In 1885 the railway was completed. The eastern and western sections of the Canadian Pacific Railway were now joined from coast to coast — the realization of a national dream. A famous photograph, taken at 9:22 a.m. on November 7, 1885, records the driving of the last spike by company director Sir Donald Smith at Craigellachie, British Columbia, and the proud but stern faces of Canadian Pacific Railway officials and workers. Borne on the backs of the industrious Chinese labourers, who comprised three-quarters of the railway workforce, the crowning achievement that united Canada was celebrated with not one Chinese in attendance. Nor were there any references made about them among the countless news articles written at the time. Onderdonk, who would have been bankrupted by higher labour costs without the Chinese, made a tidy profit of over $3 million.21 The Canadian Pacific Railway was the backbone to the development of Canada as a nation. In the end, the Chinese were written out of history.
More than one hundred trestles and bridges, like this wooden one photographed in 1881, were built to traverse the Fraser and Thompson Rivers.
As long as the flint remains, the seeds of fire will never die out.
— LU XUN, 1881–1936.
The completion of the Canadian Pacific Railway threw thousands of Chinese out of work. Although the Chinese had proven their worth as hard-working and dedicated railway labourers, the scarcity of jobs and high competition for work left them scrambling. Nearly one thousand men who had earned enough for the return fare to China headed home, but not in the numbers as assumed and hoped for by the British Columbia government.1 Those who could not afford the passage fare looked for work as miners, domestic servants, farm labourers, food canners, and forest workers, with the unsuccessful ones left loitering on the streets, suffering from cold and hunger. These railway workers had been abandoned at no fault of their own. Andrew Onderdonk’s refusal to honour his pledge of a ticket back to China left labourers stranded in a foreign land.
A steady stream of Chinese, victims of these dire circumstances, began moving east on the very railway they had built to unite the country. Opportunities for starting small businesses beckoned where Chinese communities were smaller and anti-Chinese sentiment had not reached the same heights as in British Columbia. The Chinese willingly took jobs at almost any wage. By 1901, Chinese lived in every province of Canada. Although the majority remained in British Columbia until the 1920s, the gradual move eastwards saw a decline of Chinese living in the province, which had previously been home to 99 percent of all Chinese in Canada.
Undetermined numbers also arrived in Eastern Canada from the United States. There were many reasons for the influx from south of the Canadian border. The American economy soured in the 1870s and 1880s, followed by the national depression of 1893. With the growing number of unemployed white workers, the Chinese were among the scapegoats blamed for stealing jobs away from Americans. Many Chinese moved north to escape discrimination. Another influencing factor was the impact of the 1882 Chinese Exclusion Act, which prevented the re-entry of American Chinese railway workers who had worked on the Canadian Pacific Railway.
Anti-Chinese Racism
Even as the Chinese moved eastward, widespread anti-Chinese sentiment, which had been temporarily put to rest during the construction of the Canadian Pacific Railway, was revived. White British Columbia was enraged at the Chinese who remained. Few minority groups attracted as much negative public reaction and discrimination as the Chinese, and this was at a time when a significant proportion of the Canadian population was foreign-born or a generation or two removed from their country of origin.
Racism and white supremacism played out on the international stage as European powers expanded their empires into Asia and Africa. The West’s perception of the Chinese was handily informed by Britain’s easy victory over China in the first Opium War (1839–1842). For a country that had dispelled all foreigners and viewed itself as the centre of the world, white imperialism was now on its doorstep. China was forced to open key ports to outsiders, and its position as the leading power in Asia was drastically diminished. Other countries, including the United States, France, Russia, and Portugal, soon followed Britain’s lead and demanded trade agreements that China was powerless to refuse.
Canadian attitudes were shaped by these events as well as those occurring on home soil. After Confederation in 1867, Canada needed large-scale immigration to expand settlement in the prairies. The immigrant of choice was of British and European stock — a white Canada. The Dominion Lands Policy opened wide the doors to farmers and agricultural labourers from the United States and Europe with offers of free farmland. From 1896 to 1905, an aggressive advertising campaign implemented by the federal government attracted over 650,000 farmers from Scandinavia, Germany, Russia, Ukraine, Poland, Romania, and Austria-Hungary. During a cross-Canada visit in 1907, author Rudyard Kipling made known his views for a white society and said that “the best way to keep the yellow man out is to get the white man in.”2
The popular media played no insignificant role in influencing public opinion during this time of unchecked anti-Chinese sentiment. Sensationalism not only sold newspapers but also perpetuated narrow stereotypes that included labels like chink, celestial, and Oriental. News stories depicted Chinese men as diseased, drug-addicted, indolent, morally bankrupt, unclean, and unlawful. Headlines like HEATHEN CHINEE IN BRITISH COLUMBIA were common, as well as caricatures that lampooned Chinese facial features, hair, and dress. Even as hundreds of Chinese moved out of British Columbia, those who remained were subject to constant scrutiny. Politicians and citizens viewed the Chinese as inassimilable and a threat to society for their inferior and backward ways.
The media in British Columbia reflected the strong anti-Chinese sentiment. This cartoon with the caption THE HEATTHEN CHINEE IN BRITTISH COLUMBBIA depicts newspaper editor, Amor de Cosmos, forcing an immigrant to leave.
In this cartoon from the Saturday Sunset, August 24, 1907, the gatekeeper, dressed in a Union Jack, closes the gate to the “Oriental” men, while the well-dressed “whites” are seen arriving with women and children.
Fears about the Yellow Peril and its threat to the British race became a powerful rallying point for politicians, who parlayed the deep-seated antagonism to handily steer the course of anti-Chinese legislation. Chinese could not purchase Crown lands. They could not work in underground coal mines or on any public works projects, like road and bridge construction. All Chinese over the age of 14 had to pay a $10 annual fee for a residential licence.
The law that sealed the alien status of the Chinese, however, was the Electoral Franchise Act. Up until 1875, Chinese exercised the right to vote in British Columbia. That year, provincial legislation barred the Chinese from elections. In 1885 Prime Minister Macdonald took disenfranchisement to a new level by introducing the franchise act, which gave the federal government control over the right to vote across the country at all three levels of elections. Chinese, even naturalized Canadian citizens, were not allowed to vote in a federal election. No vote in federal elections meant no vote in any provincial or municipal elections. Without registration on the electoral roll, Chinese were further disqualified from occupations like political office, law, medicine, and pharmacy.
Another government response to anti-Chinese sentiment was the establishment of a Royal Commission on Chinese Immigration to investigate the “Chinese question.” According to its 1884 report, there were 10,492 Chinese living in British Columbia, 4,000 of them railway workers.3 The testimonies of 51 witnesses, almost all prejudiced against the Chinese, were documented. In the words of one witness, “Unless the Chinese character should undergo a radical change they cannot become permanent settlers.”4