According to a StatCan study conducted in 2006, by 2031, 47% of “second generation Canadians would belong to a visible minority group, nearly double the proportion of the 24% in 2006”. Specifically in Vancouver, B.C., “Chinese would be the largest visible minority group, with a population of around 809,000…account[ing] for about 23% of the Vancouver’s population, up from 18% in 2006” (StatCan, 2006). Despite these exponential predictions, the population diversity, specifically the population of Chinese in Canada was at one point actively discouraged.

The CanLit guide on Nationalism states that “as a result of the construction of the white British settler as the ideal Canadian, early racialized settlers and later immigrants were seen as less worthy, and  therefore less Canadian” (CanLit Nationalism). According to Peter Li, a professor at the University of Saskatchewan, the first wave of Chinese to enter Canada occurred in 1859, but it wasn’t until 1881 that Chinese immigration increased dramatically (Li 127). Why? The government needed workers that they could underpay to complete the western portion of the Canadian Pacific Railway (127). Chinese workers flooded into British Columbia to work on the railway and were often given the “the most back-breaking and dangerous work to do” (Collections Can). They blasted tunnels through the mountains, and the landslides and dynamite blasts killed many. They worked for $1.00 a day, and from that $1.00 had to pay for food and camping and cooking gear. Alternatively, white workers were paid $1.50-2.50 per day and did not have to pay for their own food or gear (Collections Canada). From 1881 to 1884, over 17,000 Chinese men immigrated to work on the railway.

When the CPR was completed in 1885, the Canadian government legalized discrimination against the Chinese and imposed a $50 head tax on Chinese immigrants to limit their population growth within Canada. The head tax was raised to $100 in 1900, and to $500 in 1903 (Li 128). Li adds: “Between 1886 and 1924, 82,379 Chinese entering Canada paid a total of $23 million in head tax” (128). The British Columbian government also passed a number of laws that disallowed Chinese to acquire land, prevented them from working and disqualified them from voting (128). Since the majority of workers were Chinese men, the ever-increasing head tax discouraged the men from bringing their families to Canada. In 1923, the Canadian government passed another Canadian Immigration Act, one that completely restricted and prevented Chinese from immigrating to Canada. These acts not only enforced racial discrimination against the Chinese on a legal, governmental level, but also ensured that the discrimination was maintained, and was prevalent and pervasive on a day-to-day basis for Chinese immigrants. The 1923 act meant that Chinese immigrants had no hope of bringing their families to Canada until 1947, when immigration laws underwent slight reform (129). It was only after World War II that “legal discrimination and exclusion of the Chinese were removed” (129), primarily for their contributions during the war. After the war, they were given the right to vote (CCMMS) and in 1947, the first “Canadian citizenship ceremony for Chinese was held at the Commodore Cabaret in Vancouver” (CCMMS).

After 1967, a new wave of Chinese immigrated to Canada, and unlike their predecessors, they were “better educated, more cosmopolitan, and upwardly mobile” (Li 130). With them came the emergence of a new Chinese middle class. In 1983, a “Chinese Canadian called Dak Leon Mark contacted the office of Margret Mitchell, New Democratic Party MP for east Vancouver, expressing his wish to have the government return the $500 head tax he had paid” (131). He was the first of many to demand reparations for the head tax, and the Chinese Canadian National Council (CCNC) stated that their objective was to “seek an all-party parliamentary resolution to properly acknowledge the injustice and racial discrimination in the Head Tax and the Chinese Immigration Act” (131).

It was not until 2006 that the Canadian government apologized and admitted the mistreatment of the Chinese, as well as granting an official redress (135). The Government of Canada offered symbolic “ex-gratia payments to living head tax payers and living spouses of deceased payers as well as establish funds to help finance community projects aimed at acknowledging the impact of past wartime measures and immigration restrictions on ethnocultural communities” (135). Other Canadian departments and organizations also gifted the Chinese Canadian community with symbolic ex-gratia payments. The official recognition of 2006 came 121 years after the first head tax and took seven prime ministers and many court proceedings after the first claim in 1983 (128).

The Chinese Immigration Acts of 1885 and 1923 are greatly derived from Coleman’s theory of “white civility”.  The Chinese were clearly discriminated against because they did not fit the Canadian government’s idea of “British whiteness”. While reading about Coleman’s concept of “British whiteness”, the thought of diversity within Britain lay on my mind. A census conducted by the British Office for National Statistics found that in 2011, the ethnic majority of England and Wales was “the White ethnic group” with 86.0%, a decrease from the 1991 94.1% of the population (England Ethnicity 4). So while I would like to have argued that Coleman’s idea of “British whiteness” was dated, “British whiteness” appears to be a still appropriate term, despite the decrease of people who identified with being “white”. For a long time (121 years), the Canadian government enforced Coleman’s idea of a “fictive ethnicity…forgetting…the very uncivil acts of colonialism and nation-building”. Coleman emphasizes a need to forget the uncivil acts in order to maintain Canada’s “fictive ethnicity”.  On the other hand, the Canadian government has remembered and acknowledged the uncivil acts enforced on the Chinese, which has, in a way, carved a path for a new fictive ethnicity.

Works Cited

“Building the Canadian Pacific Railway.” Library and Archives Canada. Web. 3 July 2014.

CanLit Guides. “Reading and Writing in Canada, A Classroom Guide to Nationalism.” Canadian Literature. Web. 3 July 2014.

“Ethnicity and National Identity in England and Wales 2011.” Office of National Statistics: 2012. Web. 3 July 2014.

Li, Peter. “Reconciling with History: The Chinese Canadian Head Tax Redress.” Journal of Chinese Overseas 4.1 (2008): 127-140.

“Study: Projections of the Diversity of the Canadian Population.” Statistics Canada: 2006. Web. 3 July 2014.

Wong, Larry. “Chinese Canadian History.” The Chinese Canadian Military Museum Society. Web. 3 July 2014.