Wendy Yuan posing on a railway with a photo of her ancestor Chin Sun Jing. | Photo by Stephanie Lamy

Between 1881 and 1885, about 17,000 Chinese men came to work on the Canadian Pacific Railway. They were paid less than other workers and had to live in poor conditions. In 1885, the Canadian government passed the Chinese Immigration Act, which mandated that all Chinese entering Canada must pay a $50 fee; this fee was later referred to as a head tax. In 1903, the fee increased to a maximum of $500. In addition to the head tax, municipal ordinances restricted employment opportunities for Chinese immigrants to jobs that white Canadians found less desirable, such as work in laundromats and fishing.

Some members of the Chinese community are trying to get the B.C. Government to expand on current teaching of early Chinese immigrant experiences in school textbooks. Wendy Yuan, the president of Bradley Pacific Enterprises and a federal Liberal candidate in the 2008 and 2011 elections, has a connection to this history through her husband, Kan Chan. Chan’s great grandfather, Chin Sun Jing, worked as a general labourer on the West Coast section railway and Chan’s grandfather was among those forced to pay a head tax to immigrate to Canada. Yuan would like to see such wrongs included in teaching at the elementary, high school and university levels of education. She also wants to make sure there is a real sense of reconciliation.

“I hope the B.C. government makes funding decisions to teach society about the history and to promote the healing of the community. It has to go beyond the photo op or simple gestures. We need to right the historical wrongs by ensuring that our children get educated about this very dark period in Canadian history, especially to more than 80,000 head tax payers and their families,” says Yuan.

Ricky Li, president of the Association of Chinese Cultural Promotion-Canada. | Photo by Florence Hwang

Ricky Li, the current president of the Association of Chinese Cultural Promotion-Canada, also wants to make sure the government includes more information about 19th century Chinese immigration in the provincial schools’ curriculum so that the next generation will remember the struggles Chinese immigrants endured. For Li, education is more important than an apology.

“If they say sorry, in one year, two years, people forget. If we put this in the curriculum, people will remember for a long time,” Li says.

School board looks forward to updating curriculum

Currently, the provincial educational curriculum does address such issues as the Chinese head tax and the plight of Chinese railway workers through courses in social studies, history and civic studies. However, the changes community members such as Yuan and Li have proposed are still in the consultation stage.

Ben Green, a public affairs officer with the Ministry of Education, says it is anticipated that these issues will remain as suggested topics in the revised curriculum. According to Green, the ministry wants to personalize the curriculum to allow teachers more flexibility to “explore and share topics of interest to them, to allow students to dive deeper into issues and teachers to incorporate additional information on topics as they see fit.”

Patti Bacchus, who chairs the Vancouver School Board (VSB), says the VSB has heard a lot of support “for an increased focus on the history of the contributions of Chinese immigrants to Canada and the injustices and racism they experienced.”

“It would be helpful to have increased access to learning resources for classrooms that provided more extensive information about the history of Chinese immigrants in Canada and B.C., including the contributions and the injustices and racism they faced,” says Bacchus.

The VSB will look into including these issues in a new draft curriculum for social studies as well as updating learning resources to support the new curriculum.

“We will be advocating to the government for funding to enable us to update learning resources to include a deeper study of the history of Chinese immigrants in B.C.,” says Bacchus.