The Chinese in Toronto from 1878. Arlene Chan
Chinese were regarded as sojourners whose intentions were to earn money and return to China. A sojourner is defined as someone who spends “many years of his lifetime in a foreign country without being assimilated by it.”5 The notion that the Chinese were in Canada merely as sojourners has proven to be highly controversial among historians and scholars. The issue in dispute is whether the early Chinese immigrants really did not intend on staying in Canada or wanted to settle but were rejected on racist grounds.
One of the lone voices in support of the Chinese was that of Huang Zunxian, the Chinese Consul General of San Francisco, appointed by the Chinese government and given jurisdiction over the Chinese in Canada. He countered the majority of other witnesses by giving evidence of Chinese who had settled with their families in other locales, like the West Indies, Cuba, and the Philippines:
It 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. There are quite a number of foreigners in China, but few of them have brought their families. 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 as 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.6
Head Tax
Consul General Huang’s voice fell on deaf ears. The report of the Royal Commission secured Canada’s first anti-Chinese immigration law. In 1885 a head tax of $50 was levied on every Chinese landing in Canada, with the intent of discouraging their further immigration. Prime Minister Macdonald’s address to parliamentarians in 1886 reflected the attitude of the day: “I do not think that it would be to the advantage of Canada or any other country occupied by Aryans for members of the Mongolian race to become permanent inhabitants of the country.”7 The head tax was even more sinister because the Chinese were the only group ever assessed such a fee, based purely on race. It ranked among the most anti-Chinese legislation of the day — institutional racism at its worst.
Head tax certificates were required for all Chinese immigrants as proof of their payment for entry into Canada. Officially called C.I. 5 certificates, “C.I.” an abbreviation for Chinese Immigration, these were issued by the federal authorities to show the amount of the head tax and the port and date of arrival. An official stamp was required on the certificate for those who wished to return to Canada following a visit to China. Because copies were not kept by the government, the certificates were all the more carefully guarded from damage and loss.
At $50 the head tax was a financial hardship, and deliberately so, to discourage Chinese immigration, particularly wives and children. The Royal Commission estimated that the average Chinese labourer earned $225 a year, spent $130 for food and clothing, $24 for rent, $28 for other expenses, and saved a modest $43.8 As such, the $50 head tax exceeded one year’s savings and made it impossible for most men to pay for a spouse or child to come to Canada.
Lem Wong was among the 1,762 Chinese immigrants who came in 1896 and paid the $50 head tax, collectively generating $88,000 in taxes for the federal coffers.9 Born in 1881 in a small village near Guangzhou, he departed at age 15 with his uncle and landed a job in a Vancouver laundry. He moved eastward, working in other laundries before settling in London, Ontario, where he set up his own hand laundry. After a few years, he opened a restaurant that ensured the future of his wife and four children, one of whom was Gretta Wong Grant, the first female Chinese Canadian lawyer.
The punitive head tax had short-lived success in curbing immigration. At first, the number of Chinese immigrants dropped drastically, from the thousands of previous years to 212 in 1886.10 By 1890, however, the trend reversed and the numbers climbed again. The outrage of British Columbians led to the doubling of the head tax to $100 in 1900. A year later, the federal government appointed another royal commission.
This time, the subject of investigation included not only the Chinese but also the Japanese. The Royal Commission on Chinese and Japanese. Immigration recorded public opinion from many individuals, whose prejudicial comments reiterated how Canadians in the nineteenth century generally felt about the “Orientals.” One witness demeaned the Chinese as “a most undesirable class of immigrants” who “retard the progress of the country, and keep good immigrants from coming in here.”11 Another considered the Chinese “physically and mentally an inferior race, and if allowed to come into the country without restriction … the white race would be driven our [sic] or be degenerated and degraded.”12 The issue of the Chinese sojourner was resurrected.
The head tax certificate shows that Chew Ying Bull paid $500 in 1918 for entry into Vancouver. He became the owner of the Oriental Trading Company at 624 Yonge Street.
While there was no shortage of opinions that the Chinese were not wholly adopting Canada as their country, some people recognized that negative public opinion, racist laws, and discrimination discouraged the Chinese from considering Canada as their permanent home. The pastor of Knox Presbyterian Church in Toronto reported that he had “met Chinese who had expressed a desire to become citizens, but claim they could not do so and maintain their self-respect… they said they could not bring themselves to belong to a nation that treated another nation so unfairly.” He continued in his testimonial to the Royal Commission that there was “hope of Chinese becoming permanent settlers if treated the same as other nationalities.” 13 The commissioners concluded that the Chinese did not “assimilate with the white race in British Columbia, and it would not be desirable if they did.”14
In 1903 the head tax was increased once again, this time to $500, an exorbitant amount that immediately curbed the influx of Chinese. In the first half of 1904, no Chinese entered the country, while in the latter half, only a trickle managed the monetary feat.15 Without a doubt, this $500 tax was a financial challenge. A typical farmer of the day in China, who earned seven cents a day, would have to work for 20 years to pay this tax, while a Chinese labourer in Canada would have to work for two years. At the time, $500 was enough to purchase two houses in Vancouver.
Fourteen-year-old John Kuong paid the $500 head tax when he arrived in 1921:
You worked for $5 or $6 for a seven-day week, if you were lucky. But back then you could buy 100 pounds of potatoes for 25 cents. That’s why paying $500 for a head tax was a lot of money.16
After Kuong moved to Toronto from Saskatoon, he worked in a restaurant, and in 1967 he owned a laundromat at Dundas and Keele streets in the Junction.
With some Chinese, such as Kuong, still managing despite the immense head tax, a strongly worded circular was issued by the Victoria Chinese Board of Trade Guild in 1913 and widely distributed in China. Created as a communication to deter Chinese from immigrating to Canada, the flyer, in part, described the hardships and miseries of those already in the country, so that the “people in China” would “give up the idea of coming.”
Why should you, brothers, leave your parents and your wives and children to come over here? Don’t you know that our lot in life here is very much harder than it is in China? There are now about 20 thousand Chinese in Canada, who are unemployed and without a permanent home. They can get no work to support themselves. They go about begging old clothes and bread to save themselves from cold and starvation.17
The circular further detailed the revenue collected by the Canadian government and showed that over $9 million was collected from 1885 to 1913 (see Table 1).
TABLE 1
Victoria Chinese Board of Trade Guild Circular
Source: Kootenay: An Exploration of Historic Prejudice and Intolerance, www.fortsteele.ca/exhibits/kootenay/ethnic/circular.asp.
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