A Calgary author who’s researched the racist immigration laws the federal government imposed on China in the 20th century will visit Revelstoke to share her new book on how Chinese-Canadians navigated these challenges.
The following Tuesday evening, April 7, Revelstoke Museum and Archives hosts Jacqueline Louie as she recites excerpts from Honouring the Gold Mountain Dreamers, which examines the 1923 Chinese Immigration Act’s cascading impacts on the descendants of Chinese-Canadians in B.C. and Alberta.
Also called the Chinese Exclusion Act, this legislation “virtually banned all immigration from China to Canada from 1923 to 1947,” Louie told Black Press Media.
According to community historian Catherine Clement, who curated The Paper Trail to the 1923 Chinese Exclusion Act at Vancouver’s Chinese Canadian Museum, “the Chinese Exclusion Act is a monumental chapter in this country’s history, yet it is forgotten.”
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Louie, a Prairie newspaper journalist, secured a 2023 City of Calgary grant to research the Chinese Immigration Act during its centennial year.
“This is part of our past, and it informs our present,” she reasoned.
As a descendant of Chinese immigrants, Louie also had personal ties to the topic. One of her great-grandfathers may have initially visited Canada sometime in the 18oos, and her grandparents’ families had moved there by the late century.
“Why would people come so far away from their home to Canada?” was a question Louie sought to answer when learning about other Chinese-Canadians’ family history.
Only given a year to research and write her book, she engaged with historians and interviewed numerous Chinese-Canadian families, who she said all had strong ties to B.C. The chapters cover everything from early Chinese martial arts culture in Canada to resilient tales of Chinese-Canadians finding opportunities to ascend from Chinatown ghettos and the legal discrimination these citizens faced.
“Even kids born in Canada had to have immigration certificates that said, ‘Does not establish legal status in Canada,’” Louie reported.
Though she noted it’s a heavy topic, and Chinese immigrants are just one of many minority groups that contributed to Canada’s early growth and success, Louie hopes her book can shed light on their stories that continue into the present.
“I wanted it to be something (readers) would come away feeling good about,” she reflected. “I hope people would come away just with awareness of the commonality of anybody. Everybody I talked to said they were very proud to be Canadian.”
Alongside Louie, Revelstoke Museum curator Cathy English will present on April 7 on how Chinese workers instrumentally contributed to the completion of the Canadian Pacific Railway (CPR) through B.C.
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From 1881 to 1884, more than 17,000 Chinese railway workers voyaged from Asia to California for the construction of the CPR, according to Mable Elmore, B.C.’s former parliamentary secretary for anti-racism initiatives.
An estimated three Chinese workers died for every mile of track laid — possibly thousands of fatalities — while sometimes earning less than half what white workers received and having to pay for their own gear and food.
The federal government officially apologized for its “injustices caused by the act” in 2006, and this July 1, B.C. will recognize its fourth-annual Chinese Railroad Workers Memorial Day.
“To ensure the racism and discrimination that Chinese settlers experienced never happens again, we must all commit to standing up against racism and building a better, more inclusive province,” Elmore wrote in 2023.
Honouring the Gold Mountain Dreamers is available for purchase at Revelstoke Museum and Archives, and can be found at revelstokemuseum.ca/shop-product-listings/gold-mountain-dreamers-book.
Louie begins her book reading there at 7 p.m. on April 7, before co-presenting at the Okanagan Heritage Museum in Kelowna at 6:30 p.m. the following Wednesday, April 8.