British Columbia History 53.4 Winter 2020

The Washboard Legacy We were pleased to see the excellent article in the Fall issue of British Columbia History about Chinese laundries in BC. It is worth noting, however, that discriminatory legal measures against the Chinese were not confined to head taxes and labour restrictions but were intended to affect Chinese laundries as well. In 1885, BC’s provincial government amended its Municipal Act to authorize municipalities to regulate and licence laundries with fees that were calculated to force them to shut down. The City of Victoria quickly enacted a bylaw designed to have this effect. Of course, everyone knew that such laundries were almost exclusively owned and operated by Chinese. Once such operator, Mee Wah, was convicted under the bylaw because he had not paid the exorbitant licence fee. He…

The importance of community and local history is not lost on someone who rarely sees her history reflected in Canadian public discourse or correctly reflected in the Canadian record. My thoughts turn to the early 1900s when my first brethren came to BC’s shores from an India that was under colonial rule and where, in their own country, they were treated as second-class citizens. They came seeking a better economic life but quickly faced discrimination that cut to the very core of their identity. Today, as we are forced come to terms with our own culpability as settlers on this land through the work of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, I realize that much work needs to be done by all of us to create a better Canadian historic record…

If you were in Vancouver’s Chinatown in the early 1970s, standing on the corner of Union Street and Gore Avenue, you could not have missed the Prior Street on-ramp of the new Georgia–Dunsmuir viaduct. As you came off the viaduct, you would see our red brick Union Laundry building at 274 Union Street. Our home, business, and the rental house next door stuck out like sore thumbs: my father was still in dispute with the City of Vancouver long after our former neighbours had relocated to make way for the new viaduct. Fast forward to 2020. At our former laundry site is now Nora Hendrix Place, a temporary modular housing structure. Television reporters looking for Black Lives Matter stories frequently focus on this building named after the grandmother of musician…

Standard Chinese, also known as Modern Standard Mandarin, uses a simplified character set that came into use in 1949. It is used today in Mainland China and in Singapore. The characters Elwin has used in his article are from the Traditional Chinese character set, used today in Hong Kong, Taiwan, and Macau. He notes that his family speaks Enping (Yin Ping), a dialect of standard Cantonese. Cantonese is part of the Yue group of Chinese languages spoken in southeast China. The majority of early Chinese immigrants to North, Central and South America and British Commonwealth countries during the mid-19th century arrived from several counties within Guangdong Province (Kwangtung). Enping (Yin Ping), Kaiping (Hoy Ping), Panyu (Poon Yue), Shunde (Shun Duck), Taishan (Toishan), Xinhui (Sun Wui), and Zhong Shan (Chung Shan)…

The South Asian Studies Institute is a unique research centre that studies both the South Asia region and the South Asian Canadian diaspora. In 2004 a group of intrepid community leaders met with the University of the Fraser Valley’s senior administration to discuss the need to include Indo Canadian studies as a part of the curriculum and as a specialized area of research. Their ideas were met with great enthusiasm, and the foundations for developing programming at UFV was set. That same group then volunteered to fundraise towards the establishment of a Research Chair on Canada–India Business and Economic Development. In two years, they successfully raised $1.25 million dollars, matched by the BC government. The university then designed the Centre for Indo Canadian Studies, which officially opened its doors in…

Originally named Mayo Siding, this mill town just west of Duncan was founded by Mayo Singh in 1917. It flourished for two decades, then struggled after the mill closed in the 1940s. People gather each summer to remember the meaning of this place, and in 2017 people came from all over the world to celebrate the centenary of the Paldi Sikh Temple, once the heart of the community. Today only this temple remains as evidence of the town’s built heritage, and the life stories of the many thousands of people who called this place home are just beginning to be gathered. Satwinder Bains reflects on the importance of Paldi history and the urgency she feels to safeguard its stories. Paldi is one of those small towns in BC where even…