Tam Kung Temple is preparing to welcome the world, says long-time volunteer and community organizer Gayle Nye of Victoria’s historic Hakka place of worship. A 2025 finalist in the National Trust for Canada’s Next Great Save competition, Yen Wo Society
hopes to win the grand prize of $50, 000—money that would help preserve the temple and its immigrant stories for future generations.

“It’s a place to go and honour ancestors and to remember and be respectful of those that came before us,” adds Nye, whose Hakka father regularly visited the temple.

The Next Great Save helps charities and non-profit organizations preserve heritage sites. Daily voting for this year’s finalists takes place now until Apr. 17.

Steps to history
Officially established in 1876, the temple’s origins date to the 1860s Gold Rush. A Hakka miner placed a statute of Tam Kung—the deity of seafaring—near Johnson Street ravine, creating a roadside shrine. By the following decade, the statue was moved to its current location at 1713 Government Street, now known as the Yen Wo Society building.

Yen Wo Society, a Hakka association established in 1905, is the temple’s guardian. For Nora Butz, president of the Society, the temple has long been a unifying force in Victoria’s Chinatown—connecting not just Hakka immigrants, but the broader Chinese community.

“When [the statute] came to Victoria, and the temple was built, the Hakka population was quite small,” she adds. “It was open to other Chinese people, and they all came to the temple to worship.”

This spirit of inclusivity is central to the Society’s development plans. If they win the Next Great Save, the prize money will be used to build a welcome reception and interpretation centre with the hopes of engaging younger generations.

“It’s important for new generations and incoming generations to have access in terms of a reception and interpretation centre, so that tours, materials, displays, and so on can be offered in Chinese and English,” Nye adds.

They have also built an ascending system that would make the 52 steps up to the shrine more accessible for seniors. For the past few years, their team has been raising funds to address building deficiencies, including leaky roofs and windows. Having completed phase one of their renovations, which involved bracing the roof for earthquakes, Yen Wo Society hopes to begin phase two this summer.

“The original estimate came in at six hundred thousand dollars,” Butz shares. “And we were just devastated because there was no way we could have done any of the renovations without assistance.”

A great inheritance
For the society members, Tam Kung Temple holds more than religious value; it is also a treasured container of immigration history. Butz notes how in its early days, the temple served as a post office for newly arrived immigrants without a permanent address. Tam Kung’s caregivers would read letters to community members, and at times, store them in the temple.

This tradition led Butz and her team to a curious discovery this summer: hundreds of letters written during the 1800s locked away in an old desk. They plan to translate and catalogue these letters, preserving them as historical artifacts.

“Much will be discovered when those are translated,” Nye adds. “I know it’s going to be a great interest in time to come.”

On their fathers’ sides, both Nye and Butz are Hakkas, a distinct Chinese ethnic, linguistic, and cultural group. Due to war and other social upheavals, the Hakkas have been largely nomadic, bringing their language and culture to form diasporas around the world. Butz recalls her recent trip to the World Hakka Conference in Luoyang, China, where she and other Canadian delegates met people of Hakka descent from Malaysia, India, Germany and Australia.

“I was amazed how these people in their 60s, 70s and have been in [Canada] for years and years, and they all spoke it,” she shares, noting how she hadn’t heard the Hakka language since her childhood in Hong Kong. “That language is not dead; it’s really thriving as a matter of fact.” Despite their heritage, Butz and Nye did not find their own connection to Tam Kung Temple until later in life. This community work has allowed Butz to form a deeper connection with her roots—one that is reminiscent of her late father’s experience.

“When we immigrated from Hong Kong, the first thing was to seek out other Hakka people in Victoria,” she shares. “He was directed to the temple in which he found likeminded people.”

Nye has also touched a part of her family’s history through this work. With the help of historian Jenny Clayton, the Canadian government recognized the Tam Kung Temple as a National Historic Site in February. It was also Clayton who discovered documents pertaining to Nye’s father and relatives—bringing history just a little bit closer.

“I always had a reverence for the place and an appreciation for the hard work of ancestors,” Nye shares, remembering her father’s calls to visit Tam Kung.

For more information on the Tam Kung Temple and Yen Wo Society, see https://tamkungtemple.ca/ .
To vote in the Next Great Save, see https://nextgreatsave.nationaltrustcanada.ca/2025/.