The Chinese in Toronto from 1878. Arlene Chan
on Vancouver Island to build a trading post and a small schooner, the North West America, for use in the trade of sea otter pelts to China. Close to 100 years passed before the Chinese appeared again in British North America, this time in significantly greater numbers.
Like the thousands of prospectors from California, the new arrivals from China quickly set out for the gold fields. By 1863, 4,000 Chinese were panning for gold.11 They were not welcomed by the experienced white fortune-seekers from California. Miners in California often used violence to drive the Chinese out of various mines, and the Chinese learned to rework abandoned claims to avoid beatings and robberies. The Chinese, the most conspicuous of immigrant gold rushers, were singled out for harsh treatment and discrimination. Their large numbers, physical differences, incomprehensible language, and eating habits with chopsticks made them easy targets to spot. They wore cotton shoes, jackets with cloth buttons, and loose cotton trousers — traditional dress that added more fuel for attacks and abuse.
One striking characteristic, in particular, was their hair, commonly held in a queue or long braid. When the Qing dynasty was established in 1644, their traditional Manchu hairstyle was enforced on the defeated Han men, who came to regard it as a symbol of their servitude and subjugation. Cutting it off meant certain execution in China, as this was considered an act of treason against the Manchus. A favourite sport for pranksters in North America was cutting off Chinese queues, something that caused great shame for the victims.12 Not until the overthrow of the Qing Dynasty, in 1911, were the Chinese allowed to cut their braids without fear of persecution.
By the end of the gold rush, in 1863, the Gold Mountain dreams of the Chinese were realized only for a few; most faced only failure and disappointment.
Canadian Pacific Railway
The second major wave of Chinese immigrants was lured to Canada for an entirely different purpose — the transcontinental railway to link Canada from the Atlantic to Pacific coasts. When the Americans completed their Northern Pacific Railway in 1869, British Columbia showed great interest in joining the United States. At that time, British Columbia was still an isolated colony of the British Empire. The American purchase of Alaska, in 1867, boxed British Columbia in, with the United States then bordering it in both the north and south. Prime Minister John A. Macdonald tried to persuade the colony to join Confederation; however, British Columbia’s response was that unless it was tied by rail to the rest of the country, the colony would secede from the British Empire or, worse still, be annexed to the United States. Furthermore, any agreement would be annulled if the railway was not completed within 10 years. With the prime minister’s acceptance of these terms, British Columbia joined Canada in 1871 as the sixth province.
Prime Minister Macdonald’s success in nation-building was not without its challenges. In the 1873 elections, he was defeated and the new prime minister, Alexander Mackenzie, was not interested in fulfilling the promise of a railway in the West. Macdonald was re-elected in 1878, but his renewed effort to build the railway was met with more roadblocks.
Andrew Onderdonk, an American engineer, bid successfully on the rights to build the railway from Port Moody to Craigellachie — a distance of 547 kilometres. He needed cheap labour to come within budget, and he favoured Chinese labourers, who had worked on his railway projects in the United States. They worked hard and at wages 30–50 percent lower that those paid to white labourers. Prime Minister Macdonald, not without strong opposition, immediately approved the hiring of 10,000 Chinese. In his words, spoken in parliament, “If you want the railroad you’ll have to accept the use of Chinese labour. If you won’t have Chinese labour, you won’t have a railroad.”13 From 1881 to 1884, 1,500 experienced Chinese workers came from the United States, 15,701 from China.14
Onderdonk dispatched recruiters to China, especially the Guangdong province, to entice a work force of labourers. Leaflets and posters with promises of work in Canada were distributed. The passage and settlement expenses, about $40 per person, were paid in advance by the recruiters. Most applicants were typically penniless peasants who had to pay the recruiters back as indentured labourers.
In the earlier years, the Chinese sailed on threemasted sailing ships, and later on Pacific fleets, including the Empress liners, which were launched by the Canadian Pacific Railway. As an example, the RMS Empress of Asia, built in 1913, accommodated 300 first class passengers, 100 second class, and 800 in steerage. This ocean liner was used primarily to transport cargo and passengers from Asia to British Columbia.15
Like the earlier immigrants en route to the gold rush, the Chinese travelled in steerage, crammed shoulder to shoulder and knee to knee. As dictated by the contracts upon which these recruits had pressed their fingerprints, tea was served twice a day and unboiled water the rest of the time. The 400 grams of rice, to which each group of four people had been promised as a day’s ration, was in fact shared among 10.16 Many died of starvation before reaching the shores of Canada.
The age, sex, and background of these men on a Canadian Pacific Railway ship make them typical of the Chinese immigrants bound for Canada.
The hardships endured during the crossing paled in comparison to the perils to come; the Rocky Mountains proved to be a formidable obstacle to railway construction, slowing progress and endangering workers. There were treacherous peaks and long stretches of water, islands, and bays that needed to be traversed. To this end, work distribution was unevenly handled. White labourers from Europe worked lighter types of jobs, like measurement, calculation, and design. The Chinese were mostly engaged in the heavy work — building bridges, chiselling tunnels, chipping away at rocks, and transporting heavy debris. The use of nitroglycerine, a powerful and unpredictable explosive, one drop of which could cause catastrophic blasts, was handled by the Chinese. They took on the risks, with the foremen’s promises of passage money for their wives. Many makeshift tunnels that were used to start the blasting of the mountains on the north side of the Fraser River remained half-completed and abandoned after too many workers were killed. Others perished from different causes, such as overwork, landslides, and collapsing bridges. Local lore tells the tales of ghosts who, to this very day, linger around the unmarked graves and tunnels.
Chinese workers were not compensated for this dangerous work. In fact, they were paid significantly less than the white labourers. James Pon, chairman of the Foundation to Commemorate the Chinese Railroad Workers in Canada and himself a descendant of a railway worker, stated:
The life of the Chinese railway worker was very hard. He worked 12 hours a day six days a week. He got paid 75 cents a day, whereas a white man, or Caucasian, was paid a dollar-fifty a day, and he, the white man, was supplied with food and lodging, whereas the Chinese was not given any food or lodging. The Chinese lived in tents and they had to buy their own food, and sometimes they had to buy food from the company store.17
Disease was rampant and swept through the camps of exhausted workers. Malnutrition from the lack of fruit and vegetables exasperated the health of the Chinese, who were deprived of medicine and medical care. Scurvy and beri-beri were among the major causes of death. And the terrible weather in the Rockies found the Chinese ill-prepared for the brutal winters, as told by the son of one worker:
My father came from Xinhui in Guangdong province, and because it was very warm there, he was not prepared for the cold winters in Canada, nor were any other of the Chinese. They arrived in their thin clothing, cloth shoes, still wearing their pigtails, and the railway did not provide them with gloves, hats, or any kind of work clothing. When the winter snows came, they still worked in their cloth shoes, and my father told me that he had to wrap burlap sacks around his feet to keep from freezing.18
Chinese labourers used hammers to break up rocks and transported the gravel using their heads, shoulder poles, and pushcarts for the construction of a roadbed in 1884.
The sacrifices in human life amounted to an estimated one person for every mile of railway track that was laid.19 Although the death count is estimated at 600 to