Community Associations
The governing body of the clan and district structures was the Chinese Consolidated Benevolent Association (zhonghua huiguan). First organized in 1884 in Victoria, this organization was the top tier of the associations, with overall responsibility for maintaining order in the community, defending against external threats, and fighting discrimination. Until an official consulate was established in Ottawa in 1908, the Chinese Consolidated Benevolent Association assumed Chinese consulship in Canada and acted as the government within the borders of Chinatown.11 The merchants, who were the leaders in the association, were the ones with financial and social influence that enabled them to deal with the world beyond Chinatown. They negotiated with the city government and police and established an important link between the Chinese and the host establishment. Even though the Chinese lacked the right to vote, the association gave Chinatown a voice. The Toronto branch was established in 1920 on Elizabeth Street.
The association collected funds through a $2 exit fee levied on anyone who returned to China.12 This money was used for operating expenses and also to pay for return fares for members who lacked the financial resources to return on their own. The exit fees also offset costs incurred in shipping the bones of deceased Chinese to their respective ancestral villages, a service that the association coordinated across Canada.
Sending bones to China was important because the belief was that their burial in ancestral homes would save the deceased from becoming wandering spirits in a foreign land. Bodies were buried twice, the first time in shallow graves immediately following death. After seven years, the bodies were exhumed, the bones cleaned, placed in a bag labelled with the person’s name, home county, and village name, and shipped to Victoria. Once there were sufficient numbers of bags of bones, these were shipped to Hong Kong, then to their respective home villages in China for a second burial in the ancestral plot. These shipments occurred about once every seven years and continued until 1940.13
Despite these arrangements, only a few had their remains shipped back to China; most were buried where they died. Even among those bones that were shipped to China, many were unclaimed and buried without ceremony at numerous sites. One such graveyard had been set up in the county of Xinhui in 1892 for the remains of 387 deceased workers who had no families to claim their remains. The inscription marking this burial ground states:
The remains of deceased Chinese which were shipped back to this town from various ports in Gold Mountain. From the 14th year of the reign of Emperor Guangxu to February of the 18th year, in addition to those claimed and buried, there still remained 387unclaimed, and they were buried here on February 23rd this year.14
In Toronto there was a holding section at the Mount Pleasant Cemetery for the bones awaiting shipment to China.15
Political Associations
The fourth type of traditional organization was the political association. Membership was open to everyone, and it was not an uncommon practice for leaders in the family associations to become prominent in the political ones as well. Most significantly, the political associations served a need in the community by opening membership to the Chinese who were not entitled to join the clan and district associations. They also provided a means to obtain and respond to information about the socio-political changes in China.
Chinese immigrants were keenly interested in news about the homeland, as China was poised for change to modernize its government, industries, army, and navy. There were two main groups of modern-day political activists: the reformers, who advocated reform and modernization of the Qing government, and revolutionaries, who wanted to overthrow a regime they considered beyond redemption. These two group’s political activism had origins dating back to 1644 when the Manchus defeated the Han people and established the Qing dynasty, and resisters formed secret fraternal societies that came to be known as Zhi Gong Tang. For the next 250 years, anti-Manchu rebellions were organized to restore the Hans and Chinese rule. The secret societies became associated with other terms, like triads and tongs, which in turn became linked with criminal gangs in modern usage. The term triad was first coined by Dr. William Milne in 1821, due to the prevalence of the number three in the names of the societies.16 Tong means “meeting hall” or “a place to meet.” Both terms originally referred to legitimate political organizations, and there is no evidence that these early Chinese societies were criminal ones.
Barkerville, British Columbia, was home to the first Zhi Gong Tang in Canada. More than 40 chapters were established in neighbouring settlements, like Quesnel Forks and Rossland. Vancouver saw the Zhi Gong Tang established there in 1892. By 1900, this political association had a membership estimated between 10,000 and 20,000 across Canada.17 Zhi Gong Tang filled the role of mutual aid societies by providing welfare support, and creating a sense of belonging among the immigrant Chinese. There was a place for social gatherings, traditional ceremonies, and celebrations. Spreading anti-Qing propaganda and raising money for the political struggle in China, however, were the main objectives of this organization.
In Toronto, Zhi Gong Tang was first listed in the 1905 city directory as a laundry under the name of Chee Swing Tong at 192 York Street, an error that was corrected the following year. The building was described in The Toronto Star in 1905:
A square wooden sign covered with an inscription in Chinese, and decorated at the corners with terra cotta silk tassels that look like elongated pool pockets, is fitted below the first window. Just to impress the fact that this is a Chinese Masonic society upon the heathen English, a black and gold sign upon the door reads: “Chee Kung Tong, Chinese Freemasons.”
The news article further reported that a barber shop occupied the ground floor, a meeting room on the second floor, and a joss house, or Chinese shrine, on the third floor.18
The only non-Chinese man to have seen the interior of the joss house, at the time, described the third floor in great detail in the Toronto Star. He found a shrine with “an idol” that was adorned with “brilliant colored silk,” long scrolls on each side, and burning incense in front. There were five or six images of “gods” and “ancestors” in various parts of the room:
Gifts of various articles lay in front of the shrine and my conductor explained that the members of the society worshipped these gods and the spirits of their ancestors, which he gravely assured me hovered around when the priest was at his incantations. He intimated that filial piety was the root of all Christian virtues.19
The global interaction of events in China and Canada was heightened by Sun Yat-sen, a member of the Zhi Gong Tang and a revolutionary. Sun Yat-sen, an activist without a country, lived a precarious life on the run. He actively solicited financial support from the Chinese living abroad in North America and Europe to fund the overthrow of the Manchus.
In return for their financial contributions to this cause, overseas Chinese leaders received charters as official spokesmen of the Chinese government — an added boost to their prestige and legitimacy in the community.
Sun Yat-sen saw Canada as important to the support of his revolution, and he stirred up anti-Qing sentiment in the Toronto Chinese community for the cause. On February 15, 1910, he attended a meeting at 55 Queen Street West, after which time his appeal for funds netted $10,000 from the Toronto Zhi Gong Tang branch, which mortgaged its building.20 The following year, on March 29, he made another visit that coincided with the failed Huang Hua Kang uprising in Guangzhou, a revolt that had been financed in part by the Toronto branch.
On the other side of the political spectrum, with respect to the Qing government, were those who advocated reform and modernization rather than an overthrow. A group of these political reformers led a 100-day movement to modernize China’s political and economic systems and establish the emperor as a constitutional monarchy. The Empress Dowager intervened and banished the reform leaders into exile. One was Kang Yuwei, who visited Canada in 1899 to further his cause. He established the first Chinese Empire Reform Association in Victoria and, within six years, 11 branches were opened, the Toronto one in 1903 on Queen Street East. Kang Yuwei returned for two more visits to Canada in 1902 and 1904.
On the 10th day