From: The Encyclopedia of Canada's Peoples/Chinese/Peter S. Li
Throughout their history in Canada and especially before World War II, the Chinese organized voluntary associations to address the needs of the immigrant community. These groups provided important functions, such as mutual aid and social services for the sojourners. For example, many associations set up hostels for Chinese who needed a place to stay temporarily. When the Victoria public school system attempted to segregate the Chinese from other students, volunteer organizations built schools to boycott the public system. They also mediated internal disputes and dealt with the external pressures of discrimination and segregation. Many developed a quasi-judiciary system for adjudicating disputes.
Although the Chinese were not excluded from Canadian courts, two factors probably explain why they preferred to settle disagreements through community associations: the inability of many to speak English and their apprehension that they would not receive a fair hearing in the courts. Such concerns were well founded, given the attitude of Canadian law-enforcement agencies towards them. N.W.T. Drake, president of the executive council of British Columbia, made the following statement before the Royal Commission on Chinese Immigration in 1885: “The Chinese are utterly unacquainted with truth, and it is a universal comment on their evidence that you cannot believe anything they say. They shelter themselves under their ignorance of the English language so that no cross-examination can reach them, and it is generally believed that the interpreters guide the evidence.” Such bias was widespread at the time.
Undoubtedly, the absence of wives and children increased the reliance by Chinese men on community associations for emotional and material support. Other factors also contributed to the growth of the organizations. Racism and discrimination in society at large engendered solidarity in the community. The associations provided social support to the Chinese. Under such conditions, it is easy to understand why they were so popular in the nineteenth century and the first half of the twentieth. Their decline in the post–World War II years reflects the different needs of the new immigrants.
The way in which Chinese Canadians formed associations shows an ingenious use of limited resources. Place of origin, surname, and common heritage and the principles of fraternity were employed as the bases of organization. Regional background often meant not only differing allegiances and identity, but also substantial variations in dialect. Unlike southeast Asia, where five or more Chinese languages were used, the Chinese in Canada were culturally and linguistically more homogeneous. Immigrants in the nineteenth century came predominantly from a small number of counties in southeastern China. Common surnames or clans enabled them to use both real and pseudo-kinship for social organization. In China, clans had the limited function of defining exogamy, but in Canada they served many purposes. A distinction should be made between clans in China and clan associations in Canada; the latter included only Chinese of the same surname and not all resident members of the clan. They operated more on the basis of institutionalized friendship than of true clanship.
Another principle of community organization was to model them after secret societies in China. The first groups formed in Canada were fraternal associations that had their origin in these societies. According to available documents, the first such organization, a chapter of the Zhi Gong Tang (Chih-kung T’ang), was established in Barkerville, British Columbia, in 1862. Later chapters were formed in other gold-mining towns, such as Quesnel in 1876 and Yale in 1882. A rival branch of the Zhi Gong Tang, also known as Hongmen (Hung-men), was founded in Victoria in 1897, and there are indications that by 1903 the order had local, regional, and provincial divisions in the country. The Zhi Gong Tang had its origins in the Triad Society (San He Hui), believed to have been established in China by the early eighteenth century. Its purpose was to overthrow the Qing dynasty and restore Ming rule. Between 1787 and 1911, chapters of the Triad Society participated in a number of insurgencies against the Qing dynasty. However, it appears that secret societies in Canada were more concerned with local affairs affecting daily life than with politics in China, although changes in the homeland sometimes prompted action from these overseas organizations. The activities of Zhi Gong Tang in Canada ranged from running hostels to arbitrating disputes.
The first community-based Chinese organization was formed in Victoria in 1884 under the name of the Chinese Consolidated Benevolent Association (Zhong Hua Hui Guan). An umbrella organization, it purported to represent the community as a whole. According to its 1884 rules and by-laws, it was to provide social services and aid, resolve disputes, and confront oppression. Its regulations also indicate that the association would assist Chinese to fight in court against abuses or unfair treatment by white Canadians. Its activities in the early period fall into four categories: fund-raising for court challenges against discriminatory laws, arbitration of disputes and the maintenance of order in Chinatown, raising relief funds for Chinese communities elsewhere, and operating a hospital, cemetery, and school.
Although the Chinese Consolidated Benevolent Association claimed to represent all Chinese in Canada, it was in fact controlled by a small number of merchants. The by-laws stipulated that executive positions were to be filled by wealthy Chinese of good reputation. Merchants also provided most of the financial support when the association raised money to build a hall. Its officers were chiefly concerned with protecting their own interests. There is evidence to indicate that Chinese merchants and workers had different interests despite the collective discrimination against them. When Chinese workers staged a general strike in Victoria in 1878 to protest against a discriminatory tax, for example, the merchants publicly dissociated themselves from the strikers.
With the emergence of Chinese communities across Canada in the early twentieth century came associations in other cities. In 1923 there were ten clan organizations in Toronto and two district associations, while in Calgary there were six clan associations and one based on locality. At that time, Vancouver had twenty-six clan and twelve locality groups. By 1937 the clan associations in Vancouver had increased to forty-six and those based on locality to seventeen. There were corresponding increases in the number of Chinese organizations in Toronto and Calgary.
Since the 1980s, with the development of a Chinese middle class, there have been new attempts to unite the community through a national organization. The Chinese Canadian National Council for Equality (Quan Jia Hua Ren Xie Jin Hui, also known as Ping Quan Hui), based in Toronto, was officially established in 1980 after a concerted effort to protest against the television program “Campus Giveaway.” The program, broadcast on 30 September 1979 by the CTV network in its public-affairs series W5, reported that some 100,000 foreign students were taking away educational opportunities at Canadian universities that could have gone to Canadian students. It showed Chinese-looking students in university classrooms; by implication, they were automatically equated with foreign students irrespective of nationality. The formation of a national organization was facilitated by the network of Chinese-Canadian organizations that was built up during the resulting protest movement. Within a year, chapters of the council were being established in major Canadian cities. By 1993 the Chinese Canadian National Council for Equality had a head office in Toronto, with two full-time staff members, and thirty chapters across the country.
The main objectives of the council are to educate Chinese Canadians about their contribution to multiculturalism and to protect the civil liberties of minorities. Since 1984 the council has pressed the federal government for redress over the head tax paid by the Chinese and over injustices that resulted from the Chinese Immigration Act of 1923. It presented the government with a list of some 2,300 surviving Chinese who had paid a head tax of $500 to enter Canada. Many meetings were held between government officials and representatives of the council, but as late as the 1990s, no resolution was reached.
