A police officer was on-site at a traffic jam caused by a disabled truck on Elizabeth Street in 1934.
The increasing number of Chinese residents and businesses did not go unnoticed. The editor of Toronto’s Saturday Night warned the public of the Chinese influence and advocated “keeping the Chinese on the move.”37 Jack Canuck reported that the development of a Chinatown would have “dangerous consequences” for the city.38 In 1907, the Globe published an editorial, “Asiatic Peril to National Life,” proclaiming that Asian immigrants could never become good citizens, because Asians would lead to “national decay” and their intellect was incompatible with Anglo-Saxon ideals.39
These printed opinions reflected and directed the negative attitudes of Torontonians. Although Chinatown was crowded and unsanitary, these conditions were equally true of other city neighbourhoods. The outcome of public and media opinion had an unintended effect. Rather than dispersing them, the Chinese showed more determination in staying closer to one another for mutual protection and support.
Chinatown grew into a bustling commercial and residential centre, and it was during this period that the most recognizable and enduring icons of the Chinese business community appeared on the scene — family-run laundries, restaurants, and grocery stores. By investing a small amount of money, the Chinese could create their own jobs, go into business, and, above all, avoid hostility from white workers and employers. In China, people who were merchants or businessmen were not respected, and they fell to the bottom of the Confucian social order that valued the scholar, the government official, and the farmer. In Toronto and the rest of the country, however, financial success in business was highly valued. This new perspective brought a semblance of prosperity.
Laundries
That laundry work fell to the Chinese is a testament to invention by circumstance. In China there were no laundries. Traditionally, men were not responsible for this household task; washing clothes was considered women’s work. The Chinese living in Canada were no more adept at laundering than any other immigrants at the time. In fact, during the gold rush, clothes were worn until they fell apart, or for the Chinese with money, clothing was sent home to be washed and returned months later.40
What the Chinese found was a niche, a business opportunity that could be taken without persecution and objection. The Chinese filled the demand of a rapidly growing urban economy by providing quality, low-cost laundry service to a workforce of single men who lived in boarding houses or apartment hotels, men who needed their clothes washed. The gravitation into the laundry business was not so much a choice but a response to what was available. The washing work, “which white men who can get anything else to do will not do,” as was reported in the House of Commons, was easily relegated to the Chinese.41
The earliest Chinese laundries date to the days of the gold rush in the 1850s, at which time they were among the first businesses to be opened in any town.42 This enterprise eventually extended eastward from British Columbia to cities, towns, and villages across Canada where the first Chinese were, more often than not, laundrymen. Without a working knowledge of English or experience in running a business, they opened laundries with low startup capital and eked out a modest living from meager profit margins. Chinese laundries also charged less than competitors: a laundered shirt cost 12 cents, compared to 15 to 18 cents in white establishments; a bed sheet, 15 cents; and a handkerchief, 3 cents.43
The work was tedious and physically demanding. Twelve to 18 hour days, keeping the doors open as long as there were customers, and toiling away for six or seven days a week were the norm. Even when the store was closed on Sunday, there was work to be done sorting and packaging laundry in preparation for the following week.
The setup was typically in a small space of a modest building. In the reception area, wall-to-wall counters and shelves divided the public area from the work space. Clean laundry was packaged in brown paper, stacked, and labelled in Chinese to identify the customers. Hidden behind the partition was the workroom. There were kettles, washtubs, scrubbing boards, wringers, a stove to boil water, and enough space to hang laundry to dry. Clothes were hand-scrubbed and squeezed dry through a wringer. Irons, warmed on the stove with buckets of coal hauled from the basement, were used to press the laundry items by hand with minute attention to detail.
An interior shot a Chinese laundry in Toronto, circa 1900, shows the cramped living and working space. The average wage paid to Chinese laundry workers ranged from $8 to $18 per month, including room and board.
Also behind the partition were the sleeping quarters and eating area. The absence of family life and the priority to save money led to living conditions that reflected little concern for personal health and well-being. The Chinese ate, slept, and worked in these small and crowded workplaces, which often reached temperatures upwards of 38°C (100°F). Common health problems included lack of sleep from working long hours, and chronic leg, arm, and back pain.
As noted, Sam Ching was the first Chinese resident, who owned a hand laundry on Adelaide Street East. The fact that his laundry opened for business eight years before the completion of the Canadian Pacific Railway suggests that this man may have come from the United States, where Chinese laundries were already flourishing.44 The preponderance of Chinese laundries in Toronto may not have been coincidental.
By 1881, with a population of only 10 Chinese, there were four laundries, all within the working-class ward of St. Patrick.45 Sam Ching’s laundry was now at 15 Adelaide Street East, Sam Lee at 42 Jarvis Street, Sam Sing at 1331/3 Queen Street West, and Tan Gee at 121 Yonge Street.46 Seven more laundries opened, including addresses at 40 St. George Street, 91 Queen Street East, and 208 King Street East. Chinese continued to flock to the laundry business, numbering 24 in the 1891 city directory. This was at a time when there were only 33 Chinese in the city — an indication that most, if not all, were involved in laundries.47
Not without an eagerness to attract customers, one Chinese laundryman updated his manner of attire and store sign, as reported in the Toronto Star: “A wishee washee up town has been badly bit by Anglomania. He has sacrificed his queue and has put on trousers and tail coats … The new sign over his laundry, in white letters on a red ground, reads elegantly ‘J. Lee Wah.’”48
Chinese laundries became increasingly more newsworthy as their numbers grew. In 1894, torrential rains and high winds flooded and damaged many buildings in the city, including a laundry owned by Sam Lee at Jarvis and King streets. “The Celestial didn’t want to move,” reported The Toronto Star. “His countrymen were appealed to, but they took little interest and replied that if he didn’t know enough to get out he ought to be killed. Finally he was persuaded and he left none too soon, for almost before his chattels were all removed the building came tumbling down.”49
Another Toronto Star article in 1895 reported on a robbery. A laundry owned by Wah Sing on Queen and John streets was robbed of “a quantity of laundry and $1.50 by Charles Edwards.”50 Chee Mo Lew, who owned a laundry at 399½ Queen Street West, later testified and identified a dagger and other stolen items found in Edwards’ possession.51 In another robbery, Chong Wing appeared in court to testify against a man who was charged with robbing his laundry of $10.25 at 611 King Street East. The laundryman had difficulty in taking the oath, even with the assistance of a Chinese interpreter, who spoke “very pigeony,”52 which is a reference to the pidgin language used by the Chinese, in this case, to speak English.
Sadly, the tide of tolerance turned, not even six years after the opening of the first Chinese laundries. These establishments were condemned as a curse by labour union leaders and businesses. On December 26, 1883, the Canadian Labour Congress met in Dufferin Hall, where the president Charles March urged delegates not to disregard the “Chinese immigration