The Chinese in Toronto from 1878. Arlene Chan
exclusiveness and the isolation of the Chinese.
The Chinese quarters, in 1886, were located on Cormorant Street in Victoria, home of the oldest Chinatown in Canada.
The first Chinese resident recorded in Toronto’s city directory of 1878 was Sam Ching. He was the owner of a hand laundry at 9 Adelaide Street East, a two-storey building owned by the barrister Thomas Ince. The neighbours, all with Anglo-Saxon names, included a machinist, a blacksmith, oil merchants, and book keepers.23 Another man, Wo Kee, operated a laundry nearby, at 385 Yonge Street.24
By 1881 10 Chinese lived in Toronto and there were four Chinese laundries. Seven Chinese resided in the St. James Ward, bordered by Yonge Street to Jarvis Street and King Street north to Bloor Street. Three lived in the St. Andrews Ward, bordered by Yonge Street to the western city limits and King Street north to Queen Street.25
A barber shop, import store, and tailor occupied one-and two-storey buildings at 70½–74 Elizabeth Street in 1937.
The population growth was slow, insufficient in numbers to constitute a defined community. In 1891 the Chinese in Toronto numbered 33. Three years later, there were 50.26 This rate of growth changed, however, at the dawn of the new century. As the city grew rapidly during the early 1900s, so did the Chinese population. In 1900 there were 200 Chinese and 95 businesses that were widely scattered. In 1905, 228 laundries, a few grocery stores, some restaurants, and at least 15 merchants appeared.27
By 1910 there were two clusters of Chinese businesses in small yet identifiable Chinese sections.28 The first cluster was located on Queen and George streets, where there were six Chinese businesses and the Toronto branch of the Chinese Empire Reform Association, which had opened in 1905. This office closed after the fall of the Manchu dynasty in 1911, and the businesses moved away, halting the growth of what had appeared to be developing into a Chinese area. By this time, the Chinese numbered 1,001 men and 35 women, a negligible proportion of the city’s population of 130,000.29
Yet, even such a small population, less than 1 percent, was grounds for concern among Torontonians. The city’s first neighbourhood association, the Rosedale Ratepayers Association, announced the need to keep Chinese laundries out of its neighbourhood.30 Jack Canuck, a Toronto newspaper, mounted its attack on the growing number of Chinese:
There are not less than 25 Chinese stores, laundries and restaurants in the blocks bounded by King, Queen, Yonge and York Streets. How many of them are ‘dens’ in the Police court parlance? One need only stroll through the above mentioned blocks and notice the throngs of Chinese lounging in the streets and doorways to realize that the ‘Yellow Peril’ is more than a mere word in this city.31
It was not until after 1915 that Toronto’s Chinese settled in a clearly defined area, with nine businesses and residences.32 This early community was on and around York Street but was soon disrupted due to a redevelopment, the first of many to come. The Chinese then moved west to the low-rent area along Queen Street between York and Elizabeth streets. When this location was also designated for redevelopment, the Chinese moved north up Elizabeth Street toward Dundas Street West.
This area was located in what was then known as the Ward, bounded by Yonge Street, University Avenue, College Street, and Queen Street. Close to the railway station, the Ward was a major immigrant reception area and provided low-cost housing for the city’s poorest settlers, largely East European Jews and Italians. It was a maze of broken-down cottages and unpaved alleys and laneways, like Foster Place and Hagerman Street. The Ward gained a reputation as a slum after the House of Industry, a poor house, was opened at Elm and Chestnut streets in 1848. One block away was Centre Street, a red-light district until the late 1800s.
This vacant property, adjacent to the Great Wall Company and a tailor shop at 60–70 Elizabeth Street in 1937, was a sign of the high turnover of businesses in Chinatown.
The living conditions in the densely populated Ward were deplorable. As more Jews settled there between 1905 and 1912, housing demand increased, rents soared, and landlords neglected to improve their properties. Dr. Charles Hasting, the city’s medical health officer, reported in 1911 that 108 houses in the Ward were unfit for habitation.
The Jewish businesses, including poultry shops, grocery stores, fish stores, and bakery shops, eventually moved westward to Kensington Market, and the Italians moved to Little Italy at College and Grace streets. After these groups had departed, the Chinese moved into the area and Chinatown began to develop along Elizabeth Street.
A Chinese store adjacent to the Markowitz Bakery at 109–111 Elizabeth Street in 1937. When Jewish businesses and residents moved westward to Spadina Avenue, the Chinese moved in.
The first Chinese to own property on Elizabeth Street, as recorded in the 1911 city assessment rolls, was Gip Kan Mark. A wholesale grocer, Ying Chong Tai, occupied the first floor of Mark’s three-storey building at 16 Elizabeth Street, where neighbouring businesses included a blacksmith, a dairy, veterinary surgeons, and horse stables.33 Within the next 10 years, many more Chinese purchased properties, and by the 1921 census, Toronto’s Chinatown ranked as the third largest in Canada, after Vancouver and Victoria, a position it held until the end of the Second World War. The 39,587 Chinese in Canada were no longer confined to British Columbia as in the early years of settlement. The western province’s share of 99 percent had declined to 59 percent; Ontario had 14 percent; Quebec, 6 percent; Alberta, 9 percent; Saskatchewan, 7 percent; Manitoba, 3 percent; and the Maritimes and Territories, 1 percent. The growth of the Chinese population in Toronto from 1880 to 1931 went in leaps and bounds (see Table 4).
TABLE 4
Toronto’s Chinese Population, 1870-1931
Source: Valerie Mah, An In-Depth Look at Toronto’s Early Chinatown, 1913–1933 (master’s thesis, University of Toronto, 1977).
While these population statistics are historically significant, they may not be 100 percent accurate, due to challenges of deciphering and transliterating Chinese names. Surnames always appear first, followed by the given names. Errors often occurred in the name order, which in English has the family name at the end rather than the beginning.
Lack of knowledge of the Chinese language was another source of confusion and errors for English-speaking enumerators and registrars. They transliterated Chinese names as closely as possible into English, with the result of numerous anglicized names for the same individual. For example, Lee Hong, who operated a laundry at 48 Elizabeth Street, is recorded on the Toronto assessment rolls from 1908 to 1913 as Lee Chong, Cong Lee, and Yee Chong.34 “Ah” is another example of inaccuracy in government records. Positioned at the beginning of one’s name in conversation, Ah means “that person.” However, it often was recorded in English as part of the surname — Ah Chong instead of just Chong, for instance.
All inaccuracies aside, there were only 13 Chinese families among 2,035 Chinese in 1921. The heads of these families were two herbalists, one professional gambler, one Canadian National Rail agent, four merchants selling groceries and laundry supplies, one minister herbalist, one laundryman, one Canadian Pacific Railway agent, one man employed on lake boats, and one wholesaler in tobacco.35 There were 31 daughters and 34 sons in total, all but four born in Canada.36 Nine of the families lived in the Chinatown area, mostly in rented premises.
A cart with live chickens is pulled along Hagerman