The Chinese in Toronto from 1878. Arlene Chan
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Название: The Chinese in Toronto from 1878
Автор: Arlene Chan
Издательство: Ingram
Жанр: История
isbn: 9781459700949
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The Jewish businesses, including poultry shops, grocery stores, fish stores, and bakery shops, eventually moved westward to Kensington Market, and the Italians moved to Little Italy at College and Grace streets. After these groups had departed, the Chinese moved into the area and Chinatown began to develop along Elizabeth Street.
A Chinese store adjacent to the Markowitz Bakery at 109–111 Elizabeth Street in 1937. When Jewish businesses and residents moved westward to Spadina Avenue, the Chinese moved in.
The first Chinese to own property on Elizabeth Street, as recorded in the 1911 city assessment rolls, was Gip Kan Mark. A wholesale grocer, Ying Chong Tai, occupied the first floor of Mark’s three-storey building at 16 Elizabeth Street, where neighbouring businesses included a blacksmith, a dairy, veterinary surgeons, and horse stables.33 Within the next 10 years, many more Chinese purchased properties, and by the 1921 census, Toronto’s Chinatown ranked as the third largest in Canada, after Vancouver and Victoria, a position it held until the end of the Second World War. The 39,587 Chinese in Canada were no longer confined to British Columbia as in the early years of settlement. The western province’s share of 99 percent had declined to 59 percent; Ontario had 14 percent; Quebec, 6 percent; Alberta, 9 percent; Saskatchewan, 7 percent; Manitoba, 3 percent; and the Maritimes and Territories, 1 percent. The growth of the Chinese population in Toronto from 1880 to 1931 went in leaps and bounds (see Table 4).
TABLE 4
Toronto’s Chinese Population, 1870-1931
Source: Valerie Mah, An In-Depth Look at Toronto’s Early Chinatown, 1913–1933 (master’s thesis, University of Toronto, 1977).
While these population statistics are historically significant, they may not be 100 percent accurate, due to challenges of deciphering and transliterating Chinese names. Surnames always appear first, followed by the given names. Errors often occurred in the name order, which in English has the family name at the end rather than the beginning.
Lack of knowledge of the Chinese language was another source of confusion and errors for English-speaking enumerators and registrars. They transliterated Chinese names as closely as possible into English, with the result of numerous anglicized names for the same individual. For example, Lee Hong, who operated a laundry at 48 Elizabeth Street, is recorded on the Toronto assessment rolls from 1908 to 1913 as Lee Chong, Cong Lee, and Yee Chong.34 “Ah” is another example of inaccuracy in government records. Positioned at the beginning of one’s name in conversation, Ah means “that person.” However, it often was recorded in English as part of the surname — Ah Chong instead of just Chong, for instance.
All inaccuracies aside, there were only 13 Chinese families among 2,035 Chinese in 1921. The heads of these families were two herbalists, one professional gambler, one Canadian National Rail agent, four merchants selling groceries and laundry supplies, one minister herbalist, one laundryman, one Canadian Pacific Railway agent, one man employed on lake boats, and one wholesaler in tobacco.35 There were 31 daughters and 34 sons in total, all but four born in Canada.36 Nine of the families lived in the Chinatown area, mostly in rented premises.
A cart with live chickens is pulled along Hagerman Street in 1926. Chinese could not obtain licences for selling live poultry, but there were three Jewish poultry shops on Chestnut and Elizabeth streets, and others in Kensington Market.
A police officer was on-site at a traffic jam caused by a disabled truck on Elizabeth Street in 1934.
The increasing number of Chinese residents and businesses did not go unnoticed. The editor of Toronto’s Saturday Night warned the public of the Chinese influence and advocated “keeping the Chinese on the move.”37 Jack Canuck reported that the development of a Chinatown would have “dangerous consequences” for the city.38 In 1907, the Globe published an editorial, “Asiatic Peril to National Life,” proclaiming that Asian immigrants could never become good citizens, because Asians would lead to “national decay” and their intellect was incompatible with Anglo-Saxon ideals.39
These printed opinions reflected and directed the negative attitudes of Torontonians. Although Chinatown was crowded and unsanitary, these conditions were equally true of other city neighbourhoods. The outcome of public and media opinion had an unintended effect. Rather than dispersing them, the Chinese showed more determination in staying closer to one another for mutual protection and support.
Chinatown grew into a bustling commercial and residential centre, and it was during this period that the most recognizable and enduring icons of the Chinese business community appeared on the scene — family-run laundries, restaurants, and grocery stores. By investing a small amount of money, the Chinese could create their own jobs, go into business, and, above all, avoid hostility from white workers and employers. In China, people who were merchants or businessmen were not respected, and they fell to the bottom of the Confucian social order that valued the scholar, the government official, and the farmer. In Toronto and the rest of the country, however, financial success in business was highly valued. This new perspective brought a semblance of prosperity.
Laundries
That laundry work fell to the Chinese is a testament to invention by circumstance. In China there were no laundries. Traditionally, men were not responsible for this household task; washing clothes was considered women’s work. The Chinese living in Canada were no more adept at laundering than any other immigrants at the time. In fact, during the gold rush, clothes were worn until they fell apart, or for the Chinese with money, clothing was sent home to be washed and returned months later.40
What the Chinese found was a niche, a business opportunity that could be taken without persecution and objection. The Chinese filled the demand of a rapidly growing urban economy by providing quality, low-cost laundry service to a workforce of single men who lived in boarding houses or apartment hotels, men who needed their clothes washed. The gravitation into the laundry business was not so much a choice but a response to what was available. The washing work, “which white men who can get anything else to do will not do,” as was reported in the House of Commons, was easily relegated to the Chinese.41
The earliest Chinese laundries date to the days of the gold rush in the 1850s, at which time they were among the first businesses to be opened in any town.42 This enterprise eventually extended eastward from British Columbia to cities, towns, and villages across Canada where the first Chinese were, more often than not, laundrymen. Without a working knowledge of English or experience in running a business, they opened laundries with low startup capital and eked out a modest living from meager profit margins. Chinese laundries also charged less than competitors: a laundered shirt cost 12 cents, compared to 15 to 18 cents in white establishments; a bed sheet, 15 cents; and a handkerchief, 3 cents.43
The work was tedious and physically demanding. Twelve to 18 hour days, keeping the doors open as long as there were customers, and toiling away for six or seven days a week were the norm. Even when the store was closed on Sunday, there was work to be done sorting and packaging laundry in preparation for the following week.
The setup was typically in a small space of a modest building. In the reception area, wall-to-wall counters СКАЧАТЬ