Appendix 1
On June 28, 1858, the steamer Caribbean pulled into small, lonely Fort Victoria at the south end of Vancouver Island. The ship had stopped at San Francisco en route to the rugged north coast after its trans-Pacific voyage from China. Aboard were 300 Chinese, the first major movement of migrants from the Orient to what was to become the province of British Columbia. The discovery of gold in California some twenty years earlier had attracted the first Chinese; now reports of strikes along the Fraser River and in the Cariboo drew them north.
The first Chinese, many from the area around Canton, landed in Victoria. Some stayed on Vancouver Island to work in the resource industries—mining, logging, and fishing. They soon established their own areas within the communities of Victoria, Cumberland, Duncan, Nanaimo, and a few other Island centres. By about 1880 there were approximately 3,000 Chinese in B.C. There were early cries from the white population that cheap “coolie labour” was taking their jobs, and the British Colonist newspaper in Victoria echoed the sentiment: “The Chinese ulcer is eating into the prosperity of the country and must be cut out.”
It was the building of the Canadian Pacific Railway, the country-spanning line that induced B.C. to join Confederation and opened the west, that encouraged many more Chinese to enter Canada. The ambitious railway project, which many predicted was doomed to failure, had a myriad of problems, including finding enough men to tackle the backbreaking tasks involved in the mammoth construction project that would cross a wilderness of forests and muskeg, raging rivers, and mighty mountains. Prime Minister Sir John A. Macdonald in 1882 put the Chinese labour argument succinctly: “It is simply a question of alternatives; either you must have this labour or you can’t have the railway.” The decision was made and the Chinese were in.
One of the most difficult sections of the CPR to build was the stretch from Kamloops to tidewater undertaken by contractor Andrew Onderdonk. It required blasting a route through the rugged Fraser Canyon and was destined to be the final resting place of many who toiled there. Onderdonk enlisted the aid of as many of B.C.’s approximately 35,000 white population as he could persuade to take jobs, along with Native people and as many workers as could be attracted from the U.S., where other railway projects were under construction and competing for available labour.
The contractor needed a work force of 10,000, and he soon looked to the Chinese, who were his only alternative and who would work for $1 a day compared to the top rate of $1.75 for white labourers. In the winter of 1881–82, Onderdonk chartered two sailing ships that brought 2,000 more coolies to B.C. He was to bring in another 6,000. Between 1881 and 1884 some 10,000 Chinese came across the Pacific to Canada and another 4,000 moved up from the U.S., although not all of them worked for the railway.
The Canadian government estimates that 600 Chinese died from accidents and sickness while working on the railway. Many were killed in premature explosions because of the sensitive nature of the dynamite used to blast through rock to build right of ways, tunnels, and bridges along the canyon walls. But it was not only the Chinese who died and suffered in the great project; illness and accident took many lives with no regard for age, race, or ability. Living conditions for anyone working on the railway were primitive, nourishment was inadequate, and health services all but nonexistent. The CPR was built on the endurance, courage, and tenacity of a great army of men of many races and nationalities, including those who died and those who were maimed or suffered ill health for the rest of their lives. There were labourers who saved some money, and there were others who blew their hard-earned wages on gambling and drink. All those who toiled along the Onderdonk section deserve the gratitude of today’s beneficiaries. It is a large part of the early Chinese contribution to the development of the province.