Chinese Canadians
Chinese Canadians are Canadians of full or partial Chinese ancestry, which includes both naturalized Chinese immigrants and Canadian-born Chinese. They comprise a subgroup of East Asian Canadians which is a further subgroup of Asian Canadians. Demographic research tends to include immigrants from Mainland China, Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Macau, as well as overseas Chinese who have immigrated from Southeast Asia and South America into the broadly defined Chinese Canadian category.
Canadians who identify themselves as being of Chinese ethnic origin make up about 5.1% of the Canadian population, or about 1.77 million people according to the 2016 census.
While other Asian groups are growing rapidly in the country, the Chinese Canadian community fell slightly to 1.71 million, or 4.63% of the Canadian population, in the 2021 Canadian census.
The Chinese Canadian community is the second largest ethnic group of Asian Canadians after Indians, constituting approximately 30% of the Asian Canadian population. Most Canadians of Chinese descent are concentrated within the provinces of Ontario and British Columbia.
History
Pre-19th century
The first record of Chinese in what is known as Canada today can be dated back to 1788. The British fur trader John Meares hired a group of roughly 70 Chinese carpenters from Macau and employed them to build a ship, the North West America, at Nootka Sound, Vancouver Island, British Columbia. This was then an important European outpost on the Pacific coast, disputed between Spain and Britain. The British post was seized by Spain, and thereafter was abandoned by Meares. The later fortunes of the Chinese carpenters went unknown.19th century
Before 1885 and the completion of the Canadian Pacific Railway, access to British Columbia from other parts of Canada was difficult. The creation of a better transportation system was essential to integration of British Columbia into the new Confederation.Chinese railway workers made up the labour force for construction of two one-hundred mile sections of the Canadian Pacific Railway from the Pacific to Craigellachie in the Eagle Pass in British Columbia. When British Columbia agreed to join Confederation in 1871, one of the conditions was that the Dominion government build a railway linking B.C. with eastern Canada within 10 years. British Columbian politicians and their electorate agitated for an immigration program from the British Isles to provide this railway labour, but Prime Minister Sir John A. Macdonald, betrayed the wishes of his constituency by insisting the project cut costs by employing Chinese immigrants to build the railway, and summarized the situation this way to Parliament in 1882: "It is simply a question of alternatives: either you must have this labour or you can't have the railway.".
Chinese communities in Canada in the 19th and well into the 20th centuries were organized around the traditional kinship systems linking people belonging to the same clans together.
As not everyone in the Chinese communities necessarily belonged to the same clans, "voluntary" associations that functioned in many ways like guilds that provided social welfare, community events and a forum for politics became very important in Chinese-Canadian communities. Linking together all of the voluntary associations were Benevolent Associations that in effect ran the various Chinatowns in Canada, mediating disputes within the communities and providing for leaders who negotiated with Canadian politicians.
Many workers from Guangdong Province arrived to help build the Canadian Pacific Railway in the 19th century as did Chinese veterans of the gold rushes. These workers accepted the terms offered by the Chinese labour contractors who were engaged by the railway construction company to hire them—low pay, long hours, lower wages than non-Chinese workers and dangerous working conditions, in order to support their families that stayed in China. Their willingness to endure hardship for low wages enraged fellow non-Chinese workers who thought they were unnecessarily complicating the labour market situations. Most of the Chinese immigrants in the 19th century spoke Cantonese and their term for Canada was Gum San. The name Gum San, which concerned a supposed gigantic mountain made of pure gold located somewhere in the Rockies, was not taken literally, but instead was a metaphor for the hopes of Chinese immigrants for greater wealth in Canada. Almost all of the Chinese immigrants in the 19th century were young men, with women staying behind in China with the hope of marrying a "Gold mountain guest" as those who made money in Canada usually returned to China. Unable to marry white women, many Chinese men in Canada married First Nations women as the Indian peoples were more willing to accept them.
From the passage of the Chinese Immigration Act in 1885, under pressure "to stop the flow of immigrants" the Canadian government began to charge a $50 head tax for each Chinese person immigrating to Canada. The Chinese were the only ethnic group that had to pay such a tax.
Early 20th century
In 1902, the Liberal Prime Minister Sir Wilfrid Laurier appointed a Royal Commission on Chinese and Japanese Immigration, whose report stated that the Asians were "unfit for full citizenship... obnoxious to a free community and dangerous to the state." Following the Royal Commission's report, Parliament voted to increase the Chinese head tax to $500, which temporarily caused Chinese immigration to Canada to stop. However, those Chinese wishing to go to Canada began to save up money to pay the head tax, which led to agitation, especially in British Columbia for the Dominion government to ban Asian immigration. Between September 7–9, 1907, an anti-Asian pogrom took place in Vancouver. The Asiatic Exclusion League organized attacks against homes and businesses owned by Chinese, Japanese, Korean and Indian immigrants under the slogan "White Canada Forever!"; though no one was killed, much property damage was done and numerous Asian-Canadians were beaten.The 1907 pogrom was merely the most dramatic expression of the continuous agitation in Canada, especially in western Canada and among the working class, for the total exclusion of Asian immigration to Canada. In 1922, the feminist Emily Murphy published her best-selling book The Black Candle blaming Chinese and black immigrants for allegedly causing the problems of drug addiction among white Canadians. In 1923, the federal Liberal government of William Lyon Mackenzie King banned Chinese immigration with the passage of the Chinese Immigration Act of 1923, although numerous exemptions for businessmen, clergy, students and others did not end immigration entirely. With this act, the Chinese received similar legal treatment to blacks before them who Canada also had specifically excluded from immigration on the basis of race. During the next 25 years, more and more laws against the Chinese were passed. Most jobs were closed to Chinese men and women. Many Chinese opened their own restaurants and laundry businesses. In British Columbia, Saskatchewan and Ontario, Chinese employers were not allowed to hire white females. Ernest Chewant Mark, an immigrant who arrived in Canada in 1908, emerged as one of the leading critics of the 1923 Exclusion Act, and worked closely with Senator William Proudfoot, a Presbyterian minister, into seeking to pressure the government to repeal the act.
Some of those Chinese-Canadian workers settled in Canada after the railway was constructed. Most could not bring the rest of their families, including immediate relatives, due to government restrictions and enormous processing fees. They established Chinatowns and societies in undesirable sections of the cities, such as Dupont Street in Vancouver, which had been the focus of the early city's red-light district until Chinese merchants took over the area from the 1890s onwards. During the Great Depression, life was even tougher for the Chinese than it was for other Canadians. In Alberta, for example, Chinese Canadians received relief payments of less than half the amount paid to other Canadians. And because the Chinese Exclusion Act prohibited any additional immigration from China, the Chinese men who had arrived earlier had to face these hardships alone, without the companionship of their wives and children. Census data from 1931 shows that there were 1,240 men to every 100 women in Chinese Canadian communities. To protest the Chinese Exclusion Act, Chinese Canadians closed their businesses and boycotted Dominion Day celebrations every July 1, which became known as "Humiliation Day" by the Chinese Canadians. The film-maker Melinda Friedman stated about her interviews with Chinese Canadian veterans of World War II: "The thing that was the most shocking to me was hearing from the veterans... describe what life was like in Vancouver as late as 1940, with the Ku Klux Klan living in Vancouver who were targeting, quite often, the Chinese community."
In 1937, when Japan attacked China, the government of Chiang Kai-shek asked for the overseas Chinese communities to support the homeland. From 1937 onward, the Chinese Canadian community regularly organized fund-raising events to raise money for China. By 1945, the Chinese Canadians had contributed $5 million Canadian dollars to China. Following the Xi'an Incident of December 1936, a "United Front" bringing together the Chinese Communist Party and the Kuomintang had been formed to resist Japanese aggression, which was soon put to the test when Japan invaded China in July 1937. Within the Chinese Canadian communities, a "United Front" atmosphere prevailed from the summer of 1937 on as various community leaders put aside their differences to focus on supporting China. Starting in 1937, a boycott was organized of Japanese goods, and Canadian businesses that sold war materials to Japan were subject of demonstrations. One of the main slogans used at the demonstrations was "Don't Kill Babies", a reference to the Imperial Japanese Army's habit of using Chinese infants for "bayonet practice".