Early arrivals in British Columbia
Chinese people began arriving in what is now Canada in the second half of the nineteenth century. Many came to British Columbia around the time of the Fraser River gold rush of the late 1850s, traveling either directly from China or from California. Most early migrants came from southern Guangdong province and worked in mining, services, canneries, laundries and other jobs.
The largest early group of workers was brought in during the 1880s to help build the western section of the Canadian Pacific Railway. The work was dangerous, wages were lower than those paid to other workers, and many lives were lost. The railway, often presented as a symbol of national unity, relied heavily on this labor, a fact that was often left out of earlier popular histories.
The head tax and exclusion
After the railway was finished, Canadian governments introduced laws to restrict Chinese immigration. A head tax was imposed on Chinese entrants in 1885 and later increased. In 1923 the government replaced it with the Chinese Immigration Act, which effectively stopped most immigration. Chinese Canadians were also denied the vote in some provinces and excluded from certain professions.
These measures separated many families, as men who were already in Canada could not easily bring wives and children. The community came to include many “bachelor societies,” in which men lived and worked far from relatives in China. The 1923 act was repealed in 1947, and in 2006 the federal government issued a formal apology for the head tax and the exclusion laws. Restrictions on immigration were eased in stages afterward, especially after the 1960s.
Neighborhoods and associations
As elsewhere in North America, Chinese Canadians formed neighborhoods that became known as Chinatowns. Victoria, Vancouver and later Toronto, Montreal, Calgary and other cities developed their own. Family and district associations, along with clan halls built around shared surnames, offered mutual help, social life and a link to home villages. Clan genealogies and records of home villages mattered to many families, especially when travel to China was difficult.
Chinatowns were not only commercial districts. They were places for weddings, funerals, festivals, newspapers and language classes. Today, historic Chinatowns exist alongside large Chinese-majority suburbs in places such as Richmond, British Columbia, and Markham and Scarborough in the Toronto area. The city-by-city differences are considerable, and so are the differences between older and newer residents.
A more varied community
The immigration reforms of the 1960s and 1970s moved Canada toward a system that weighed skills and family ties instead of national origin. Subsequent decades brought people from Hong Kong, Taiwan, mainland China and Southeast Asia, as well as Chinese communities from the Caribbean and other regions. Because of these different origins, Chinese Canadians speak several languages, including Cantonese, Mandarin, Hokkien and Hakka, and hold varied political and religious views.
It would therefore be inaccurate to treat Chinese Canadian culture as a single thing. A family that has lived in Canada for four generations may have quite a different outlook from one that arrived recently, and both may differ from people living in China today.
Food in Canadian life
Chinese restaurants have existed in Canadian towns, including small prairie communities, for a long time, and in many places they were among the first restaurants to open. Early restaurateurs adapted menus to local tastes, producing combinations that are now regarded as part of Canadian food culture. One often-mentioned example is a Calgary-associated dish of battered beef in a sweet sauce, though accounts of its origin differ.
More recently, regional Chinese cuisine and dim sum restaurants have become common in larger cities, along with bakeries, tea shops and grocery stores. The underlying Chinese cuisine has many regional styles, and the food in a typical Canadian city reflects both migration history and local customers’ preferences. Tea culture also features in Canadian life, from specialist cafes to home habits.
Festivals, schools and public life
Lunar New Year is widely celebrated in Canadian cities, with parades, lion dances, community fairs and family dinners. In some communities the Mid-Autumn Festival and Dragon Boat Festival are marked with moon-viewing gatherings and boat races. Dragon boat racing has become a popular summer sport in several cities, attracting many participants with no Chinese background.
Weekend Chinese language schools help children keep their languages, and universities teach Chinese language and literature. Community museums, historical societies and public archives preserve records of the railway era and the exclusion period, and projects to remember them often involve descendants of those affected.
Contributions beyond the obvious
Focusing only on food and festivals can understate the picture. Chinese Canadians work in every field, including medicine, science, technology, law, construction, politics, the arts and education. They have also been part of the long struggle for civil rights in Canada, including the campaign for the vote and for redress for the head tax. In daily life, contributions often show up in ways that are easy to overlook: family businesses, neighborhood associations and volunteer work.
Keeping the story balanced
Canada’s story with Chinese migrants includes both generosity and discrimination, and a respectful account includes both. Chinese heritage in Canada is not frozen in the past, either. New generations are creating music, writing, film and cuisine that mix influences in their own ways, so the relationship between Chinese culture and Canadian culture continues to change.