When they arrived, the men had to pay back the cost of their passage, which greatly reduced their earnings. They were often given the toughest jobs to do, such as grading work for the railways. But they worked very hard and saved as much money as they could, and soon many of these men were keeping shops, establishing farms, and bringing their families to their new home.
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| Canadian Pacific Railway Chinese labourers camp at Kamloops, 1886 D-04712 |
Mary Chan:
"My grandfather came from Kwangtung in 1879 on a sailing ship. It took him several months to get here and he came right to Vancouver. He was coming to look for gold. You had to walk a long way along the river and then all you got was a little bit of gold dust. He made just enough to eat. So then he went to work on the railroad.""Many people died during the construction of that railroad. They lived in tents along the track and it was cold. Some people got arthritis. They were attacked by mosquitoes and black flies, and some people eventually went blind. And then, after it was finished, there was no other work. So he settled where the old Immigration Building used to be, and he raised pigs and chickens."
"Later on he became a gardener working for a different household each day of the week. That's how he met his wife, because she was working for one of them ... She married my father in 1913 when she was 19 ... [Vancouver] Chinatown then was very dilapidated. There was a knitting mill and a Chinese bakery, I remember."
"The streets were unpaved and it got very muddy when it rained. My brother and I would go and play on boards in the street, one of us would stand at one end and the other would get on the other end and the water would be flying and the mud would be flying - we had a great time. But I got my dress dirty up to my neck and my mother spanked me afterwards."
Provincial Archives of British Columbia. Sound Heritage. Victoria. Vol. VIII, nos. 1 - 2
