Family and Kinship

A consequence of restrictive immigration policy towards the Chinese was to retard the development of the family in Canada. Immigrants who came to this country in the latter half of the nineteenth century were overwhelmingly men. Economic hardship and uncertainty about the future made it difficult for many to bring their families with them. With the imposition of a head tax in 1885 and its eventual increase to $500 in 1903, it became impossible for the average worker to afford both the passage money and the tax for his wife and other family members. Hostility and discrimination also tended to discourage the men from bringing their families to Canada. Chinese enclaves were sometimes the target of racial attacks, as in the anti-Oriental riots of 1887 and 1907 in Vancouver.

After 1923 the Chinese Immigration Act excluded practically all Chinese from immigrating to Canada, thus making it impossible for men already in the country to sponsor their wives to join them. As a result of these financial and legal hardships, the Chinese-Canadian community remained a predominantly male society until decades after World War II. Data from the 1911 census indicate that among the 27,831 Chinese in Canada, the ratio was 2,800 men to 100 women, while the corresponding ratio for the country as a whole was 113 men to 100 women. Thus, the imbalance among the Chinese was about twenty-five times the national figure. The ratio stood at 1,533 men to 100 women among the 39,587 Chinese in 1921 and 1,240 men to 100 women in a population of 46,519 a decade later. The corresponding ratios for Canada as a whole per 100 females were 106 in 1921 and 107 in 1931. Despite a general decline over the census years, the sex ratio among the Chinese remained relatively high: 785 men to 100 women in 1941 and 374 men to 100 women ten years later.

Throughout the period before World War II, the sex imbalance in the Chinese population was the most severe of all ethnic groups in Canada. Many men led a bachelor life separated from their families in China. Those who had the financial resources to do so would take periodic trips to the home country to visit their wives and families. However, they could be away for up to only two years; otherwise they would lose the right to return to Canada. For many, the dream remained to save enough money so that they could eventually retire in China, where the cost of living was lower. But given that most Chinese held menial jobs, it is doubtful that a significant number could have realized this goal. Many men in Canada lost contact with their families during World War II after Japan invaded China. The dream of reunion became even more remote after the war, when the Communists defeated the Nationalist Party and established a socialist government. Sinophobia in the West during the fifties and the subsequent Cold War made it virtually impossible for men in Canada to join their families. Although some were able to sponsor relatives from Taiwan and Hong Kong during the fifties and sixties, many had to wait until the seventies, when diplomatic relations between Canada and China were normalized, before family reunion was possible. In 1973, during the visit of Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau to China, an agreement was signed to enable relatives of Chinese Canadians to emigrate. Within a year of the agreement, they had filed some six thousand applications on behalf of about fifteen thousand family members, 90 percent of whom lived in Guangdong province. Not all the applicants were successful; some men never had a chance to be reunited with their families, and for those who did, the period of separation had been long.

The 1941 census provides further evidence of the extent of such separation. The data indicate that of the 29,033 Chinese men in Canada 23,556, or over 80 percent, were married. By contrast, there were only 2,337 Chinese women in Canada, and 50 percent were married. The ratio was thus 2,001 married men to 100 married women. Although it is possible that some Chinese had married members of other ethnic groups, such marriages were rare, given the racial discrimination against the Chinese. The absence of women in the Chinese community also meant that the growth of a second generation in Canada was delayed. Census data from various years show a slow increase in the population born in this country. In 1911 only 3 percent of the 27,831 Chinese in Canada were native-born. Two decades later, despite the fact that the Chinese had been in Canada for seventy-three years, those born in Canada made up only 12 percent. The native-born population grew slowly to 20 percent in 1941 and 31 percent ten years later. It was only after World War II, with changes in immigration policy, that a sizable second and third generation began to emerge.

A more balanced ratio between men and women was gradually restored in the Chinese-Canadian community. By the 1970s it had reached 102 males per 100 females in 1981, and it would stand at 99 males to 100 females at the end of the following decade. The 1971 census shows that 83 percent of Chinese in Canada belonged to a census family household, composed of a husband and wife with or without unmarried children. In contrast, 6.5 percent were part of an economic family, which included parents living with a married child and his or her family. Individual Chinese not belonging to a family made up only about 10 percent of the total. Thus, since 1971 the husband-and-wife family has been the dominant pattern among Chinese Canadians. At the same time, a larger percentage than among other Canadians tended to belong to families that included persons other than children. The 1981 census shows that 19.6 percent of Chinese Canadians formed part of such families, as compared with 7.3 percent among other Canadians. Similarly, 12.5 percent of the Chinese in 1981, as compared with 2.1 percent of other Canadians, belonged to multiple-family households, that is, households with one or more families occupying the same dwelling. Five years later about 13 percent of Chinese Canadians belonged to multiple-family households and 16.2 percent belonged to husband-and-wife households with persons other than children.