History of Chinese Immigration To Canada - Immigration For The Railway

Immigration For The Railway

Chinese railway workers made up the labour force for construction of two one-hundred mile sections of the Canadian Pacific Railway from the Pacific to Craigellachie in the Eagle Pass in British Columbia. The railway as a whole consisted of 28 such sections, 2% of which were constructed by workers of European origin. When British Columbia agreed to join Confederation in 1871, one of the conditions was that the Dominion government build a railway linking B.C. with eastern Canada within 10 years. British Columbia politicians and their electorate agitated for an immigration program from the British Isles to provide this railway labour, but Canada's first Prime Minister, Sir John A. Macdonald, betraying the wishes of his constituency, Victoria, by insisting the project cut costs by employing Chinese to build the railway, and summarized the situation this way to Parliament in 1882: "It is simply a question of alternatives: either you must have this labour or you can't have the railway." (British Columbia politicians had wanted a settlement-immigration plan for workers from the British Isles, but Canadian politicians and investors said it would be too expensive).

In 1880, Andrew Onderdonk, an American who was one of the Canadian Pacific Railway construction contractors in British Columbia, originally enlisted Chinese labourers from California. When most of these deserted the railway workings for the goldfields, signed several agreements with Chinese contractors in China's Guangdong province, Taiwan and also via Chinese companies in Victoria. Through those contracts more than 5000 labourers were sent as "guest workers" from China by ship. Onderdonk also recruited over 7000 Chinese railway workers from California. These two groups of workers were the main force for the building of Onderdonk's seven per cent of the railway's mileage. As was the case with non-Chinese workers, some of them fell ill during construction or died while planting explosives or in other construction accidents, but many deserted the rail workings for the province's various goldfields. By the end of 1881, the first group of Chinese labourers, which was previously numbered at 5000, had less than 1500 remaining as a large number had deserted for the goldfields away from the rail line Onderdonk needed more workers, so he directly contracted Chinese businessmen in Victoria, California and China to send many more workers to Canada.

Onderdonk engaged these Chinese labour contractors who engaged Chinese workers willing to accept only $1 a day while white, black and native workers were paid three times that amount. Chinese railway workers were hired for 200 miles of the Canadian Pacific Railway considered to be among the more difficult segments of the projected railway, notably the area that goes through the Fraser Canyon. As with railway workers on other parts of the line in the Prairies and northern Ontario, most of the Chinese workers lived in tents. These canvas tents were often unsafe, and did not provide adequate protection against falling rocks or severe weather in areas of steep terrain. Such tents were typical of working-class accommodations on the frontier for all immigrant workers although (non-Chinese) foremen, shift bosses and trained railwaymen recruited from the UK were housed in sleeping cars and railway-built houses in Yale and the other railway towns. Chinese railway workers also established transient Chinatowns along the rail line, with housing at the largest consisting of log-houses half dug into the ground, which was a common housing style for natives as well as other frontier settlers, because of the insulating effect of the ground in an area of extreme temperatures.