Chinese immigrant, British Columbia. 1903-1905.
They were barred from voting, accused of taking jobs from the "white men" and forced to enroll their kids in segregated schools. These city archives could have been lifted from a history book of American Deep South.
In reality, the awful snippets of history occurred in the West Coast municipality of New Westminster and the people concerned are the Chinese-Canadian immigrants who began settling in British Columbia more than 150 years ago.
Now, in a massive research effort - described as the first of its kind in Canada - the municipality has scoured its archives to document racism against its Chinese-Canadian residents, and the role the city might have played in fostering the discrimination.
The results are exhaustive and unnerving, depicting a young post-colonial society comprised largely of immigrants from the British Isles who were deeply suspicious and hostile toward the other Canadian immigrants who came from across the Pacific.
There is the 1908 bylaw that barred "Chinese, Japanese, or other Asiatics or Indians" from voting in municipal elections. There is the 1884 bylaw that prohibited the "employment of Chinese labour of any kind" in the construction of its city sidewalks.
More alarming is the way the Chinese are referred to in newspaper articles from the time.
Chinks Object to New Bylaw, one headline blared from a 1908 edition of the British Columbian Weekly. A 1923 newspaper article recounted the city's efforts to form an "Asiatic Exclusion League." The mayor presided over the meeting, held to confer about "the Oriental menace in British Columbia."
For retired Vancouver engineer Bill Chu, who last year asked the city to undertake the study, the gesture was historic and instructive. The raw data that's been unearthed paints a telling portrait of the relationship between early British Columbia municipal leaders and Chinese immigrants.
Racism towards the Chinese Canadians has been documented in the past, especially the head tax levied against Chinese immigrants, which Prime Minister Stephen Harper apologized for in 2006. But this research reveals the kind of day-to-day discrimination at play at the local level, including school and hospital segregation. And it reveals the degree of suspicion local leaders held for the Chinese.
"The racism in this province was endemic then," Mr. Chu said, arguing that the contributions of the first Chinese immigrants, who began arriving in the 1850s, have often been overlooked. Rather, Chinese immigrants helped build the province, Mr. Chu said.
At one point in the late 1880s, Chinese immigrants represented 20 per cent of the B.C. population, a far higher percentage than today, Mr. Chu said. Most history books suggest that British Columbia was founded and built solely by British immigrants.
"If you only learned, for example, that this province was founded by one race of people, then you will put yourself on a pedestal and say: 'We are the hosts and you are the guest.' "
One of the reasons Mr. Chu zeroed in on New Westminster was because of a simmering issue there concerning a local high school that was built on top of a Chinese cemetery in 1949. The recent discovery instigated a discussion of the city's treatment of Chinese.
Last year, the California legislature apologized to the Chinese-American community for anti-Chinese state laws passed in the mid-19th century, which, among other things, barred the Chinese from owning property and land and marrying whites.
The preliminary New Westminster research has been published online and the city is finishing a final report that will be sent to the city later this month.
New Westminster social planner John Stark, who oversaw the project, said it's the first attempt he's aware of to research a Canadian city government's role in discrimination against the Chinese.
Mr. Chu said he isn't looking for compensation, but would like a formal apology. And he hopes other Canadian municipalities search their respective pasts to examine how they treated their Chinese-Canadians.