History of Chinese Immigration To Canada - Chinese in Canada After The Completion of The CPR

Chinese in Canada After The Completion of The CPR

After the Canadian Pacific Railway was completed, many Chinese were left with no work and no longer seen as useful to both the CPR and the Canadian government. The government of Canada passed The Chinese Immigration Act, 1885 levying a "Head Tax" of $50 on any Chinese coming to Canada. After the 1885 legislation failed to deter Chinese immigration to Canada, the government of Canada passed The Chinese Immigration Act, 1900 to increase the tax to $100, and The Chinese Immigration Act, 1903 further increased the landing fees to $500, equivalent to $8000 in 2003. - as compared to the Right of Landing Fee, or Right of Permanent Residence Fee, of merely $975 per person paid by new immigrants in 1995–2005, and further reduced to $490 in 2006.

The Chinese Immigration Act, 1923, better known as the Chinese Exclusion Act, replaced prohibitive fees with an outright ban on Chinese immigration to Canada with the exceptions of merchants, diplomats, students, and "special circumstances" cases. The Chinese that entered Canada before 1924 had to register with the local authorities and could leave Canada only for two years or less. Since the Exclusion Act went into effect on July 1, 1923, Chinese at the time referred to Dominion Day as "Humiliation Day" and refused to celebrate Dominion Day until after the act was repealed in 1947.

From the completion of the CPR to the end of the Exclusion Era (1923–1947), Chinese in Canada lived in mainly a "bachelor's of the backpack society" since most Chinese families could not pay the expensive head tax to send their daughters to Canada. As with many other groups of immigrants, Chinese initially found it hard to adjust and assimilate into life in Canada. As a result, they formed ethnic enclaves known as "Chinatowns" where they could live alongside fellow Chinese immigrants. Chinese settlers began moving eastward after the completion of the CPR, although Chinese numbers in BC continued to grow and, until the 1960s, there were no significant populations of Chinese in any other province. With legislation banning Chinese from many professions, Chinese entered professions that non-Chinese Canadians did not want to do like laundry shops or salmon processing. These Chinese opened grocery stores and restaurants that served the whole population, not just Chinese, and Chinese cooks became the mainstay in the restaurant and hotel industries as well as in private service. Chinese success at market gardening led to a continuing prominent role in the produce industry in British Columbia. After the railway was finished, their families could come to Canada. They could become Canadian citizens. Even though they became citizens of Canada, they have faced discrimination.

Chinese merchants formed the Chinese Consolidated Benevolent Association, with the first branch in Victoria in 1885 and the second one in Vancouver in 1895. The Association was mandatory for all Chinese in the area to join and it did everything from representing members in legal disputes to sending the remains of a members who died back to their ancestral homelands in China. After legislation in 1896 that stripped Chinese of voting rights in municipal elections in B.C., the Chinese in B.C. became completely disenfranchised. The electors list in federal elections came from the provincial electors list, and the provincial ones came from the municipal one.

After Canada entered World War II on September 10, 1939, Chinese communities greatly contributed to Canada's war effort, mainly in an attempt to persuade Canada to intervene against Japan in the Second Sino-Japanese War, which had started in 1937 (although Canada did not declare war on Japan until the attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941). The Chinese Consolidated Benevolent Association requested its members to purchase Canadian and Chinese war bonds and to boycott Japanese goods. Also, many Chinese enlisted in the Canadian forces. But Ottawa and the B.C. government were unwilling to send Chinese-Canadian recruits into action, since they did not want Chinese to ask for enfranchisement after the war. However, with 90,000 British troops captured in the Battles of Malaya and Singapore in February 1942, Ottawa decided to send Chinese-Canadian forces in as spies to train the local guerrillas to resist the Japanese Imperial Forces in 1944. However, these spies were little more than a token gesture, as the outcome of World War II had been more or less decided by that time.