Experiences on the North-West Pacific Coast is by a man named R. Byron Johnson and was published by London, Sampson, Low, Marston, Lowe, & Searle in 1872.

2.Patricia Roy, A White Man's Province: British Columbia Politicians and Chinese and Japanese Immigrants, 1858-1914 (Vancouver: UBC Press, 1989), 10.

3."Amor De Cosmos to the Electors of Victoria District," Standard, 20 June 1882. In Patricia Roy's, A White Man's Province, page 37.

4.David Chuenyan Lai, "Chinese: The Changing Geography of the Largest Visible Minority" in Canadian Western Geographical Series 36( 2001): 151.

5.David Chuenyan Lai, Chinatowns: Towns Within Cities in Canada (Vancouver: UBC Press, 1988), 32.

6.W. Peter Ward, White Canada Forever: Popular Attitudes and Public Policy Toward Orientals in British Columbia Second Edition(Montreal: McGill-Queen's University Press, 1990), 41.