Lisa Rose Mar Brokering Belonging Chinese in Canadas Exclusion Era, 1885-1945 PDF

Brokering Belonging
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Brokering
lisa rose mar
Belonging
Chinese in Canada’s
Exclusion Era, 1885–1945
2010
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Mar, Lisa Rose.
Brokering belonging : Chinese in Canada’s exclusion era, 1885-1945 / Lisa Rose Mar.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-19-973313-2; 978-0-19-973314-9 (pbk.)
1. Chinese—British Columbia—Vancouver—History—19th century.
2. Chinese—British Columbia—Vancouver—History—20th century.
3. Immigrants—British Columbia—Vancouver—History. 4. Chinese—Legal status,
laws, etc.—Canada—History. 5. Emigration and immigration law—
Canada—History. 6. Chinese—British Columbia—Vancouver—Politics and
government. 7. Brokers—British Columbia—Vancouver—History.
8. Civic leaders—British Columbia—Vancouver—History.
9. Community life—British Columbia—Vancouver—History.
10. Vancouver (B.C.)—Ethnic relations. I. Title.
F1089.5.V22M298 2010
305.800971′1—dc22 2009049009
9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Printed in the United States of America
on acid-free paper
Dedicated to the memory of Edgar Wickberg
acknowledgments
D oing research and writing a book is a labor of love, and I was

fortunate to enjoy the generous help of many colleagues, friends, and
family members.
Brokering Belonging is dedicated to the memory of Edgar Wickberg of the
University of British Columbia. Ed was a kind mentor and incisive critic in my
journeys through Chinese Canadian history since my undergraduate student
days. Ed’s intellectual generosity, broad approach to knowledge, and commit-
ment to community history have guided my own academic work. Following
his example, I learned to read modern and classical Chinese. These skills
revealed new evidence so compelling that I put aside my dissertation and
started an entirely new book organized around the insight that Chinese Cana-
dians had approached Canada, the United States, and China as a single field of
opportunity. Ed’s critical readings of this book’s early chapters reflected his
deep immersion in Chinese diaspora, Chinese, Canadian, U.S., and Asian
American history.
My dear friend Andrea Goldman, a China historian at the University of
California, Los Angeles, proved a steadfast intellectual companion through-
out the research and writing process. She read through a number of early
draft chapters, and we discussed Brokering Belonging from start to finish, in-
cluding during many late night phone calls. Andrea helped to strengthen the
book’s connections to China studies, and she was a helpful critic of Asian
American history. She offered both theoretical and practical suggestions
which helped the book reach its full potential.
Timothy Brook, a China historian at the University of British Colum-
bia, was my graduate advisor at the University of Toronto. I am grateful for
his gracious collegiality, his professional support, and his critical reading of
both early chapters and the full manuscript. Tim’s comments improved
both the Canadian and Chinese aspects of the book, as well as its organiza-
tion. Brokering Belonging’s conceptual structure is most strongly inspired by
modern Chinese history, particularly local elite-society relations. As a
mentor, Tim continues to have an important impact on my intellectual
development.
Patricia Roy, a Canadian political historian, British Columbia specialist,
and race relations expert at the University of Victoria, read several early chap-
ters. She offered invaluable criticisms, editorial advice, and guidance. Every
page of Brokering Belonging builds on Pat’s foundational research into Cana-
da’s Asian-white race relations. Pat’s impressive breadth of knowledge
strengthened this book, and she generously shared tips about relevant archi-
val collections. I am grateful to her for being a model colleague and scholar.
I also appreciate Gordon Chang, an Asian American historian at Stanford
University, for being a mentor since I first ventured into Chinese Canadian
research as an undergraduate student. I benefited from his sage counsel and
his scholarly mastery of Asian American, U.S., and China studies. Gordon
read the entire manuscript, and he offered extraordinarily helpful criticisms
that made Brokering Belonging into a better book.
My editor, Susan Ferber of Oxford University Press, contributed helpful
advice in the developmental years of the project, and she also helped to
guide the mature manuscript toward more effective focus. Susan’s thoughtful
edits and responsive feedback have made Brokering Belonging a stronger,
leaner, and more accessible book. In addition to Susan, I would like to thank
the readers and editors from three university presses, who greatly improved
this book’s content, concepts, and organization. These included six very
generous anonymous readers who offered many criticisms and suggestions.
At Oxford University Press, I enjoyed working with helpful production ed-
itor Jennifer Kowing and copy editor Merryl Sloane, whose careful reading
and insight made this book better throughout. Len Husband of the Univer-
sity of Toronto Press, and Stacy Wagner of Stanford University Press also
greatly contributed.
Many of my colleagues at the University of Maryland, College Park, also
read chapters, and I am grateful for their help. As a mentor, Julie Greene
offered helpful feedback on the introduction and book proposal. Her advice
also helped to guide my navigation through the book publishing process.
Gary Gerstle helped to sharpen the project’s conceptual framework. Robyn
Muncy encouraged a deeper exploration of social movements. Saverio Gio-
vachinni contributed the concept of an alternative public sphere. David
viii | acknowledgments
Grimsted’s provocative questions about preliminary findings pushed me to
investigate fragmentary evidence to the fullest extent. David Freund helped
with the introduction. Alison Olson’s reading of drafts improved the book’s
clarity. Rick Bell’s and Peter Wien’s comments on a conference paper about
the Chicago School of Sociology helped me to better communicate.
Chairs on both sides of my joint appointment, Richard Price (history) and
Larry Shinagawa (Asian American studies), gave me the time to complete
Brokering Belonging. Their attentive mentoring, support, encouragement,
course releases, and coordination made this book possible. Previous chairs
Gary Gerstle (history) and Timothy Ng (Asian American studies) also
arranged a semester of research time.
Henry Yu of the University of British Columbia and Roger Daniels of the
University of Cincinnati provided helpful suggestions and encouragement.
I would like to thank Mae Ngai of Columbia University for inviting me
to present my work on the Chicago School of Sociology at a 2006 American
Studies Association panel that she organized on the history of Asian Ameri-
can brokerage. The attendees, especially Donna Gabaccia of the University of
Minnesota, provided helpful feedback.
I very much appreciated an opportunity to preview Brokering Belonging at
a conference titled Refracting Pacific Canada, which was organized by Chris
Lee and Henry Yu of the University of British Columbia. The preview gen-
erated a helpful dialogue with scholars from Canada, the United States, and
East Asia, as well as students and community members. Thank you also to
editors Henry Yu and Robert Macdonald and to two anonymous readers for
the journal BC Studies for helpful feedback on the subsequent article.
Thank you to the following Chinese Canadian community members for
their help and hospitality during my research: Larry Wong, Quan Lim,
Vivian Wong, Josie Lee, Howe Lee, Chris Lee, Jim Wong-Chu, and Dora Nipp.
My assistants on this project also deserve credit. University of Maryland
doctoral student Rebecca Wieters read and formatted the penultimate man-
uscript. Rebecca turned out to be an excellent critic and natural copyeditor.
Her fresh look made the manuscript tighter, better organized, and more
transparent to a nonspecialist audience. Begin Zen and Claudia Cole helped
with gathering research data. David Estrin provided editorial assistance.
Many archivists and librarians also assisted with my research, especially
George Brandak (UBC Rare Books and Special Collections), Ralph Stanton
(UBC Rare Books and Special Collections), Eleanor Yuen (UBC Asian Li-
brary), Sheldon Goldfarb (Alma Mater Society Archives), Kelly-Ann Turk-
ington (BC Archives), Carolyn Soltau (Pacific Newspaper Group Library),
Keith Bunnell (UBC), the Special Collections Department of the Vancouver
acknowledgments | ix
Public Library, the staff at the National Library and Archives of Canada, and
the University of Maryland’s Interlibrary Loan Department.
Although this book is not a revision of a dissertation, it builds upon my
earlier work and draws on one-tenth of my earlier data. Therefore, I would
like to thank my other graduate teachers at the University of Toronto who
laid this book’s foundation: Franca Iacovetta, who introduced me to immi-
gration history, and Carolyn Strange, Michael Szonyi, Michael Bliss, and R.
Craig Brown.
Funding and hosting support for Brokering Belonging’s research came from
the University of Maryland’s Graduate Research Board, the Institute of Asian
Research at the University of British Columbia, the Queen’s Fellowship of
the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, the Andrew
W. Mellon Fellowship, the University of Toronto, Cornell University’s East
Asia Program, the U.S. Department of Education’s Foreign Language and
Area Studies Fellowship, Green College at the University of British Colum-
bia, the American Historical Association, the International Council of Cana-
dian Studies, and the University of Toronto’s Chinese Canadian Culture and
Chinese Railway Workers of Canada fellowship.
The following permitted use of their copyrighted material. The last and
the 17th paragraph of the introduction, chapter 1’s endnote 120, chapter 5’s
discussion of the Chinese workers’ movement, the conclusion’s endnote 2,
and the second paragraph of the conclusion originally appeared in BC Studies
156–157 (Winter 2007–Spring 2008). The quotation from the David C. Lew
Fonds comes from the Royal British Columbia Museum, British Columbia
Archives (E/D/L58). The picture of Yip On is a detail from a photo by the
Chinese Empire Reform Society, Vancouver Public Library (VPL26691). The
photo of Thomas Moore Whaun from the 1927 Totem is reproduced courtesy
of the Alma Mater Society Archives. Alphonse Savard took the cover photo of
Chinese Empire Reform Association members in Vancouver with Liang
Qichao, a visiting scholar and reformer from China. It comes from the
University of British Columbia, Rare Books and Special Collections, Won
Alexander Cumyow Fonds (BC-1848-14).
Above all, I would like to thank my family for their love and encourage-
ment. I would especially like to thank my parents, Linda and Jerry Mar, for
inspiring in me a love of learning, and my brother, David Mar, whose friend-
ship I treasure. My mother’s comments greatly improved the book’s flow, and
she helped to distill my approach to legal history. My father and brother
helped me to calibrate my manuscript to be accessible to a broader audience.
In British Columbia, Jack and Arlene Mar, as well as Coreen and Georges
Rivard, welcomed me into their homes. Finally, my beloved husband, Troy
x | acknowledgments
Goodfellow, read every draft of this book from start to finish. As a Canadian
political scientist and freelance writer, Troy gave me feedback on both my
analysis and my writing. He also coined the title, Brokering Belonging. I am
grateful beyond words for Troy, who is a strong comfort, an intellectual
soulmate, and a beacon of wisdom in my life.
acknowledgments | xi
contents
Note on Translations and Terms xv
Introduction 3
one Negotiating Protection: Illegal Immigration and
Party Machines 15
two Arguing Cases: Legal Interpreters, Law, and
Society 49
three Popularizing Politics: The Anti-Segregation
Movement as Social Revolution 69
four Fixing Knowledge: Pacific Coast Chinese Leaders’
Management of the Chicago School of
Sociology 89
five Transforming Democracy: Brokerage Politics
and the Exclusion Era’s Denouement 111
Conclusion 131
Notes 135
Bibliography 191
Index 217
note on translations and terms
T his book renders chinese names according to their English spell-

ings, with Mandarin romanization given when Chinese characters are
available. Consequently, the transliteration of Cantonese terms reflects immi-
grants’ idiosyncratic romanization from local subdialects. A Chinese charac-
ter glossary for Brokering Belonging is available at the University of British
Columbia Library Rare Books and Special Collections.
I refer to British Columbia’s European population in a variety of ways that
reflect Chinese Canadians’ understanding. These terms describe a history of
relations as most people perceived them, through a lens tinged with ideas
about “race.” British Columbia’s mainstream population is most commonly
called “Anglo,” defined as Anglophone Europeans who belonged to the prov-
ince’s dominant British American power structure. I also use the terms
“white” and “European” when they are most relevant to the context at hand.
Brokering Belonging
Introduction
M iddlemen are never heroes. Every immigrant community has

middlemen because they serve an important function: they help
immigrants deal with the larger society. Their work is often controversial.
They may expect payment in loyalty, coin, tribute, or souls. Often, mid-
dlemen became immigrant communities’ most visible public figures, but
their profile in history does not match their prominence in life.1 This book
explores some of the most controversial political middlemen in the history
of Canada and the United States: Chinese immigrant leaders during the
Chinese Exclusion Era.2 It also probes the mystery of why their past became
obscured.
Between the 1880s and 1940s, Canada and the United States imple-
mented policies that excluded and harassed Chinese immigrants. In the
face of immigration exclusion, anti-Chinese laws, and mob violence,3 Chi-
nese sought political power to combat this discrimination. The Chinese
Exclusion Act (1882–1943) barred the entry of all Chinese workers to the
United States. Canada implemented a Chinese head tax (1885–1924) on
entering Chinese workers, followed by the total exclusion of virtually all
new Chinese immigrants (1923–1947).4 In this setting, Chinese political
middlemen improvised, creating unofficial ties to mainstream institu-
tions. Their persistence heightened public unease about nonwhite immi-
grants, as many Canadians and Americans felt that Chinese political
middlemen threatened democracy. Frequently, they saw the middlemen as
exploiters of non-English-speaking Chinese workers, who treated the
workers more like “yellow slaves” than free men and women.5 The popular
media often depicted middlemen as despots who ruled Chinatowns rife
with Oriental intrigue. The media also described them as mediators so
alluring that few of their non-Chinese neighbors could resist their sup-
posed corrupting influence.6 Fearing Chinese political power, Canada and
the United States denied nearly all Chinese the right to vote.7
Many ordinary Chinese saw the immigrant power brokers as complex fig-
ures. Chinese greatly respected individual leaders, regarding them as effec-
tive community representatives and as patrons, but they also criticized
particular leaders as compromised collaborators with Anglo society, deeming
them exploiters. Perhaps because of this complexity, some historians have
described Chinese middlemen, but very few have explored the process of
brokerage itself.8
Brokering Belonging traces the history of some Chinese brokers, individual
ethnic leaders who acted as intermediaries between the Chinese and Anglo
worlds of North America’s West Coast. Examining the work of these leaders
in the brokerage relations between Chinese and Anglo institutions provides
a new view of West Coast society. This book will reveal a process of making
history from the middle, from neither a top-down nor a bottom-up perspec-
tive. Against the backdrop of a rapidly changing landscape of politics, law,
and institutions in the early twentieth-century Pacific world, several genera-
tions of ethnic leaders aspired to claim power as the dominant representatives
of their Chinese immigrant communities to Anglo institutions. Analysis of
their work offers a new view of the boundaries between the Chinese and
Anglo worlds and the political interactions between them. A unique but
fragmentary body of Chinese-language documents has provided a record of
the politics that sustained North America’s first illegal immigrant group.9
Canada’s authorities could not read Chinese newspapers and letters without
Chinese brokers’ help. Secure behind the language barrier, Exclusion Era
Chinese created an alternative public sphere,10 where they openly debated the
politics of brokers, brokerage relations, and illegal immigration.
Brokering Belonging’s story has no heroes or villains but documents a rest-
less struggle for power amid great change and instability. Chinese power
brokers’ political world was competitive. They worked hard for the support
of Chinese and Anglo constituents, who often had conflicting interests. If one
failed, a more effective broker would take his or her place. The history of
Chinese brokers reveals mainstream and minority politics as inextricably
linked. First, the brokers’ story helps to reconfigure top-down histories of
exclusion, which have focused on politics, the state, and the law. Brokering
Belonging shows Chinese as more than excluded victims or resisting outsiders.11
4 | b rokering b elonging
Through brokers, Chinese immigrants actively joined in the central politics
of their time: party machines and social reformers, labor and capital, immi-
gration debates, and conflicts over a more interventionist state. Second, Bro-
kering Belonging traces how brokers’ negotiating power within both the
Chinese and Anglo worlds often was rooted in Canadian, transpacific Chi-
nese, and transnational North American ties. Third, Brokering Belonging
explores transformations over time in brokerage. I eschew the common
approach to immigrant leadership as the domination of naïve new arrivals by
English-speaking merchants, labor contractors, interpreters, and profession-
als.12 Brokering Belonging instead focuses on the changing political relations
between ordinary people, their leaders, and their institutions in the Pacific
world.13
The story begins in the nineteenth century with elite-oriented politics
dominated by businesspeople. After the First World War, new charismatic
leaders mobilized ordinary citizens to participate in mass politics, challeng-
ing both traditional brokers and the subordinate place of Chinese in Cana-
dian race relations. These mass movements culminated during the Second
World War, when Chinese protests for equality helped to transform broker-
age relations, contributing to the Exclusion Era’s postwar waning. Through-
out, Brokering Belonging explores how Chinese immigrants who could not
vote wielded considerable influence, successfully navigating a period of anti-
Asian sentiment and exclusion at all levels of society. Community power
brokers often succeeded in winning resources for the Chinese community.
Consequently, they became significant players in race relations, influencing
policies that affected all Canadians.
Chinese Canadians’ situation was unique because they were Canada’s first
group of immigrants from Asia, having arrived during an era of “white Can-
ada” policies. They were also one of Canada’s largest visible minorities. As
late as 1941, Canada’s population was 98 percent European; the overwhelm-
ing majority was of British or French ancestry.14 British Columbia, where
most Chinese Canadians lived, differed. In 1885, only one third of the prov-
ince’s 49,459 people were European. Two-thirds were First Nations and Chi-
nese. By 1945, ninety-two percent of British Columbians were European,
but the province remained exceptionally diverse. Asians numbered five per-
cent of the total 817,861 population, and Chinese were two percent. At the
time, many Europeans saw Chinese as racial “others.” In British Columbia,
these political pressures forced Chinese into a separate, unequal status.15
Thus, the story of Chinese brokers’ work contributes a new perspective on
the process of political integration. Most studies of foreign migrants’ politi-
cal integration focus on immigrants who could eventually become citizens.16
i ntroduction | 5
While this was the norm for European immigrants, policies in Canada and
the United States did not allow Asian immigrants the same privileges.
Legally, most Chinese had no choice but to remain permanent foreigners and
nonvoters. British Columbia did not allow Chinese Canadians to vote. Canada
also made it difficult for Chinese immigrants to become naturalized citizens.
The United States denied all Asian immigrants the right to naturalize. Many
Chinese also lacked legal immigration status.17 The ways in which Chinese
brokers wielded political power also reflected their roles as representatives of
a migrant community that stretched across Canada, China, and the United
States.
Particularly, brokers helped to create conceptions of Canada and the Unit-
ed States as immigrant nations deeply rooted in the Pacific world.18 Chinese
brokers often drew on their wider Pacific world to alter Chinese-Anglo rela-
tions. For example, Yip On (Ye En), a Chinese merchant and immigration
interpreter in Vancouver, British Columbia, made his leadership in protests
against anti-Chinese laws the foundation of a secret alliance with Canada’s
ruling Liberal Party between 1899 and 1910.19 As an orator, Yip traveled
across North America, China, and Hong Kong to urge Chinese to show their
displeasure with foreign discrimination by boycotting U.S. and Japanese
goods. He also helped to found and lead a Chinese political party, the Chinese
Empire Reform Association (CERA, Baohuanghui), which claimed five
million members.20 Yip’s passionate attacks on anti-Chinese laws encouraged
ordinary Chinese to wield their power as consumers to compel concessions
from world powers.21 Sometimes, they made gains, and the elected leaders of
the United States, Canada, and Mexico had to meet with them.22
In Canada, Yip won influence through the interplay of political and eco-
nomic power. He managed his political party’s business investments, which
ranged from a modern newspaper in Shanghai to a streetcar line in Torreon,
Mexico. In 1904, he parlayed this influence into a patronage appointment as
Canada’s official immigration interpreter in Vancouver. Yip enforced anti-
Chinese immigration laws, but he also undermined them by admitting great
numbers of illegal immigrants. Through bribes to Anglo officials, who passed
money along to Liberal Party officials, the Yip family’s emigration business
sent many Chinese workers to Canada.23 However, Yip’s secret alliance was
illegal, and he had no formal political standing, a situation that opened him
to competition from rivals.24
My examination of the brokers’ work counters common perceptions of
oppressed Chinese as a monolithic “race,” shows that they responded to a
politically complex Anglo politics of prejudice, and reinserts Chinese Cana-
dians as part of a more integrated political history. When a young rival, legal
interpreter David Lew (Liao Hongxiang), attempted to depose Yip in 1910,
conflict broke out between the two leaders’ Chinese and Anglo supporters in
Canada, the United States, and China.25 At the time, Chinese illegal immi-
gration was an open secret.26 Many Chinese Canadians complained, however,
that Vancouver’s immigration officials, including Yip, extorted excessive
amounts of cash from new arrivals.27 Taking advantage of the situation, Lew
brought together leading members of the city’s anti-Asian movement with
Chinese Canadian businesspeople who feared Yip’s dominance. To the Chi-
nese Canadian public, Lew offered himself as a more effective defender of his
people than Yip. In 1910, he arranged to meet with Canada’s prime minister,
Wilfrid Laurier, to discuss Chinese immigrants’ concerns.28 However, Lew
had garnered his political access through a devil’s bargain. Prominent white
members of Vancouver’s anti-Asian movement made a deal with Lew to
expose Vancouver’s immigration officials’ misdeeds. Lew hoped to secure a
political appointment as the port’s new Chinese immigration interpreter,
whereas the anti-Asianists wanted to expose Yip’s protectors, their rivals in
Canada’s ruling Liberal Party.29 This clash of Chinese power brokers and their
Anglo allies bears little resemblance to the oft-told story of Anglo discrimi-
nation and Chinese response.30 Instead, Chinese consistently interacted with
and exercised influence upon their non-Chinese neighbors.
While Brokering Belonging traces Chinese immigrant power brokers’ ongo-
ing negotiations with Anglo society, it roots their continuing work as actors
in a larger Pacific world. The maxim “all politics is local” frequently applied,
but in British Columbia, the local was often global. There, Canada met a
Pacific world that included the British Empire, the United States, and East
Asia. British Columbia’s chief city, Vancouver, housed one of North America’s
largest Chinese populations and was a gateway for Chinese slipping illegally
into the United States. Both Chinese and Anglos shared a West Coast culture
that crossed the U.S.-Canada border. They also felt keenly aware of distinc-
tions between Canada, which was a dominion of the British Empire, and the
United States.31 West Coast Chinese also shared common origins in Guang-
dong, China.32 For both Chinese and Anglos, Vancouver’s role as the “Chinese
capital of Canada”33 made it a pivotal site in West Coast struggles over
Chinese migration’s future. The resulting Chinese-Anglo brokerage relations
involved local contexts, but also ties to the larger Pacific world where Canada
strived to make its mark.
Indeed, Chinese Canadian power brokers played an unacknowledged role
in the foundation of immigration studies through collaborations with social
science interviewers. In 1924, they organized a community campaign to
manage visiting U.S. researchers from the Chicago School of Sociology who
i ntroduction | 7
were conducting a pioneering research project to determine whether or not
West Coast Asian immigrants could assimilate. The researchers’ interview
pool was largely made up of Chinese brokers. Fearing further discrimination,
brokers schemed to hide their transnational activities behind a façade of their
yearning to assimilate, laying the foundation of two major myths in U.S. and
Canadian immigration scholarship: the idea of Asians as a patient and dili-
gent “model minority” and the belief that immigrants seek complete assim-
ilation into the wider community.34
Further, Chinese brokers’ performances helped to encourage a heroic myth
about their communities. They inspired the researchers to conceive of them
as tragic “marginal men,” the leading edges of their people’s Canadianization
and Americanization.35 They presented themselves as immigrants with a
heroic faith in their adopted homes, patiently waiting to fulfill their new
land’s democratic promise. This domestic story of heroic assimilation without
troubling racial confrontations became celebrated as national myth. By
bridging ethnic studies with the fields of political and intellectual history,
this book argues for a more expansive vision of transnational immigrants and
nonwhites as shapers of Canadian society—and, at times, as influencers of
U.S. society as well.
For over a century, scholars have been fascinated with the Exclusion Era’s
central paradox: despite anti-Chinese laws, Chinese kept coming to Canada
and the United States. Brokering Belonging explores this puzzle of Chinese
resistance. The story of community power brokers closely relates to the U.S.
experience, so my interpretation at times speaks to both countries. Two major
schools have shaped the debates engaged by this book. The consensus school’s
roots lie in the identity politics of the 1960s with ethnic minorities’ claims
that “we, too, are Canadians,” and their insistence that discrimination be
recognized. Consensus historians often focus on racial barriers and the
nation-state. They interpret anti-Chinese laws as central expressions of larger
race relations, national politics, imperial identity, legal culture, and bureau-
cratic state-building. They often trace Chinese dealings with Anglo institu-
tions. Most see Chinese resistance as expressing a universal immigrant process
of assimilation.36
The historians of exclusion of the China school often employ a Sino-
centric lens that foregrounds migrants and their transpacific connections.
The majority of early Chinese immigrants were men who supported families
in China. These historians explain Chinese resistance as a product of migrants’
transpacific culture, society, and economy.37 Brokering Belonging employs
underutilized Chinese-language historical documents38 to build on both the
China and consensus schools, while it also unifies and expands these schools.
Both schools treat Chinese and Anglos as mostly separate groups. How
different would the history of the Chinese Exclusion Era look through an
immigrant-centered lens that focused on the shared dimensions of Anglo-
Chinese political life?
The story begins in 1885, when Canada implemented its first anti-Chi-
nese immigration act, the head tax, just as Chinese workers were completing
the new nation’s first transcontinental railway. At the railway’s Pacific termi-
nus, Vancouver became an instant city as British Columbia transformed from
a mainly First Nations western frontier into a British Canadian settler soci-
ety. Vancouver, its regional center, served as a hub for a steamship and rail
network that helped to bind together the globe-girdling British Empire to
which Canada belonged. Vancouver’s Chinatown, a rustic collection of wood
buildings built in a tidal swamp, underlined the marginal position of Chi-
nese residents in the new Exclusion Era order.39
Crossing back and forth across the Pacific, as well as moving between
Canada and the United States, many Chinese led what scholars term a “trans-
national life” that did not conform to Canada’s immigrant settler ideal.40
Chinese Canadians included legal and illegal residents, foreigners and citi-
zens, settlers and temporary migrants, China-born and Canadian-born.41
Given this mix, Chinese often felt a deep sense of personal connectedness to
more than one nation, whether through kith and kin or the imagined ties of
culture and memory.42 Most Anglos imagined Chinese as permanent for-
eigners, but Chinese were also assimilating and developing deep roots in
Canada.43 At the same time, many Chinese Canadians kept open minds about
their ultimate destination. The majority of Chinese left Canada for the United
States or China. Departure rates ranged from half to over two-thirds of arrivals.44
Even those who stayed in Canada continued to send money to relatives in
China.45 Chinese Canadians also had close ties to the United States—ties
made tighter by illegal Chinese emigration to that country.46 Even Chinese
children born in Canada saw life as something that involved moving across
borders.47 By the early twentieth century, generations of Chinese Canadians
had approached Canada, China, and the United States as a single field of op-
portunity. Chinese noted that Canada’s other immigrants from Europe and
Asia behaved similarly.48 Neither anti-Chinese laws nor repeated acts of
Anglo racial violence would drive the Chinese out of the Pacific West.
The first and second generation of brokers, backed by wealthy Chinese
merchants, acted as representatives for the disenfranchised, establishing
themselves among the community. These traditional brokers prioritized
assuring a steady stream of Chinese immigrants. With corrupt or sympathetic
partners in Anglo politics and business, the brokers helped many Chinese
i ntroduction | 9
newcomers to evade anti-Chinese immigration laws. Even the legal route
through Canada’s borders was tightly controlled by these brokers and their
allies in China. To this end, Chinese brokers often secured official immigra-
tion interpreter posts by making alliances with ruling party factions and by
bribing politicians.
A rivalry between two brokers, Yip On and David Lew, provides the focus
for chapter 1, “Negotiating Protection.” To evade the Chinese head tax, both
Yip and Lew formed alliances with factions of Canada’s ruling Liberal Party.49
They swayed powerful politicians with both financial boons and international
threats.50 The Yip-Lew conflict stands out because its public exposure pro-
voked national scandal. However, it was part of a larger pattern of covert
Chinese-Anglo political alliances that were prevalent during the Exclusion
Era in both Canada and the United States. Party machines helped to inte-
grate disenfranchised groups.51 Ultimately, public scandal imperiled but did
not destroy the founding bargain between Chinese and Anglo factions to
permit illegal immigration that ruling parties across the political spectrum
would honor.
Chapter 2, “Arguing Cases,” demonstrates how brokers merged their
Chinese clients’ aspirations with British legal institutions. Chinese Cana-
dians contended with laws and a justice system that frequently treated them
unfairly. When Chinese appealed to Canadian and British Empire courts to
rectify these wrongs, judges often upheld the white majority’s right to dis-
criminate against them.52 Despite these challenges, Chinese Canadians found
ways to influence the larger legal culture. Chinese brought from China and
the United States strong traditions of litigation, so they often turned to
Canadian law to resolve external and internal disputes.53 Because British
Columbia did not permit Chinese to practice law, Chinese legal interpreters
worked as unofficial “Chinese lawyers” and were often involved in legal nego-
tiations that expanded the Canadian state’s influence in Chinese Canadian
affairs. Chinese in the United States similarly dealt with popular demands for
the rule of law and with racial barriers in the legal profession. The final act of
the Yip-Lew rivalry involved a contest of legal virtuosity between 1922 and
1925. It began in Nanaimo, a small coal-mining town in Vancouver’s hinter-
land, and ended in London, England, as the House of Lords judged the case’s
import for the British Empire.54 In the midst of these machinations, an assas-
sin murdered David Lew, leading to an investigation that created an extraor-
dinary record of his legal dealings.55
Starting in the 1920s, traditional merchant brokers and legal interpreters
faced new challenges from a third generation of charismatic brokers: intellec-
tuals, labor leaders, and civil rights activists. The new brokerage was based
less on wealth or patron-client relations and more on the active consciousness
of thousands of Chinese. Chapter 3, “Popularizing Politics,” explores how
these new leaders burst onto the political stage in 1922 with a year-long mass
protest movement against public school segregation. While this protest has
been regarded as a local Chinese-Anglo conflict, Chinese evidence reveals it
to be a transpacific event, rooted in global anti-colonial nationalist move-
ments after the First World War.56 Anti-segregation leaders joined new
social movements across the Pacific world that mobilized ordinary people to
political protest. Besides making British and Canadian claims, leaders
alluded to mass protests against British colonialism in China and India. Their
efforts paralleled rising labor unions and emulated related campaigns by Chi-
nese Americans. Their populism provoked severe backlashes from some Chi-
nese and Anglo business leaders, but the social movement’s power to bring
ordinary people into brokerage politics could not be undone.
Chapter 4, “Fixing Knowledge,” examines how astute intellectuals among
these new brokers attempted to reshape public discourse about Chinese in
Canada and the United States. As the first major academic survey of East
Asian immigrants’ opinions began in 1924, its director, Robert Park of the
University of Chicago, opined that Asians appeared to be more like blacks
than whites.57 Chinese Canadian leaders in Vancouver believed that they
could not leave the Survey of Race Relations’ outcome to chance, so they
coordinated the interview data that researchers would find.58 Chinese leaders
countered Park’s assumptions that Asians adapted more slowly than Euro-
pean immigrants by claiming that their own lives heralded Chinese Canadi-
ans’ future as an educated, assimilated, deferential, and hard-working model
minority. Their performance built on and added to nascent U.S.–Canada
debates about factoring immigrants into more pluralistic visions of national
life, rather than enforcing Anglo conformity. Chinese in Victoria, Seattle, and
San Francisco then did likewise, planting the seeds of enduring immigrant
myths in the United States and Canada.59
The new brokerage coincided with an era of intense racial pressures. In
1923, Canada’s Parliament ended legal Chinese immigration.60 Still, in the
1920s, Chinese Canadians were more integrated into greater Vancouver than
in the past. Despite racial segregation in most public schools, workplaces,
neighborhoods, and public accommodations, over half of Chinese spoke Eng-
lish.61 Chinese were scattered across more than forty integrated city blocks of
Vancouver’s East Side. They often lived among other outsiders: non-British
European immigrants, lower-class Anglo migrant workers, Jews, Japanese,
and African Canadians. Chinese also mingled with non-Chinese in gambling
houses, saloons, soccer fields, and movie theaters.62 Only Chinatown’s center,
i ntroduction | 11
a nine-block area of Chinese shops, residences, and association headquarters,
was an ethnic enclave. Even there, the many European grocery shoppers and
diners testified to Chinatown’s integration into wider city life.63 The increased
integration inspired Chinese Canadian beliefs that they might eventually
win more equal status. However, the Great Depression (1929–1939) and
Canada’s Chinese exclusion law darkened these hopes. Most Chinese later
recalled the 1920s and 1930s as a time of great Anglo discrimination, futile
resistance, and unfulfilled assimilation.64
Chapter 5, “Transforming Democracy,” discusses brokers’ ongoing nego-
tiations with Anglos and brokers’ actions within the Pacific world during the
Second World War (1939–1945). The waning of exclusion is typically attrib-
uted to liberalizing Anglo attitudes and Chinese Canadian lobbying. This
chapter shows how mass protests also contributed. Unpopular war policies
put the traditional brokers favored by the Canadian government on the
defensive. Charismatic brokers mobilized thousands of Chinese Canadians to
combat war policies that made it difficult to send relief remittances to rela-
tives in China. Thousands of Chinese workers also organized within their
larger Canadian labor unions, protesting tax regulations and demanding
equal pay. These protests pushed reluctant labor unions to combat Anglo
racial discrimination just as new industrial relations policies made unions
into more powerful political machines than in the past. An anti-conscription
movement inspired thousands of Chinese to boycott military service to pro-
test their disenfranchisement. This protest also built on the larger conscrip-
tion crisis, which bitterly divided British and French Canadians. This Chinese
Canadian action highlights an overlooked dimension of the conscription cri-
sis: a majority of Canada’s nonwhite population refused to serve. Brokering
Belonging ends in 1945, as Chinese Canadians’ new alliances began to shift
their legal status from aliens to citizens and as the rise of Communist power
in China ushered in a new era of Chinese Canadian transpacific relations.
Brokerage relations provide a new lens that transforms common views of
the Exclusion Era as it has been understood in the Americas, China, and the
Pacific world. Particularly, this book revises the Exclusion Era’s larger context:
a global turn away from unrestricted entry into the immigrant settlement
nations of the Americas and the British Empire toward policies of gatekeep-
ing designed to keep undesirable immigrants out.65 This new regime of global
border controls first focused on Chinese, but it later expanded to encompass
all immigrants.66 Arriving at a time of vast global international migrations,
Chinese found themselves on the cusp of a transition from immigration free-
dom to immigration restriction in the Americas and Australasia. Most his-
tories of this transition focus on the gatekeepers and their institutions, a
perspective that renders invisible much of Chinese agency and Chinese inter-
nal tensions. The story of the Chinese brokers points toward another side of
this gatekeeping story: its persistent failures, its gate continually left ajar.
Throughout the Exclusion Era world, Chinese developed a global system of
illegal immigration and secured local political protections that made contin-
ued migrations possible. Chinese Canadians achieved a true but unequal
political integration. This history of trading for power brings Chinese con-
nections with the Pacific world back into the center of domestic histories of
North America.
My analysis of Chinese brokers’ work challenges conceptions of immigra-
tion history which have viewed Asians as marginal compared with European
settlers during the great age of migration from the mid-nineteenth to the
early twentieth century. Exclusion laws did significantly constrain Chinese
immigration. However, continuing interactions between Chinese and Anglo
worlds, as well as ongoing transnational and transpacific connections, under-
line the limitations of an immigration history which has been shaped by a
methodological nationalism—a desire to tell histories of permanent settle-
ment even when one-third of the global Canadian-born population had
moved to the United States.67 Brokering Belonging embraces Chinese migrants’
mobility and global gaze as typically Canadian. It challenges conceptions of
transnational migrants as “nowhere” in national history,68 demonstrating
how mobile, cosmopolitan peoples created a distinctive history of Canada.
Still, Brokering Belonging holds no illusions about the ways that white
racial prejudices divided the Chinese and Anglo worlds. The hardening
boundaries between these worlds created a Chinese Exclusion Era almost
entirely unknown to Canadians today. This book chronicles the daily difficulties
of Chinese Canadian life, as well as Chinese brokers’ relations with Anglo
Canadian allies, which made the situation tolerable. At the time, immigra-
tion and racial policies expressed a European nation-building intent. The
Chinese Exclusion Era coincided with the displacement of First Nations peo-
ple and with the aggressive recruitment of European immigrants to the
Canadian West. Brokering Belonging contributes a new Chinese-centered view
of the operation of Canada’s racial policies, but it also challenges common
views of past race relations as expressive of white racial hegemony.69 Chinese
Canadians worked with a significant minority of Anglo Canadians to develop
unofficial multicultural, transnational spaces of politics and law.
My research in Chinese-language materials shows that Chinese Canadians
did not merely react to Anglo dominance: they took action and they adapted.
Through political brokerage, this disenfranchised group mitigated even the
most direct processes of exclusion. They were shapers of their own presents
i ntroduction | 13
and futures, as well as those of the surrounding society. The history of the
Chinese in Canada can only be properly understood if scholars explore inter-
actions as much as exclusions. We will see that the official settler story of
Canada as a nation of immigrants coincided with an unofficial story of Canada
that was written through global migrations at the crossroads of the Pacific,
North American, and British worlds.
one
| Negotiating Protection
Illegal Immigration and Party Machines
O ne of the most curious aspects of anti-Chinese policies was

officials’ practice of hiring immigrant Chinese interpreters, thus
foiling exclusionary laws. The clash of two titans, Yip On and David Lew,
shows how political alliances across racial lines compromised enforcement of
anti-Chinese immigration policies.1 Both leaders sought to control Vancou-
ver’s Chinese immigration interpreter post. Like generals, they marched
with powerful political machines. They battled from Ottawa’s halls to
Vancouver’s backrooms. They attacked along fronts in Canada, the United
States, and China. In 1910 and 1911, Lew’s efforts to reform Chinese immigra-
tion thrust the open secret of Chinese Canadian influence into the public
eye. The resulting Royal Commission inquiry created a unique record of
Canada’s unofficial political history. Through brokerage, Chinese immi-
grants who could not vote found ways of influencing policy; in an era of
“white Canada” policies, they helped to make Canadian party politics
covertly multicultural.
The study of interpreters and the politics through which they won, held,
and lost their posts creates a new understanding of how immigration policy
was made. As an ethnic collaborator, the interpreter engaged in policy mak-
ing from a distinctive position. He had a duty to carry out the mandates of
Parliament, but he gained political leadership from supporters who viewed
anti-Chinese laws as illegitimate. On a daily basis, he had to reconcile
national politics with ethnic community dynamics. Thus, the story of inter-
preters brings together these two often separate histories. While other studies
of Canada’s Chinese head tax treat the policy from a legislative perspective
and some scholars emphasize the law’s passage as a symbol of racism, this
chapter moves beyond the legislative and takes into account how the head tax
was enforced. By my focus on the day-to-day implementation of the law,
disenfranchised Chinese Canadians appear as key political players in determin-
ing the head tax’s significance for Canada’s Chinese immigrant community. In
contrast to the letter of the law, enforcement of the head tax was arbitrary,
and Chinese Canadians in British Columbia found many ways to influence
enforcement of the head tax policy.
The Chinese head tax did more than levy a fee of two years’ wages on all
new Chinese immigrants who were not merchants, students, or diplomats. It
created Canada’s first policy to closely screen individual immigrants, and it
set precedents that would have a lasting impact on national policy.2 To that
end, Canada’s officials modeled the Chinese head tax on the U.S. Chinese
Exclusion Act of 1882.3 Both systems treated Chinese as suspected illegal
immigrants. Both countries detained arriving Chinese for questioning and
held them indefinitely, while Europeans entered without undue hindrance.4
Most Chinese who did not speak English—or who spoke it poorly—felt “deaf
and dumb” as they dealt with Anglo officials.5 For these immigrants, the
Chinese interpreter became their ears and tongues. Their salvation or damna-
tion rested in the interpreter’s hands. Interpreters served as crucial conduits
for communications, but they were rarely impartial.
Canadian historians have presumed that party patronage appointments to
civil service jobs only involved voters; the Yip-Lew clash shows how the dis-
enfranchised could also exercise influence.6 As with most patronage politics,
the participants were careful not to leave any embarrassing documents to
posterity.7 The official record often only lists the results of political struggle:
appointments to and resignations from civil service posts.8 The daily thrust
and parry of patronage politics belongs to the unofficial history of Canada’s
democracy. Often, these backroom deals defined later official acts. They
helped to meld local community politics with national public policy.
Chinese Canadian patronage politics involved not only race relations, but
also balancing local, national, and transnational politics in the struggle. The
close connections between political parties and society enabled a few Chinese
leaders to interact as Pacific world citizens and to participate in Canada’s
economy. These leaders made themselves valuable to Canadian corporations
and political parties through their ties to transpacific commerce. To win
allies, these leaders proffered cash, connections, and the promise of a stronger
Pacific Canada. Much of their bargaining power came from transpacific
contexts and, sometimes, they won an audience.9 Without votes, however,
Chinese had to negotiate from a position of weakness. Because Chinese
Canadians would pay almost any price for minor political access, party
leaders could afford to alienate them, yet still draw on them as a source of
party funds. In general, parties did not permit direct contributions from
Chinese Canadians.10 Chinese had to work through Anglo intermediaries,
such as influential local Liberal Party members or Anglo corporate busi-
ness partners. Every hand through which Chinese Canadian contributions
passed profited. Between 1907 and 1911, the money trail associated with
Chinese interpreter appointments stretched across Canada and even to
China. In these arrangements, each political broker brought his or her
network’s politics to the table.
The enforcers of the Chinese head tax served at the pleasure of the ruling
political parties, which profoundly affected their handling of policy.11 Before
the First World War, the spoils system reigned in the civil service. The local
branch of the ruling party rewarded supporters with posts, charging civil
servants with the sometimes contradictory objectives of buttressing both the
party and the state. At the time, the federal cabinet determined the hiring,
firing, promotion, salary, and benefits of all customs and immigration
personnel at Canada’s borders.12 Candidates for civil service positions often
campaigned for support within their local party associations, seeking to win
the nomination from their member of Parliament (MP) and regional cabinet
minister.13 Likewise, Chinese Canadians who wanted interpreter positions
importuned the ruling party’s leaders. They also campaigned to depose rival
incumbents in Vancouver, Victoria, and Nanaimo.14
The populace considered interpreters’ appointments to be at-will jobs.
Since the inception of the Chinese head tax in 1885, newspapers had report-
ed public campaigns for and against particular Chinese interpreters. The
first appointee, former U.S. Chinese immigration interpreter John
Vrooman Gardiner, bested Won Alexander Cumyow (Wen Jinyou) in a
competition debated in Victoria newspapers.15 Interpreters frequently
dealt with challenges from rivals. Between 1908 and 1910, Lim Bang
(Lin Bang), a merchant in Victoria, approached British Columbia’s cabinet
minister, William Templeman, about deposing interpreter Lee Mongkow
(Li Mengjiu) and taking his place.16 Lee kept his post until 1920, despite
evidence of misconduct.17 In 1908, David Lew proffered a $1,500 bribe in
exchange for being appointed as Yip On’s replacement, but failed to dislodge
him.18 Still, Chinese Canadian political appointees had no constituencies of
voters to support them, so they were less secure than their European counter-
parts. As a result, Canadians approached Chinese interpreter appointments as
matters of continual—and often public—politicking.
n egotiating p rotection | 17
Because interpreters’ political appointments came from alliances between
Chinese and Anglo political machines, many factions felt entitled to try and
control the outcome. This context magnified the Yip-Lew conflict into a broader
struggle that affected both Chinese and Anglo populations. In the English-
language press, the conflict made news across Canada and in California.19
Liberal Party factions, unions, corporations, Chinese political parties, anti-
Asian groups, and fraternal associations all vied for advantage. Chinese across
North America also followed the contest. For many Chinese, evading immi-
gration laws at Vancouver had been a first step in an illegal journey to the
United States.20 Even the Chinese in New York City reportedly discussed Yip
and Lew in their shops.21 Eight Chinese-language reporters covered the story,
printing stories in Chinese newspapers that circulated throughout North
America.22 Yip On was known as a visionary nationalist leader in much of the
Chinese world, especially among the Chinese diaspora in the Americas,
Guangdong, Hong Kong, and Southeast Asia.23 David Lew, on the other
hand, appeared to be known mainly in Canada. Behind the scenes, members
of Canada’s political elite, including Prime Minister Wilfrid Laurier and cab-
inet minister William Templeman, struggled to control the controversy.24
Pressure also arose from the grassroots. White labor unions opposed to Asian
immigration donated money to support Lew’s side.25 As accusations of Lib-
eral Party graft in Chinese immigration burst into public view, Laurier
attempted to control the political damage by creating a Royal Commission.26
Under the public spotlight, neither side could gracefully withdraw.
The Titans: Competing for Vancouver’s

Chinese Interpreter Post
To many Chinese Canadians, Yip and Lew had heroic stature because of their
work as political brokers. They also came to represent the tragic result
of Chinese Canadian leaders’ unofficial pursuit of power: compromised posi-
tions that corroded even the most idealistic of men.27 The incumbent inter-
preter, Yip On, was a striking example of the apparent contradiction between
the head tax’s aims and its implementation. In 1904, the ruling Liberal Party
appointed Yip, an implacable foe of anti-Chinese immigration laws, as the
nation’s de facto chief enforcer of the Chinese head tax.28 Just one year after
his appointment, Yip traveled to China and led a national boycott of U.S.
goods to protest that country’s anti-Chinese immigration laws.29 As a
director of the Guangdong boycott efforts, Yip helped to blanket the prov-
ince’s cities with pamphlets and placards denouncing Americans’ ingratitude
toward the Chinese pioneers who had developed the West.30 “When the
virgin land was opened in former years, [they were] recruited as coolies,”
went one popular boycott song. “Now that the forest road has been opened
up [they are] thrown away like worn shoes.”31 Boycott literature also
denounced the “painful” U.S. detention of legitimate Chinese on reentry as
“even worse than a prison.”32 Speakers at boycott rallies also noted that the
United States and Canada were just two of many immigrant settlement
nations that mistreated Chinese.33
Chinese Canadian popular thought followed similar lines. As Da Han
Gong Bao writer Zhou Chi Zhu later lamented, after the hardest taming of
Canada’s wilderness was done, the British tried to drive out the Chinese:
“Canadians should ask in their hearts, would it not be more virtuous to treat
overseas Chinese kindly?”34 Not surprisingly, the Chinese in British Columbia
“energetically” supported Yip’s cause. In 1905, they boycotted U.S. goods,
and they refused to work for any U.S. citizen. Chinese Canadians also raised
funds to support dock workers in China who refused to unload U.S. ships.35
Many regarded Yip as a nationalist hero. He had helped to guide China’s
people to stand up against the United States, and the boycott’s representa-
tives twice won audiences with U.S. president Theodore Roosevelt.36 The
boycott did not succeed in repealing anti-Chinese laws, but it won conces-
sions that improved the treatment of arriving Chinese.37 Roosevelt ended the
humiliating Bertillon system, canceling its requirement that every arriving
Chinese’s limbs, fingers, toes, and genitals be measured. He also ordered port
officials to accept Chinese merchants’ certificates of exemption from the U.S.
Chinese Exclusion Act. The exemption certificates, produced by China’s gov-
ernment and approved by U.S. consuls, were not reliable. Nevertheless,
Roosevelt ordered that officials treat holders of exemption certificates courte-
ously and admit them without question, or be dismissed.38 Canadian officials,
likewise, enacted similar reforms in their own immigration system.39 After
the 1905 boycott, Yip returned to working for the Canadian immigration
system he opposed. As an enforcer of Canada’s anti-Chinese policies, Yip was
not unique. Between 1885 and 1910, Canada’s ruling political parties often
appointed Chinese interpreters whom they knew handled anti-Chinese
policies ambivalently.40
As a leader, Yip had an exceptional ability to inspire trust and a bold
vision of China as a nation defined by people power more than monarchs.41
He repeatedly led mass, nonviolent boycotts of foreign goods, espousing the
anti-imperialist credo “China for the Chinese.”42 His boundless energy and
sharp mind impressed observers. The Vancouver World wrote that Yip trans-
lated between Chinese and English as rapidly as a “linotype.”43
figure 1.1. Yip On.
Detail from a photo by
the Chinese Empire
Reform Association,
1899. Vancouver Public
Library, VPL26691.
As a Chinese diaspora leader, Yip spent much of his time in China and
Hong Kong attending to political matters relating to modernizing China.44
Nevertheless, he always returned to his immigration interpreter post in
Vancouver. No document records how Yip felt about his work for a system
he despised, but he probably felt unease. Perhaps he saw it as a way to soften
a harsh system; maybe he understood the political appointment as a way to
represent his community. Or perhaps he saw collaboration as a form of
domination too dangerous to leave in the hands of others. He almost cer-
tainly felt obligated to protect his family’s Chinese immigration business,
which traded on his fame.45 Nonetheless, no one could participate—much
less prevail—in the interpreter position’s sordid politics for long without
compromise.
Political machines on both sides of the racial divide influenced the politics
of Yip’s appointment. In 1910, Yip On’s family had controlled the Vancouver
Chinese immigration interpreter’s position for twenty-three years.46 To that
end, the Yips had maintained good relations with both ruling political parties,
the Conservatives (1887–1896) and the Liberals (1896–1911). The Yips’ faction
also had dominated, and to a large extent controlled, Chinese Canadian
community life.47 However, by 1910, the political base of Yip On’s bro-
kerage alliance had frayed. The Chinese political party that he once led
had collapsed into acrimony, assassination, and recriminations from his
fellow Chinese Canadian merchants. Revolution in China bitterly divided
the Chinese diaspora.48 At the same time, the Yips’ Anglo allies in
Vancouver’s Liberal Party machine also came under siege. Dissident local
leaders split from the party’s executive, alleging excessive graft.49 A series
of immigration scandals and a controversial trade policy alienated many
voters.50 Seeing Yip’s vulnerability, David Lew chose to target “Liberal
machine” corruption (in the language of early twentieth-century political
reform).
Even tarnished, Yip On was a political giant, whereas Lew’s fame came
from his reputation as a daring, brilliant legal warrior. The handsome, ever-
fashionable Lew was a charming, fast-moving, smooth-talking rogue—and
figure 1.2. David Lew.

Artist unknown. Detail
from “Artist’s Impressions
at Inquiry,” Vancouver
World, 18 January 1911.
he spoke fluent, unaccented English. He had studied Canadian law and was
not afraid of challenging established power to protest injustice. Unlike most
Chinese, he felt that he could say anything to anyone. He championed the
underdog, loved the spotlight, and felt drawn to the shadowy underworld
between the Chinese and Anglo societies.51
Chinese Canadians admired Lew much as they admired China’s unofficial
lawyers, the “litigation masters” (songshi, zhuangshi), who were able, literate
men who could sometimes win justice for the powerless.52 In the courtroom,
Lew “had a mind like a bear trap” and a quick wit that delighted audiences.
Chinese Canadians also considered him among the best writers of legal briefs
among Chinese Canada’s unofficial lawyers.53
David Lew cast his campaign against Yip On as a crusade to reform
Canada’s Chinese immigration system. Drawing on early twentieth-century
reform movement politics, he called for a more professional, nonpartisan civil
service that would advantage Canadian-oriented brokers like him.54 Refer-
ring to immigration, Lew said, “This matter is too serious to be within the
control of party politics.” With proper procedures, he argued, the Chinese
could avoid the exactions of arbitrary officials. Chinese who won entry also
would be freed from suspicion of illegal immigration.55
The question of Lew’s sincerity divided observers at the time. Like Yip, he
had a flair for strategic self-presentation.56 His backers also included Chinese
Canadian business titans who competed with Yip’s family for the profits of
migration: Chang Toy (Sam Kee, Chen Daozhi), Shen Man (Shen Man), Lee
Saifan (Lee Kee, Li Shiqi), and Loo Gee Wing (Luo Ziyong).57 Most likely, Lew
and his Chinese backers hedged their bets. If Lew succeeded, they would be
ready for reform. If not, they would continue to work within the patronage
system.
Three Liberal rising stars also joined Lew’s side: lawyers Thomas McInnes,
Gordon Grant, and John Wallace de Beque Farris.58 They defied Vancouver’s
federal Liberal Party and its machine head, Robert Kelly, because of his
alleged excessive graft in Chinese immigration. Kelly also faced criticism at
the time for the patronage appointments of judges. All three lawyers had
worked with Lew for years on Chinese Canadian legal cases.59 McInnes was
Prime Minister Wilfrid Laurier’s agent on Asian immigration matters. Grant
and Farris, former members of the Vancouver Liberal Party’s executive,
possessed inside knowledge of graft, which Lew planned to expose and
which they hoped would discredit local party leaders.60 Grant, a former vice
president of Vancouver’s Asiatic Exclusion League, also brought into Lew’s
alliance the Vancouver Trades and Labour Council (VTLC), a long-time
opponent of Asian immigration.61
Going public with criticism of the Chinese immigration system was a des-
perate action—and to understand it, it is necessary to explore the circumstances
that made Lew and his backers feel desperate. In 1910, a series of events
tightened the control of Yip and his Anglo allies over Chinese migration.
Canada and the United States moved toward more closed immigration pro-
cedures, which isolated arriving Chinese.62 Court rulings limited Chinese
entrants’ rights to legal appeal.63 Competition between various Chinese-
Anglo alliances seeking to profit from Chinese migration also escalated into
a bitter bidding war. Meanwhile, a backdrop of rising anti-Asian sentiments
in British Columbia encouraged officials to extort increasing sums from both
legal and illegal Chinese immigrants.64 Only a few years earlier, in 1907,
white mobs had taken to Vancouver’s streets, attacking Asian neighborhoods
to drive the immigrants out of Canada.65
Amid these rising tensions, Lew staked his challenge to Yip On’s control.
No clear evidence proves whether Lew organized the plan against Yip, or
whether he acted solely as the front man. Regardless, the young legal inter-
preter, who was struggling to pay his debts, found the plan’s daring and
danger irresistible.66 As an independent, he worked at the beck and call of the
wealthy Chinese merchants who hired him. If he could topple a titan, he
would become a titan himself. In any case, Lew’s exposé of Yip touched a
nerve among Anglos and Chinese who were concerned with the arrogance of
established power, shaking both political worlds.67
The Stakes: Chinese Head Tax Enforcement,

Collaboration, and Resistance
From the start, enforcement of the Chinese head tax depended on Chinese
collaborators, which deeply affected its character. Interpreters handled most
communications between arriving immigrants and Anglo officials. Inter-
preters faced the challenge of carrying out the law within a harsh system, an
institutional expression of anti-Chinese racism, while at the same time
attempting to mitigate the law’s effects for some Chinese. To that end, inter-
preters often allied with Anglo institutions seeking to profit from Chinese
migration, but their own position was fraught with competing tensions. Foon
Sien Wong (Huang Wenfu), a Chinese Canadian leader who would later work
to repeal anti-Chinese immigration laws, never forgot his first impression of
Canada. Wong arrived in Vancouver, Canada, in 1910, at the age of nine.68
When his ship landed, British Canadian guards herded all Chinese passen-
gers into an immigration detention shed while the European passengers
disembarked.69 The guards locked Wong in a cell with iron bars until his
father, a shopkeeper in Cumberland, British Columbia, could travel to Van-
couver to claim him. Wong had never been outside China and was terrified.
The British guards teased him mercilessly, calling him a “pig” and other
names he did not understand. They also cut off his queue, the long hair worn
by Chinese males as a sign of loyalty to China’s government.70 As each day
passed in jail, Wong and other Chinese passengers grew more anxious, fear-
ing that they would be sent back to China. To free his son, Wong’s father first
had to bribe the Chinese interpreter, Yip On.71 Next, Yip On interviewed the
father and son separately in the presence of Anglo official J. Mackenzie Bow-
ell, who did not understand Chinese. Yip declared that the father’s answers
matched those of his son and that the father was a legitimate merchant whose
family was exempt from paying the head tax.72 Wong was free to go, but
Canada’s sorting process had left an unwelcome message. Many Canadians, he
later wrote, treat the Chinese as “devils” and “dogs.”73
Anglo officials seeking to collect the head tax often asked for the Chinese
interpreter’s advice to help them decide cases. Otherwise, they had great
difficulty determining whether Chinese deserved exemptions. The legal cat-
egories were ambiguous. The law exempted merchants from the head tax but
gave little guidance about how to verify claims.74 The law also stipulated that
each Chinese should pay only once and that British subjects, such as natural-
ized citizens and Canadian-born individuals, were exempt.75 Many Chinese
attempted to evade the head tax by making fraudulent claims.76 In addition,
the law sometimes seemed to imply contradictory actions. While officials
were supposed to reject any Chinese likely to become unemployed, the law
instructed them to deny entry to any immigrant with a prearranged job.77
Officials also had the power to turn back any entrant deemed “unsuitable.”78
China’s government provided no reliable documentation on any of these fac-
tors, and Chinese interpreters became key actors in determining how the law
affected individual immigrants.
As a result, Chinese regarded Canada’s immigration system as arbitrary.
In the detention shed, the young Wong probably heard other Chinese talking
about Yip On. Chinese who made their travel arrangements through Yip’s
brother in Hong Kong found entry to be smooth and easy. For these Chinese,
Yip On did not even translate British Canadian officials’ questions, and he
lent them “show money” to prove their bona fides as good immigrants.79
Other Chinese faced more prolonged investigations of their class status and
identities. In 1908, Lum Ching Ling, an English-speaker and twenty-nine-
year resident of British Columbia, returned to Canada after a visit to China.
Yip and Lum knew each other, but Yip denied all evidence of Lum’s merchant
status and naturalized citizenship. Yip On detained Lum until he paid the
$500 Chinese head tax as if he were a newly arrived Chinese laborer.80 Like
Lum, a great many Chinese returning from visits to China struggled to prove
their identities. Most Chinese had even more difficulties returning because,
unlike Lum, they did not speak English well. No Anglo immigration offi-
cials could speak or read Chinese. The language barrier made it especially
difficult for Chinese Canadians to prove their previous residence.81 Historian
Edgar Wickberg described their dilemma:
Many Chinese were semiliterate in English, had never standardized

Romanized equivalents of their Chinese names, and were easily
confused and intimidated by the situation. As if that were not enough,
the names of the Blue Funnel steamships on which many Chinese
came to Canada (some examples are: “Philoctetes” and “Protesalaeus”)
seemed to be fiendishly designed to defeat comprehension in memory
of both Chinese passenger and immigration agent.82
One Chinese detainee in Victoria carved his anguish into the detention
shed’s wall in 1919: “When I think of the foreign barbarians, my anger will
rise sky high. They put me in jail and make me suffer this misery. I moan
until the early dawn. But who will console me here?”83 Ensnared in the head
tax’s bureaucratic maze, they hoped that the official interpreter would help
free them—or at least not hinder them.
Controlling and Exploiting Chinese Migration

Estimates suggest that Yip On may have helped Chinese to defraud Canada
of $1 million in head taxes between 1906 and 1910 in addition to allowing
in as many 2,000 entrants on false papers.84 Workers who impersonated
established Chinese residents had a greater chance of entry; they also avoided
the $500 head tax.85 Fraudulent Chinese merchants paid a price in bribes
that was higher than the head tax they avoided, but in exchange, they gained
a more secure status.86 Chinese certified in Canada as “merchants” could
legally enter the United States, the destination for two-thirds of Vancouver
entrants.87 Merchants’ wives and children also did not have to pay Chinese
head taxes. In contrast, Chinese workers often found bringing families from
China unaffordable. Further, fraudulent merchant papers allowed Canadian
Pacific Railway (CPR) steamships to exceed Canada’s legal limit of one head-
tax-paying Chinese passenger per fifty tons of ship’s weight.88 Most Chinese
arrivals continued to pay the head tax, but Yip’s control of the interpreter
post enabled him to preside over extensive graft and fraud.
When David Lew challenged Yip On, he also challenged the Yip family’s
backers on both sides of the racial divide. Chinese regarded the head tax as
unjust, creating a market for its evasion, and they saw Yip as a dominant
broker to Canadian corporations and political parties. This mingling of inter-
ests helped to create an unofficial political economy of migration, which Yip
and Lew fought to control. The long-term strength of Yip’s alliance with the
Liberal Party came from his family’s business, which sent a steady stream of
Chinese passengers and freight on the Canadian Pacific Railway’s train and
steamship lines.89 The Yip family’s alliance with the CPR began during its
construction, when Yip On’s uncle Yip Sang (Ye Liansheng) parlayed his rail-
way-building experience into an exclusive position as Vancouver’s Chinese
CPR ticket agent. Steamship and railway lines profited greatly from Chinese
passenger traffic, and at election time, these corporations donated generously
to political parties that supported their business interests.90 They also aggran-
dized favored Chinese brokers by appointing them as exclusive Chinese ticket
agents. Yip Sang probably arranged through the CPR for his nephews Yip
Yen and Yip On to become Vancouver’s Chinese immigration interpreters.
Like the Yip family, other Chinese immigration interpreters usually
leveraged their official power to become steamship and rail ticket agents. In
Victoria and Vancouver, they earned three to four times their official salary
from commissions.91 Their control over Chinese entries and exits made them
powerful and rich. They could also steer passengers to their favored shipping
lines. The CPR backed Yip, while Chinese merchants in Lew’s alliance sold
tickets for the rival Blue Funnel, Weir, and NYK steamship lines. No Anglo
CPR agents would sell train or steamship tickets to Chinese, so Chinese
ticket agents/interpreters effectively controlled emigrants’ ability to return
to China.92 The practice followed Chinese diaspora precedents from the Unit-
ed States and Southeast Asia. In these places, as in Canada, Chinese ticket
agents and interpreters collaborated with governments, transportation com-
panies, and local Chinese associations to “tax” returning Chinese or to pre-
vent their return to China if they had unpaid debts.93 Canada’s ruling parties
also protected the Yips despite repeated complaints about irregularities in
the handling of Chinese immigration.94
Like its U.S. and British steamship competitors, the CPR’s Empress steam-
ship line did little to enforce immigration laws. During the early 20th century,
the CPR brought in thousands of Italian and Japanese contract workers in
defiance of Canadian, Japanese, and Italian laws.95 The CPR also helped to
conceal many indebted Chinese immigrants who might otherwise have been
rejected for entry by paying Canadian head taxes for nearly all Chinese
passengers in one lump sum.96 Illegal entry increased ticket sales and made
immigrants even more dependent on the brokers who knew their secret.
Thousands of Chinese chose to enter as illegal immigrants, a legal limbo
that made their position even more precarious; they looked to leaders like
Yip for protection. Before 1913, Canada’s Chinese entry documents lacked
photos, so a black market in used immigration papers flourished.97 Officials
noted that over 99 percent of Chinese immigrants “lost” their entry docu-
ments.98 Moreover, Chinese exit certificates lacked photos until 1 October
1910.99 In Canadian ports, Chinese sailors on Pacific liners changed their
clothes in town, applied for exit certificates under new identities, then sold
the certificates to smuggling rings in Hong Kong. Older Chinese across the
province claimed to be merchants, sometimes falsely, so that they could spon-
sor the head-tax-exempt entry of younger men as “paper sons.”100 Illegal
migrants without papers came in considerable numbers as well; they hid
from often indifferent Canadian authorities with the assistance of ships’ Chi-
nese crews.101 They climbed down anchor chains, jumped out of portholes,
and disembarked at remote lumber mills and coaling depots, where steamers
docked beyond the view of immigration officials.102 Thus, through black
markets in immigration papers, invented identities, fraudulent relationships,
and human smuggling, Chinese found many ways to evade Canada’s immi-
gration laws.
This unofficial political economy of migration also depended on business
networks in China and Hong Kong. Canada’s unpredictable officials made
Chinese immigrants anxious to prearrange screening by a friendly interpreter
in Vancouver. For ordinary men, emigration required borrowing what was,
by Chinese standards, an enormous sum (Can$600–700) to cover the head
tax, travel, and emigration assistance. Families saved for years to sponsor a
single immigrant. To borrow money from emigration firms required raising
a 25 percent cash down payment. In 1902, unskilled workers in China made
an average of 3.5 Canadian cents per day.103 Estate records and oral histories
suggest that immigration costs exceeded most immigrant workers’ total net
worth even after many years in Canada.104
The political economy of international migration brought together immi-
grants, Chinese local elites, and Canadian brokers in a web of interdependent
relationships. For example, in 1910, Mak Wai of San Chuen in Taishan
County, Guangdong, wanted to go to Canada. In China, he gave his name
and photograph to unnamed “gentlemen” in his village. These gentlemen
arranged for a Chinese passport stating that Mak was a rice merchant, and the
British consul approved his claim to Canadian status as a head-tax-exempt
merchant. When Canadian officials in Vancouver questioned him without
Yip On’s expected aid, Mak cracked under the pressure. He admitted that his
father was a Chinese laundryman in Philadelphia, which was his most likely
destination.105 Mak had bought his papers and steamship ticket through one
of the many Hong Kong emigration firms active in Guangdong’s Pearl River
Delta. Yip On’s brother operated one of these firms. Yip Yen sold CPR tickets,
arranged immigration to the Americas, handled immigrants’ banking, and
conducted transpacific trade.106 The presence of his famous brother, Yip On,
as Vancouver’s interpreter, would have helped sales considerably. To Yip On
and David Lew, the interpreter post was more than a job: the victor could
partly control and channel the profits of Chinese migration.
Gatekeepers Who Left the Door Ajar

As Yip On discovered, Canadian officials’ procedures made head tax evasion
through impersonation simple. Chinese immigrants could easily memorize a
coaching book of right answers to the standard questionnaire. Most false
papers came with these coaching books, along with contracts that required
immigrants to maintain a consistent appearance of belonging to their paper
family.107 According to the records of Canada’s Department of Trade, which
administered the Chinese head tax as part of its customs mandate from 1885
to 1911, officials judged whether merchant status was warranted through a
two-step process.108 The first step examined the prospective merchant’s doc-
umentation. Before 1907, Canada’s officials depended on British consular
affidavits. Agents of the Yip family then began to sell “genuine” Chinese
viceroy of Liangguang passports that certified Chinese merchant status.
Emigrants purchased these passports, obtained Canadian visas from the
British consul in Hong Kong, and then entered Canada under aliases.109 In
Guangdong, China, a network of local brokers affiliated with the Yip family
marketed these immigration packages in Taishan County’s cities, towns, and
villages and in Guangzhou.110 For example, Ng Yik met a scholar outside the
Liangguang viceroy’s court. For Mex$90, the scholar arranged for a merchant
passport that certified Ng exempt from the head tax.111 At first, Canadian
customs officials were surprised that merchant immigrants arrived with only
Chinese-language documentation of their status.112 In 1908, Vancouver cus-
toms collector J. M. Bowell consulted his superior in Ottawa, immigration
controller Francis C. T. O’Hara. O’Hara concluded that the Chinese
passports, which no Anglo official could read, were sufficient proof. To main-
tain Bowell’s cooperation, Canada’s cabinet subsequently voted to raise his
annual salary from $400 to $700, despite the fact that he was the son of a
former Conservative Party prime minister.113 The raise indicated that backers
of illegal immigration had substantial influence within the Liberal Party.
The second step in judging Chinese merchants’ claims, the interviews,
also left ample room for officials’ interpretation. Canadian officials used
standard questionnaires to ask simple questions about entrants’ business
activities. The form that recorded their answers had room for only cursory
replies.114 Officials also examined each entrant’s appearance, clothing, hands,
and intonation for clues to his class status.115 The entrant also had to display
sufficient cash and credit to convince officials that he could start a business in
Canada. Fathers and sons had to give the same answers to a standard ques-
tionnaire about their family in order to share a head tax exemption. Officials
also asked fathers to pick their “sons” out of a group of boys.116 Returning
Chinese had to match answers to questionnaires filled out at the time of their
departure. Their height, weight, and identifying marks also had to be similar
to their exit certificate.117
The increasing standardization of Canada’s head tax system paralleled
trends in the United States’ enforcement of its Chinese exclusion law.118
However, Canada’s system diverged from the U.S. model because the ruling
parties did not attempt to create a strong Chinese immigration system. They
did not hire full-time Chinese interpreters. Frontline Anglo officials were
also part time; they devoted most of their time to handling customs.119
In addition, the Canadian government relied on the CPR for Vancouver’s
Chinese detention shed until 1914 or 1915, allowing the CPR’s Chinese
ticket agents free access to all detainees.120 The simple, underfunded system
prompted Anglo officials to rely on Chinese interpreters’ judgments. As a
result, politically appointed interpreters became the head tax’s de facto chief
gatekeepers.
Opportunity for Challenge: Contests over

Chinese Diaspora Leadership
Yip On’s Chinese Canadian political machine maintained his dominance as
a power broker only as long as it was united. Between 1899 and 1906, his
leadership in the Chinese Empire Reform Association (CERA) lifted him to
the peak of Chinese Canadian authority.121 This organization promoted
democratic reform of imperial China’s politics.122 It also helped to transform
China’s urban citizenry, mobilized mass protests against U.S. anti-Chinese
laws, and fostered civil society through the publication of China’s first modern
newspapers.123 Many of British Columbia’s wealthiest Chinese merchants,
including Chang Toy, Lee Saifan, and Loo Gee Wing joined CERA. Despite
the fact that their individual businesses competed with the Yip family’s firms,
Yip persuaded Chinese Canadian merchants to buy a great number of shares
in CERA’s investment fund. They trusted that Yip would invest their money
wisely, and in the fund’s first few years, investors enjoyed dividends.124
Yip’s political influence also came from the Chinese Freemasons (CF, Chee
Kung Tong, Zhigongtang), a Chinese brotherhood (triad, secret society) that
dominated British Columbia’s Chinese communities. The CF was Canada’s
first pan-Chinese organization, uniting a community divided by dialect and
region. It soon became a central organization for community governance,
support, and protection, enrolling at least half of all Chinese Canadians as
members. By 1914, it had over forty branches and claimed between 10,000
and 20,000 members.125 Chinese along the West Coast both admired and
feared Yip’s clout with the CF and its North American federation of tongs,
along with his CERA leadership. Few Chinese dared to oppose him by speak-
ing publicly of revolution in China.126 The Chinese Freemasons’ power also
helped to keep Yip’s graft alliance with the Liberal Party quiet and provided
a mechanism to enforce contracts and debts and to maintain the secrets
related to illegal immigration.
Between 1907 and 1910, however, divisions began to sunder the CERA/
CF political machine’s power in Canada—and some of Yip’s former allies
turned on him. The collapse of CERA reduced Yip’s stature across the Pacific
world and in Canada. It is possible that Lew’s challenge to Yip’s leadership may
have been related to settling scores within Chinese exile politics.127 For exam-
ple, Yip On had arranged for the CERA fund to invest in the building of the
Canton-to-Hankow railway in Guangdong. Under pressures associated with
the 1905 boycott, China had ejected its previous U.S. and Belgian owners. Yip
now helped to supervise the construction. To many Chinese, his railway-building
efforts made him a hero of national development. However, the railway firm’s
slow progress in laying track elicited fierce attacks from disappointed U.S. and
Mexican CERA investors. A Hong Kong newspaper accused Yip of fraud, but
U.S. consular officials noted that the railway’s lack of “any substantial accom-
plishments” arose from local political conflicts in Guangdong.128 In 1907, a
financial panic caused recessions in the United States, Canada, and Mexico,
bankrupting CERA’s banks in New York and Torreon. As CERA investments
began to fail, expected dividends to party shareholders disappeared along with
any hope of recouping their initial outlay.129
Chinese exile politics of reform and revolution further divided Yip’s once-
mighty machine. As bungled investments caused CERA to implode, Chinese
Canadian merchants sustained the worst losses.130 Yip On also had borrowed
$129,000 from the party’s investment funds, which he never returned, lead-
ing to accusations of embezzlement.131 He had strong influence within
Guangzhou’s and Hong Kong’s militantly nationalistic Canton merchants’
Self-Governing Association (SGA, Yueshang Zizhi Hui).132 Yip helped to lead
the SGA and CERA in a popular boycott of Japanese goods between 1908
and 1909, which involved both China and the Chinese diaspora.133 In 1910,
the SGA boycotted the city of San Francisco to protest the opening of the
Angel Island Immigration Station, a new U.S. detention center for arriving
Chinese.134 In 1909 or 1910, the Yips quit CERA and endorsed Dr. Sun Yat
Sen’s (Sun Zhongshan) plan to overthrow China’s monarchy. Apparently, Yip
still held strong influence within the CF, because his endorsement freed many
West Coast Chinese to declare their own revolutionary intentions.135 Sun’s
revolutionaries, however, regarded Canada’s CF and the Yip-allied SGA as his
rivals.136 In short, China’s exile politics provided no shortage of
motives. Indeed, Lew’s ally Tom McInnes said that he tried to depose Yip in
order to curry favor with unspecified powers in China.137 Whatever the cause
of their dispute, Lew and Yip became bitter rivals who used their allies in
government to strike at each other.
Competing Chinese-Anglo Alliances and the Quest for

Political Checks to Power
Vancouver’s Liberal Party machine took advantage of the divisions between
leading Chinese Canadian brokers to foment a bidding war. In 1907, the
party’s chief fixers, Robert Kelly and MP Robert Macpherson, pitted Yip and
Lew against each other for control over Chinese illegal immigration.138 As an
Asiatic Exclusion League chapter formed in Vancouver and began to plan a
terrible night of violent racial terror, Macpherson publicly “demanded that
‘Canada be kept a White man’s country’ and that ‘the influx of Asiatics . . .
be stopped.’”139 Meanwhile, Macpherson and Kelly privately raised the
cost of Chinese immigration. Many Chinese transactions required a bribe:
merchant entry, certificate to visit the United States, entry of family mem-
bers, reentry. Even real Chinese merchants had to pay $100 for their sons’
admission at Vancouver.140 The threat of anti-Asian violence prompted Yip
and Lew to increase their bribes in hopes of winning political favor, which
raised the price of illegal immigration by at least one-third. The bidding war
continued into August 1907, when the Liberal Party executive apparently
made a deal with Yip.141
In September, a white anti-Asian riot in Vancouver increased the political
risk to Yip’s Anglo allies. Ten thousand whites marched in a protest parade
against Asian immigration. As leading Liberals addressed the crowd, white
rioters split off and attacked Chinese, Japanese, and East Indian neighbor-
hoods in two nights of racial terror, broken glass, fire, and pitched street
battles.142 Higher bribe costs followed. By 1910, Chinese had to pay
Mex$1,100 (more than Can$500) to arrange fraudulent entry as head-
tax-exempt “merchants,”143 including steamship tickets, fraudulent docu-
ments, coaching, and prearranged bribes. Anglo protectors enjoyed the most
profit from the bribes. For example, a Chinese worker entrant who “reused”
another immigrant’s head tax papers paid Can$120 in bribes. The lower price
reflected that his “worker” status did not confer the benefits of “merchant”
status. Yip On himself collected only one-sixth of the bribe (Can$20) per
Chinese worker “reusing head tax papers” whereas Anglo customs officials
split Can$100.144 Anglo officials probably garnered even larger bribes from
fraudulent Chinese merchants. The number of Chinese head-tax-exempted
immigrants entering at Vancouver rose dramatically from double to triple
digits between 1904 and 1910.145 The increase in Chinese merchants also was
dramatic: 12 arrived in 1904 and 169 came in 1910.146 In any case, leading
Liberals who condoned Yip’s deal expected that Anglo beneficiaries would
return a good proportion of Chinese bribes to the Liberal Party. The receivers
of bribes’ apparent failure to abide by the unwritten rules of the patronage
game suggested a complacent sense of entitlement.147 Disaffected Liberals
probably felt that Yip’s Chinese race made him a softer target for striking at
Kelly’s machine.
Two U.S. events increased pressures on Lew’s alliance. In 1909, the U.S.
government had handed over de facto control of legal Chinese immigration
from Canada to Yip On, which suggests that Yip had powerful U.S. sup-
porters. Henceforth, all Chinese arriving in Canada who wished to enter the
United States legally had to be certified by Canada’s Chinese immigration
officials at Vancouver as part of a U.S. policy to deter Chinese Canadians’
entry.148 Moreover, in 1910, the United States closed all other border crossings
to Chinese. Until then, thousands of Chinese had traveled by rail from Van-
couver to eastern Canada to slip over the border into locales in New York and
Vermont where officials and courts appeared friendly to Chinese claims to be
U.S. citizens.149 The Vancouver monopoly on processing U.S.-bound Chinese
Canadians also cost Canada’s railway companies—and their Chinese ticket
agents—considerable revenue.150
The changing legal conditions of the Chinese head tax’s administration
provoked Lew’s challenge. In 1910, Chinese Canadians suffered a devastating
legal defeat. Following U.S. precedent, the courts declared in the Chinese
Canadian habeas corpus case of In re Lee Him that immigration officials’ judg-
ments were not subject to legal appeal. The decision gave official interpreters
like Yip On even more power.151 The court’s verdict came as head tax enforce-
ment in Vancouver shifted toward a more closed system. Whereas during the
previous decade, third parties like Anglo lawyers often participated in
Chinese immigration interviews, by 1910, Canadian authorities had grown
suspicious of outside helpers. Legal interpreters like David Lew could no
longer provide help from the outside by marshaling Anglo lawyers, business
associates, and political connections to free their clients. Court cases and tes-
timony from lawyers and legal interpreters involved in resolving detainees’
problems documented this trend.152 Even before In re Lee Him, Chinese had
few legal rights to appeal immigration officials’ decisions. Between 1905 and
1910, David Lew’s allied Anglo lawyers had attempted to check immigration
officials’ power through a series of habeas corpus court cases. The most nota-
ble victory came in 1905, in In re Chin Chee, which strengthened immigrants’
rights to return to their established homes in Canada even if they left for brief
visits to the old country.153 However, by 1910, Lew’s allies had exhausted the
possible legal challenges to the head tax system. Only through politics could
they hope to check immigration officials’ power.
Power Brokerage from the Top Down: Prime Ministerial

Conversations to Bureaucratic Infighting
David Lew began the fight in Canada’s capital, Ottawa, where he sought
Liberal Party support while trying to show Chinese that he could repre-
sent them better than Yip On. To that end, Tom McInnes introduced
David Lew to Prime Minister Wilfrid Laurier.154 The prestigious audi-
ence conferred great honor on Lew as a broker. Between 1885 and 1945,
few Chinese Canadians directly spoke with national political leaders. As
late as the 1950s, British Columbia Chinese regarded a leader who
achieved direct access to Ottawa as extraordinary.155 McInnes was Lauri-
er’s trusted advisor on Asian immigration matters.156 Laurier’s view of
CERA was positive, and Lew was a CERA member.157 McInnes also had
represented CERA in negotiations about possible Pacific trade ventures
with a number of Canadian corporate executives from Montreal and the
West.158 Thus, Lew’s audience with Laurier gave him instant credibility
as a leading political broker as it demonstrated the power of his Chinese
and British allies.
Lew’s request to Laurier echoed a personal appeal made by CERA presi-
dent Kang Youwei to U.S. president Theodore Roosevelt during the 1905
boycott. Lew argued for a mutual treaty to limit immigration, like Canada
had with Japan. He claimed that repealing the head tax system would
improve Canada’s trade relations with China. No record exists of any public
response, though Lew and McInnes believed that their appeal would have a
significant effect in the near future.159
Lew’s attempt to depose Yip On also involved him in the internal power
struggles of Canadian and U.S. immigration officials. His rising star opened
doors within the civil service bureaucracy. For ten days in Ottawa, Lew met
with high-ranking Liberals to discuss improving the handling of Chinese
immigration. To override Kelly’s machine in Vancouver, he presented evi-
dence of Yip On’s immigration frauds directly to senior officials, including
Chinese immigration controller F. C. T. O’Hara.160 O’Hara launched a
dominion Secret Service investigation of Chinese frauds at Vancouver.161
Detective work was Lew’s specialty. He had worked extensively with the
U.S. immigration service and with British Columbia’s provincial police; so
O’Hara arranged that Lew meet with Colonel Percy Sherwood, head of
Canada’s Secret Service, to plan a dominion police investigation into Yip’s
conduct.162
Lew next headed to the United States to rally support against Yip On and
to collect evidence of his alleged smuggling.163 Lew’s aims in the United
States appeared to be twofold. He wanted to find evidence to discredit Yip
On, and he wanted to break Yip’s power over Chinese migration to both the
United States and Canada. To block Lew, Yip denied him a Chinese mer-
chant’s certificate that would permit him to legally visit the United States.164
When Lew’s train crossed the border, U.S. immigration authorities detained
him for three days, until Colonel Clark, a U.S. immigration official in Mon-
treal, secured his release.165 Lew’s first stop was Chicago, where he visited
U.S. immigration inspector Dr. P. L. Prentiss. In 1909, Lew had brought to
Prentiss’s attention that Yip On had unfairly denied a group of Chinese Cana-
dian merchants certificates needed to visit the Seattle World’s Fair, which
Prentiss reversed.166 Most likely, Lew hoped that discrediting Yip might force
U.S. officials to reverse the policy of making Vancouver officials the arbiters
of Chinese entry from Canada.
Lew then crossed the continent, seeking evidence of Yip’s involvement
in smuggling Chinese into the United States, which involved Chinese
merchants in Vancouver and CF lodges in the United States that coordinated
Chinese illegal immigration.167 In Washington state, Lew sought evidence
against Yip by helping U.S. immigration officials to decipher coded letters
seized from Chinese illegal immigrants.168 He returned to Vancouver with-
out definitive proof, but with stronger political allies in both the U.S. and
Canadian immigration services.
Battle of the Transnational Networks and Their Local

Chinese-Anglo Alliances
Lew then escalated to direct challenge, setting off a battle between the two
leaders’ Chinese-Anglo alliances and their larger transnational networks.
When Lew returned to Vancouver, he worked with Edward Foster, a domin-
ion Secret Service agent from Ottawa, to gather evidence about Yip On’s
smuggling ring.169 Lew suggested a ruse to trap Yip On. Yip routinely met
Vancouver Chinese passengers aboard CPR ships in Victoria, a port eighty
miles from Vancouver. Here, Yip prepared Chinese immigrants for their
upcoming Vancouver interviews.170 Lew asked the government to temporarily
remove Yip On. Lew would stand in and gather incriminating evidence.171
Pretending to be Yip’s agent, Lew collected letters from arriving Chinese on
the CPR steamer Empress of China that detailed their plans to pose fraudu-
lently as merchants and evade the head tax.172 The documents Lew gathered
showed that three parties within the Yip family arranged immigration frauds:
Yip On’s firm, his brother Charlie Yip Yen’s firm in Hong Kong, and his
uncle Yip Sang’s Wing Sang Company (Yong Sheng Gongsi) in Vancouver.173
Yip On himself had brought in typesetters and an editor for the CERA news-
paper, Xin Bao. He also brought in workers for various Yip companies.174 The
Yips, however, quickly recovered from the surprise of Lew’s ruse. As the
Empress of China sailed from Victoria for the two-hour journey to Vancouver,
they prepared a counterattack.
When the Empress of China arrived at Vancouver, Yip On orchestrated
chaos, enabling his family members to speak with arriving Chinese pas-
sengers.175 Guards delayed steering Chinese passengers to the detention
shed, allowing them to mix with the crowd at the docks. Once the Yips
had gathered the information they needed, the guards hustled the male
Chinese to the shed. The Yips told the Chinese passengers to retract the
statements they had made to Lew. Yip On’s partner, Yip Sue Poy,
also cabled to Yip Yen in Hong Kong, warning him to stop sending so
many fraudulent merchants, “Strictly select a few come. Don’t bring
letters.”176
Later that evening, Lew and Foster saw a Chinese man lurking on the
wharf, waiting to throw a package of tea through the window of the
immigration detention shed. They seized the package and found the following
letter inside:
It is rumoured that you have stated the amount of money paid for
guarantee landing. How did you come to leak that out. If you are
asked why did you write to Yip On, this shows some secrecy, you must
answer, “I do not know Yip On,” but say this man Lew instructed me
what to write in order to be landed so I wrote accordingly. You must
remember this.177
To Yip, the investigation signaled that his Liberal Party backers had been
outfoxed in Ottawa. He had to change the political arena to a more favorable
setting fast. In September 1910, Yip left Canada for an unspecified foreign
country.178 He asked his allies to rally his supporters in Canada, Hong Kong,
and China. At community meetings in Vancouver and Victoria, Yip’s allied
Chinese Canadian merchants raised funds to pay for his legal defense. The
meetings also resolved to appeal for help from China. Yip’s supporters sent
cables to the SGA, to Hong Kong’s Sei Yap Board of Labour and Trades
(SBLT), and to the Chinese viceroy of Liangguang.179 As a matter of respect,
they demanded that any Chinese who had merchant credentials issued by
China’s government and approved by the British consul should have his
status honored.180 Put simply, Yip’s allies hoped for a repeat of the 1905 U.S.
boycott’s impact. They wanted to force Canada to halt its inquiry into
Chinese merchants’ credentials, saving Yip On and protecting the channels
for head tax evasion. Surviving English Canadian newspapers do not record
whether the SGA or SBLT replied, and Chinese Canadian coverage has not
been preserved. However, to Canadian corporations involved in Pacific trade,
like the CPR, the threat would have been clear. The 1905 boycott, as well as
the two SGA boycotts, won national attention in the United States and Can-
ada.181 The SGA’s boycott of Japanese goods from 1908 through 1910 caused
a 24 percent drop in Japan’s trade through Hong Kong and affected Japanese
shipping lines serving Canada as well.182 In the fall of 1910, as the Royal
Commission prepared its investigation, SGA’s embargo of San Francisco over
U.S. immigration policy—particularly its protest against the treatment of
Chinese “merchants”—reduced U.S.–China trade 20 percent.183
Given this context, Yip On’s appeal to the SGA evoked a boycott threat
to Canada’s, and perhaps the British Empire’s, trade with China. This threat
to Canadian corporate interests, including the CPR’s Empress line, may have
started a groundswell for Yip that eroded Lew’s Liberal Party backing.184
Surviving records from Canada’s Department of Trade related to head tax
administration do not reveal any formal government reaction to the boycott
threat.185 However, it appeared to dampen Canada’s sudden ardor for enforc-
ing immigration law.
In Canada and China, the Yips’ allies also mobilized against Lew by
appealing to Guangdong migrants’ local identities. Among his supporters,
Yip described the conflict as part of a “tong war” between Chinese from two
regions of Guangdong’s Pearl River Delta over controlling the interpreter
post.186 The two regions differed by dialect, class, and legacies of domination.
Like the Yips, two-thirds of Chinese in Canada came from Siyi (Sei Yap), the
Four Counties region.187 Siyi supplied mainly migrant workers to North
America’s Chinese diaspora; these people spoke dialects unintelligible to
speakers of standard Cantonese. The more affluent Sanyi (Sam Yap) came
from the Three Counties region, which lay closer to Guangzhou and Macau,
and spoke standard Cantonese. During the pioneer days, Sanyi merchants
who had brought capital from China dominated Chinese life in the United
States. By the early twentieth century, Siyi struggled to break free of Sanyi
power; to that end, Siyi in the United States, led by Yip On, had boycotted
Sanyi merchants.188 If Lew’s faction succeeded, both of Canada’s Pacific ports
would fall into Sanyi hands. (The Chinese interpreter at Victoria, Lee Mongkow,
was Sanyi.) Except for Lee Saifan, Lew’s backers all came from Sanyi’s Panyu
County, a suburban district of Guangzhou. Most likely, their tong was the
Chong Hoo Tong (Chang Hou Tang), run by merchants from Panyu County.189
(Lee, a Siyi, probably joined the effort because his businesses competed with
the Yips’.) Fearing Sanyi power, Siyi merchants held citizens’ meetings in
Vancouver, Victoria, and Nanaimo, organizing a See Yip Benevolent Associ-
ation (Siyi Huiguan) to defend Yip.190 They also organized a boycott of Lew;
its enforcers probably came from the CF.191 The boycott cost Lew both Chi-
nese and Anglo business.192 Vancouver’s Chinese Board of Trade, the Chinese
Chamber of Commerce, and British Columbia’s Siyi Board of Trade also con-
tributed funds for Yip’s legal defense. The meetings intimidated opponents
and reminded Sanyi of the Siyi majority’s power.
Yip also worked to deflect Lew’s blow through his allies in the Liberal
Party and the CPR. Arguing that Lew could not be trusted, Yip managed to
arrange that the ordinary practice of interviewing Chinese arrivals in seclu-
sion be suspended. When David Lew conducted immigration interviews
with Chinese “merchants” who had arrived on the Empress of China on 30
September 1910, thirteen official observers watched his every move. They
included the dominion counsel, an attorney for the applicants paid for by the
Chinese Board of Trade, the Chinese consul, the president of the Chinese
Chamber of Commerce, the president of the Chinese Citizens Association,
Edward Foster, Won Alexander Cumyow, a stenographer, the general Van-
couver CPR passenger agent, and a CPR attorney.193 Yip’s supporters hired
an Anglo lawyer, S. S. Taylor, and three Chinese Canadian interpreters to
help the Chinese “merchants” counter Lew’s accusations of immigration
fraud.194
Lew refused to be intimidated when he conducted the Chinese passengers’
interviews. He immediately moved beyond the government’s short standard
questionnaire, exposing its inadequacy. He probed every story, displaying the
virtuosity of a trial lawyer as each man’s case crumbled into inconsistencies,
evasions, and lies. Lew’s discoveries strengthened his claim that the head tax
system should be based on truth rather than farce. The merchant candidates,
all men from Taishan County, Guangdong, in Siyi, brought with them Chi-
nese viceroy’s passports and invalid “drafts” for cash to be drawn from local
Chinese firms as proof of their merchant status.195 For example, Chung
Kwong, twenty-six, of Tai Shee Wo, Taishan, claimed to be a merchant from
Kong Moon City in Xinhui. Under questioning from Lew, he admitted that
he did not know Kong Moon well. He could not recall any firms, people, or
steamers there. When immigration officials searched his luggage, they found
many white cloth coats of the type worn by cooks.196 The men admitted that
local gentry in their villages and towns had helped them to obtain viceroy’s
passports, get British consul visas, and obtain their steamship tickets. Many
had purchased their CPR tickets through the Chung Hing Company, proba-
bly an affiliate of Yip Yen’s emigration business in Hong Kong. Chung also
carried a letter from Yin Lung Tong, stating that he and eleven or twelve
other passengers from “Fong Kin Show’s place” were “guaranteed passage.”
The letter included the statement, “I received from Fong 30 small gold piec-
es, bade me when landed to hand to interpreter for his own use. Fong has a
letter for each individual to bring along to be handed to Yip Ting Sam.”197
“Yip Ting Sam” was another name for Yip On.198 These interviews proved
extremely damaging to Yip; the power struggle within the Liberal Party over
which faction would prevail intensified.
Victories and losses for both sides rapidly followed, showing the fluid
nature of each Chinese-British faction’s political influence. Shortly after Yip’s
dismissal, party leader Robert Kelly convened a meeting of the local Liberal
Party executive in Vancouver to address Lew’s accusations of political cor-
ruption. Fearing discovery of their own involvement, the Liberal executive
complained that its prerogative to advise on appointments in Vancouver had
been overridden. Moreover, it claimed that Lew was dishonest. Members
alleged that Lew wanted the position for his own profit and for the foreign
Blue Funnel line’s advantage over the Canadian-owned CPR.199 The claim
attempted to neutralize Lew’s image as a reformer and to make the contest
about supporting Canada’s economy.
Kelly’s party machine also fought to protect Yip, resulting in a struggle
in both the ruling party and the government bureaucracy. With Kelly, cabi-
net minister William Templeman allegedly visited dominion policeman
Edward Foster late at night. They reportedly told him to back off from inves-
tigating Yip and “not to harm the Liberal Party.” Bowell then reinstated Yip
On as Vancouver’s interpreter.200 On 14 November 1910, Lew reported to the
minister of customs that prominent members of the Liberal Party in the cab-
inet and the Vancouver party executive had thwarted his investigation because
of their involvement in Yip On’s Chinese immigration frauds.201 The charges
reached Prime Minister Laurier, resulting in Lew’s reinstatement and a sec-
ond dismissal of Yip.202 Shortly afterward, the federal government dismissed
Lew again and hired a new Chinese interpreter for Vancouver, Poon Shang
Lung, at the recommendation of Yip’s faction.203 Poon promptly resumed
Yip’s illegal immigration scheme.204 Meanwhile, the CPR ordered that Lew
not be admitted to its facilities so that he could not report on Poon’s activi-
ties.205 However, Lew’s accusation that a cabinet minister had impeded a
police inquiry to protect his own graft forced public scrutiny of the alleged
cover-up.
Laurier ordered a Royal Commission to explore the handling of Chinese
immigration at Vancouver, with Lew as the expected star witness. Yip’s allies
then stepped up the pressure on Lew. At first, Chinese who resented Yip On
had rejoiced at his downfall, but the fierce counterattack quickly silenced
them.206 Yip’s allies in the CF probably provided the intimidation. Unnamed
Chinese men attempted to bribe Lew to halt his inquiry. He refused. The
men then threatened Lew with death if he pursued the matter further.207 The
two Vancouver Chinese newspapers owned by the Yips printed editorials de-
nouncing Lew as a “traitor to the Chinese.” The Chinese newspapers also
reported that the merchant Wong Lung, one of Lew’s former legal clients,
had offered a $3,000 bounty for Lew’s murder.208 The two newspapers also
called for a public boycott of Lew. Enforcers levied fines on and threatened to
boycott persons dealing with Lew. Chinese and Anglos, even people Lew
thought were friends, cursed him as a “squealer.” Wherever he went, Chinese
threw mud at him, calling him a “dirty spotter,” a “spy,” and more profane
epithets. Colonel Sherwood, head of Canada’s Secret Service, heard that Lew
would be killed by Christmas.209 Eventually, personal betrayal appeared to
break Lew’s resolve. In November 1910, Lew’s Chinese house servant tried to
blind him by poisoning his eyewash with carbolic acid. After that, Lew
backed down. He burned all of his correspondence relating to Yip On. By the
time Lew testified at the Royal Commission in January 1911, he still had
criticisms of Yip, but he could no longer recall any details about the “rumors”
of Yip’s actions that could lead to a criminal charge.210 Possibly due to Liberal
Party pressures, Edward Foster also destroyed his correspondence and retract-
ed part of his earlier findings about Kelly’s Liberal machine’s protection of
Chinese immigration frauds.
During those same months, the Chinese and their Liberal Party allies
battled over control of Chinese illegal immigration elsewhere in British
Columbia. In January 1911, Tom Chue Thom, the former immigration in-
terpreter at Nanaimo, wrote to immigration controller O’Hara:
[T]he old interpreter with dozen of Chinese merchants use financial

skime influence the prominent Liberal lawyers to get the appointment
of this new interpreter in Vancouver. Well, I know this, as much, your
new interpreter got to obey these Chinese merchants.211
Thom accused the new interpreter, Poon, of having a criminal record that
included fraudulent immigration. The Royal Commission also discovered
that Poon and Yip On had been partners in a Toronto opium-dealing busi-
ness. Thom blamed the strife between the Chinese merchant factions of Siyi
(Yips) and Sanyi (Lew, Chang Toy) for the removal of Lew and the hiring of
the “thief,” Poon. “Both of them are greedy,” Thom wrote. “I know have no
chance for the appointment, because, I will not spent money for it, and I did
not go through the right party.”212
The Chinese-language North American News condemned Thom’s revela-
tions. It called for a public boycott of Thom, his mission school, and his
Sunday service. They warned that any Chinese who attended would be fined
$30, a month’s wages, by pro-Yip enforcers. Chinese notices calling Thom “a
traitor to the Chinese” also appeared on telegraph poles in Nanaimo. The
flyers stated that neither Thom nor his children were welcome in Nanaimo’s
Chinatown.213 Even Thom’s Chinese friends tried to organize a “citizens’
meeting to denounce him.”214 In the battle for interpreter posts, Chinese and
Anglo politics were inextricable.
As the Royal Commission prepared to meet, Yip’s ties to Kelly’s Liberal
machine entwined the two men’s fates. Both Yip’s and Lew’s factions lobbied
for their allied Anglo lawyers to win patronage appointments as the Royal
Commission’s judge and crown counsel.215 Laurier appointed neither faction’s
favorites. Neither judge Denis Murphy nor crown counsel George McCrossan
appeared to have extensive ties to either side. Nevertheless, their Liberal
Party loyalty mattered: Murphy and McCrossan treated their mandate as
narrowly defined.216 They felt reluctant to call all of their party’s political ap-
pointees to account, though they knew some disclosure was inevitable. If
scapegoats had to be found, they would be Chinese because, as Vancouver
Liberal executive president Harry Senkler put it, they were “proverbially
dishonest.”217
Political Accountability and Political Cover:

Managing Conflicts over Immigration Frauds
at the Royal Commission
As a strategy to manage political conflict, the Royal Commission offered a
public, quasi-judicial investigation. Judge Murphy presided over the Royal
Commission’s public hearings first before a large audience at Vancouver’s
O’Brien Theatre and later in Victoria and Nanaimo. The Royal Commission’s
charge mandated that Murphy investigate alleged Chinese frauds and recom-
mend actions to the federal government.218 To that end, it granted him the
power to compel witnesses to testify and to subpoena documents.219 George
McCrossan led the government’s inquiry. As the commission opened, McCrossan
believed that Yip On was guilty, but he regarded Lew’s evidence as possibly
tainted.220 Lew’s lack of compliance with the commission’s subpoena, partic-
ularly the burning of his papers, and Lew’s inability to recall the names of his
informants made McCrossan suspicious. He subpoenaed both the telegraph
office that Lew used to communicate with his co-conspirators and the trans-
pacific cable companies that Yip’s allies used to send messages to Hong Kong.
McCrossan found that both Yip’s and Lew’s factions had sent coded messages
about their political intrigues.221 As the commission staff attempted to
collect the facts, Yip and Lew fought to redeem their reputations.
Yip On came to the Royal Commission expecting to win. After lawyers
for both sides submitted their evidence and lists of witnesses, Yip felt certain
of victory, so he returned to Canada to testify in January 1911.222 Every time
McCrossan asked Yip a question at the trial, Yip deflected it with idiocy,
playing to Anglo stereotypes of Chinese as simple and childlike. He pretended
not to understand English, dropping his usually commanding persona. When
McCrossan handed Yip some incriminating cables to read, “His mind, which
heretofore was the delight of his countrymen, refused to work. He could not
recall a thing.” Slowly, he said, “I no send.” The cables in question had advised
his brother Yip Yen in Hong Kong not to send more illegal immigrants.223
After his testimony, which fooled no one and said nothing, Yip On sat in the
audience, smiling, as David Lew took the stand. A great number of Chinese
spectators took out pencils to write down every word that Lew said, and they
let it be known that each represented a Chinese organization that would hold
him accountable.224 Despite the fixed fight, Lew was unwilling to be totally
destroyed.
David Lew testified in perfect English, dancing around his opponent,
parrying incoming blows, but landing only light strikes upon Yip himself.
“Did you ever hear any complaint in Chinatown regarding Yip On?” asked
McCrossan. “Never a word,” said Lew. He claimed to know only rumors
about Yip. Lew explained that, after being threatened by both Chinese and
Anglos for being a traitor, he had forgotten his sources. His entire report to
O’Hara, Lew said, had come from a Chinese newspaper article.225 McCrossan
then read Lew’s letters to Ottawa complaining of the extortion of legitimate
Chinese merchants and a Liberal Party cover-up. “I do not care to withdraw
anything,” replied Lew. Ottawa, he said, should make Vancouver’s officials
more honest in their duties, as Victoria’s interpreter, Lee Mongkow, claimed
to be.226
[S]aid Mr. Taylor [Yip On’s lawyer], “why is the service at Victoria so
much better than you say it is here? . . .” “Why,” said Lew, “some peo-
ple can ask questions for two hours and not get as much as others can
get by asking just a few questions.””227
For Lew, retracting his letters would destroy his credibility, but testifying to
their content could get him killed. He chose a middle course, and Yip’s dis-
may was visible.228
Taylor, Yip On’s attorney, then produced a letter from a fictitious author,
“Len Kwong Quock,” that accused Lew of conspiring with his Chinese mer-
chant backers to seize the Vancouver interpreter post for himself. Len Kwong
Quock claimed that Lew and his supporters had raised a fund of $6,000 for
that purpose. Lew expressed indignation, and then lied, saying that he had no
interest in the post.229 His motive, he said, was the public good. The Vancou-
ver World reported his less-than-truthful explanation:
“I am,” said Lew, leaning forward with great earnestness, “the only one
in all of Chinatown who does not belong to any Tong or party.” “Yes,”
said Mr. Taylor [Yip On’s attorney]. “I am aware that you are an excep-
tional man.”230
Although it is possible that Lew had the public good in mind, he did belong
to a Chinese party, CERA, and to an informal association of Chinese from
Panyu. Only Lee Saifan, from Siyi, conferred a broader mantle of legitimacy
upon Lew’s reform campaign.
However, Yip’s reframing of the struggle as Sanyi versus Siyi made Lee’s
alliance with the Sanyi untenable. McCrossan had hoped that Lee’s testimony
would bury Yip On, but instead Lee praised him. Lee said that Chinese only
complained about Yip On because he was “too strict” in enforcing the law.
Everything else was “rumor.”231 Because they feared retaliation, most of Lew’s
Chinese witnesses testified against Yip through intermediaries and by affida-
vit. According to these men, Yip On’s customers ended up in locations as
diverse as Vancouver, Minneapolis–St. Paul, and New York City.232 Accord-
ing to Canadian and U.S. diplomatic correspondence, the illegal immigrants’
stories corroborated a pattern of illegal entry well known to officials in both
countries.233 However, neither country’s officials disclosed this information at
the Royal Commission’s public hearings, so the corroborating witnesses
appeared unconvincing. Yip On’s side responded with hearsay witnesses who
attacked Lew as a gambler and a thief.234 Ultimately, the Royal Commission
did not find documentary evidence for most of the accusations against Yip,
Lew, and Vancouver’s Liberal Party.
However, the commission did find Vancouver immigration procedures to
be extremely lax.235 Officials identified Chinese immigrants who had already
paid the $500 head tax by written descriptions. The absence of photographic
documentation encouraged fraud, especially because Yip made copies of the
descriptions on file.236 When Chinese immigrants arrived, Yip claimed to
verify their identities. If mistakes were made, Yip felt that it was up to the
Anglo officials to discover them.237 The Royal Commission described the
port guards, men hired from the Liberal Party list in Ottawa:
W. A. Kent, aged 48, given to drink and unreliable.

T. Physick, aged 63, physically unfit and service unsatisfactory.
H. H. Warburton, 50, cripple and unfit.
J. McPherson, given to drinking and unreliable.238
Even the immigration officials’ measuring stick for height was discovered to
be inaccurate, with one foot being only eleven inches.239 Such shortcomings
were apparently not unusual among patronage appointments.240
The Royal Commission’s revelations also galvanized white Vancouver labor
unions that were opposed to Chinese immigration. The Vancouver Trades and
Labour Council (VTLC) donated funds to support legal representation for labor
at the inquiry. Its representative, Gordon Grant, defended Lew while repeat-
edly raising questions about Yip On’s ties to alleged Liberal graft.241 Moreover,
the VTLC hired an “army” of private detectives to scour the Chinese popula-
tion in search of merchants whom Yip On had admitted. With Lew’s help, the
labor detectives captured two young Chinese workers at a Yip family business.
Police rushed the surprised men to the Royal Commission.242 One immigrant,
Yong Jung Sum, had been in Vancouver for four years. He had never been a
merchant, but he had come on a merchant passport arranged by Charlie Yip
Yen, Yip On’s brother in Hong Kong. The passport had the name “Lee Suo
Wong.” Once at Vancouver, Yip On had handled his immigration interview
and loaned him gold “show money” to display to Canadian officials.243 The
testimony proved Yip’s involvement in immigration frauds, though the ques-
tion of Liberal Party involvement remained undocumented.
At the Royal Commission, dissident Liberal witnesses also condemned local
Liberal leader Robert Kelly, striking blows to check the party’s excesses without
destroying the party itself. Kelly, a wholesale grocer and tea importer, had pre-
sided over Vancouver’s Liberal Party executive since 1896.244 Former provincial
premier Joseph Martin, a member of Parliament in Great Britain, returned to
Canada to denounce Kelly, stating, “I believe that there is graft in every depart-
ment of this city. . . . No one can get a contract, an order or an appointment unless
he buys it from Mr. Kelly. He is seemingly permitted—has been for nine years—
to sell government places with the understanding that he finance campaigns at
election time.”245 Harry Senkler, the Vancouver Liberal Party president in 1910,
complained that he “didn’t care a rap, personally, how many Chinamen got into
the country illegally and without paying the poll tax, but that he did object to
‘these fellows hogging it all,’ but that if it went to the Liberal executive he did
not care.”246 Ultimately, no Liberal Party witness offered any written proof, so the
Kelly machine was spared criminal charges. Grant and Farris, as recent members
of the Liberal executive, would have known more about the arrangements than
they revealed. The Royal Commission helped to check Kelly’s faction, while pro-
tecting patronage itself. According to historians of Canada’s civil service, the
Canadian public strongly favored patronage, though parties normally kept their
dealings discreet to avoid embarrassment.247
The Inquiry’s Impact

The Royal Commission concluded that Yip On was dishonest. It could find no
proof that Yip’s defenders in the local party or in the cabinet had specific
knowledge of his true character.248 Because local Liberal Party leaders vetted all
civil service appointments, this finding seems improbable. The commission
also found Lew’s behavior to be suspicious. It concluded that Lew’s
attempt to implicate Yip may have been a conspiracy to further his own
interests, not a product of reforming zeal. The inquiry had no access to
Lew’s personal letters, but it was clear that his reputation as a Chinese
broker on the edge of the law preceded him.249
In public, the Royal Commission strived to limit the damage to the Liberal
Party. Somewhat disingenuously, the commission recommended raising Chi-
nese interpreters’ wages so that bilingual Anglo men from the British Empire’s
Far East could be recruited to manage Chinese immigration in Canada.250 After
all, Yip’s part-time interpreter’s salary of $960 per year already exceeded the
Chinese immigration-related wages of the most senior Anglo official who
supervised him.251 Moreover, Yip’s schemes relied on pliable Anglo customs
officials, whom the Royal Commission publicly exonerated. Later, in May
1911, the Liberals quietly removed these Anglo officials from handling Chi-
nese immigration when they moved the head tax administration to the Depart-
ment of Immigration.252
Canada’s federal government continued to turn a blind eye to illegal
immigration. It continued to hire Chinese interpreters on a casual part-time
basis.253 It ignored the Royal Commission’s recommendation to use finger-
prints to prevent immigration fraud. Starting in October 1910, after David
Lew’s exposé, officials required Chinese to submit photos to obtain exit
certificates.254 In 1913, officials added photos to the entry records of new
Chinese, but illegal immigration continued.255 Japanese illegal immigration
also followed a similar pattern.256 Only in the 1930s, when the Great Depres-
sion caused nearly one-third of British Columbia’s workers to lose their jobs,
did Canada’s immigration department stop turning a blind eye to Asian
illegal immigration.257
Ultimately, David Lew’s side won. His defeat of Yip On brought him
great fame among both Chinese and Anglo Canadians. He made himself one
of British Columbia’s most dominant Chinese Canadian power brokers. He
became a premier unofficial “Chinese lawyer” and a businessman with com-
mercial interests in Vancouver, Victoria, and Nanaimo. As a household name,
he titled his Chinese newspaper notices simply “An Announcement from
David Lew.”258 He continued to lobby officials in Ottawa on Chinese Cana-
dian matters. Officials treated his requests with great care, worrying about
his reputation for politically dangerous “intrigue.”259 China’s government
also noticed Lew. By 1914, Lew was appointed China’s assistant consul for
western Canada.260 In 1924, a Vancouver English newspaper deemed Lew “a
prominent figure in the Oriental colonies throughout British Columbia.”261
Lew’s allies also benefited. In 1916, Tom McInnes realized his dream of a
business in China, most likely due to the influence of Lew and his backers.
He met with China’s Dr. Sun Yat Sen, then won a concession to build Guang-
zhou’s streetcar system. Between 1916 and 1924, McInnes lived in Guang-
zhou, supervising the demolition of the city’s ancient walls and the
construction of the streetcar lines.262 In 1917, Lew’s ally J. W. de B. Farris
was elected to the provincial legislature and eventually served as the prov-
ince’s attorney general.263 Yip On’s side sustained the greater loss. Facing
criminal charges, Yip fled to China, toppling from the peak of Chinese Cana-
dian power into obscurity.264 The Liberal Party cut off Kelly’s political
machine from patronage, ending its influence.265
Despite the setbacks, the Yip family continued to build a fortune through
its brokerage talents. Yip Sang had established his Wing Sang Company as
Chinese Canada’s premier brokerage firm. His network of younger relatives
and his twenty-three children ensured that members of the Yip family would
have dominant broker roles. The Conservative victory in the 1911 election
ended fifteen years of Liberal Party rule, but the Yips’ influence persisted.266
By 1916, Yip Sang’s son Yip Kew Him had become Vancouver’s Chinese
immigration and CPR interpreter, a position he held until at least 1941,
lasting through Conservative, Unionist, and Liberal governments. After Yip
Sang passed away in 1927, his son Yip Kew Mow (Ye Qiu Mao) became the
family patriarch. Yip Kew Mow continued the family’s Liberal Party ties,
attending a Vancouver Board of Trade dinner for Prime Minister William L.
Mackenzie King in 1929.267
Yip On’s fall rippled across the forty-ninth parallel: the United States quietly
ended Vancouver’s monopoly on issuing Chinese merchant certificates. From
that point, Chinese Canadians could apply at Vancouver, Victoria, or Ottawa for
documentation of their class-exempt status from the U.S. Chinese Exclusion
Act.268 But the connected Chinese population of Mexico continued to seek
admission to the United States via similar “merchant certificates” and appeared
to practice some parallel forms of political brokerage.269 The preceding analysis
of the Yip-Lew conflict thus suggests new ways of reading Chinese migrants’
resistance and collaboration within the settlement nations of the Pacific world.
Conclusions
The struggle between Yip and Lew shows that Canadian party machines had
such an extensive role in local society that even members of disenfranchised
groups found party ties to be indispensable.270 Canada’s first tentative steps
toward restricting immigrant entry thus were taken with great ambivalence.
The Chinese head tax system’s restrictions, tracking mechanisms, and border
controls set important precedents. They began Canada’s turn away from a
laissez-faire immigration policy toward a modern system of control, a change
that eventually affected all immigrants. However, before World War I,
neither Laurier’s Liberals nor Prime Minister Robert Borden’s Conservatives
had much interest in taking strong measures to stop illegal Chinese immi-
gration. Political brokerage by Chinese and Anglo leaders alike determined
the politics of enforcement.271
David Lew won in the short term, but the Royal Commission’s outcome
also revealed the enduring power of the institutions. No real reform of the
Chinese immigration system followed. Multinational corporations like the
CPR continued to be influential; sometimes, their interests coincided with
those of Chinese Canadians. Political parties continued to seek election funds
and often preferred not to know their source. Chinese power brokers contin-
ued to build alliances that fused ethnic, mainstream, and transpacific ties.
They traded dollars for modest influence, but they could not buy respect for
their race.
We might consider the early history of Canada’s immigration policy as
analogous to bootlegging and gambling, illegal activities that enjoyed suffi-
cient public support to deter effective law enforcement.272 There were many
individuals profiting from illegal migration, but for all parties in the
exchange, local politics proved to be a competitive, unstable environment.
The wealthiest Chinese Canadian merchants could at times buy influence by
asking their Anglo business associates to lobby on their behalf.273 Neverthe-
less, prejudice and the taint of illegality forced Chinese brokers to operate in
covert, subordinate roles in which they depended heavily on Anglo interme-
diaries.
Future research might explore the connections between Chinese Canadian
politics and the widely reported but understudied phenomenon of Chinese
Americans’ relations with political machines. Every component of Yip On’s
transnational Chinese Canadian political machine had U.S. ties: the Chinese
Freemasons, the Chinese Empire Reform Association, and the Self-Governing
Association. In the United States, mainstream parties also made bargains
with Chinese who could not vote. In New York City, Chinese Americans
openly supported the Tammany Hall machine, despite their lack of votes,
and won patronage posts in return.274 On the West Coast, Chinese could not
operate so openly, though the press reported that they made unofficial
campaign contributions at election time.275 Mary Coolidge, a sociologist, in
her 1909 book Chinese Immigration, also found that Chinese in San Francisco
managed anti-Chinese laws at all levels through graft alliances with officials,
police, and the political parties that appointed them.276 Before 1910, U.S.
Chinese immigration interpreters generally held political patronage
appointments,277 and civil service reforms did not erase these outside consid-
erations. In 1916, a congressional commission found that many Anglo U.S.
immigration officials acknowledged that they hired “dishonest” Chinese
interpreters.278 As in Vancouver, Chinese political brokerage for illegal immi-
gration survived. Chinese immigration interpreter posts also continued to be
highly politicized as U.S. officials often appointed well-connected Chinese
American leaders despite policies to the contrary.279
These Chinese dealings suggest a need to revisit the political history of
this era. On both sides of the forty-ninth parallel, local, national, and trans-
national politics contributed to the capture of posts. Official history records
the victors, but it does not reveal the full story of how Chinese-Anglo alli-
ances helped to influence Canadian and U.S. immigration. As in Vancouver,
much of the unofficial story can be found only through sifting the evidence
in the surviving Chinese-language sources.
two
| Arguing Cases
Legal Interpreters, Law, and Society
I n 1924, david lew’s chief profession as a legal broker made his

murder fascinating and worrisome to British Columbians. Canadians
prided themselves on a justice system based on British fair play, but the
investigation cast an uncomfortable light on apparent contradictions between
legal ideals and local practice. On the night of 24 September 1924, at the
corner of East Pender and Carrall streets in Vancouver, a Chinese man dressed
in black stepped from the shadows, shot Lew dead in the street, and then fled.
Shortly after the killing, rumors started that a powerful Chinatown faction
had ordered his death. Witnesses were afraid to speak with police. The sheer
number of suspects produced months of coverage in Vancouver’s Chinese-
and English-language press. Lew’s sudden end left many mysteries, but it
also exposed evidence that highlights the controversial power he had accrued
as a legal mediator between Chinese and Anglo Canadian society. As British
Columbians discussed Lew’s life, they interpreted him as a leader who had for
decades wielded a partly hidden power that influenced both the Chinese and
Anglo communities.1
The story of Lew’s work as a legal broker contributes a new vision of
Chinese initiative in Canadian and U.S. legal history. It extends Canadian
legal history into new spaces of Chinese-Anglo relations and allows us to
explore Chinese legal brokers’ daily work and Chinese migrants’ negotia-
tions within the Pacific world. David Lew’s case also represents an often over-
looked part of legal personnel history: the ethnic and immigrant interpreters
who acted as legal experts.2 In British Columbia, Asians and First Nations
people could neither become lawyers nor serve on juries.3 The legal system
was effectively “white.” Like those in British Columbia, most law societies in
Canada and the United States denied Chinese immigrants the right to
become lawyers.4 Nevertheless, Chinese Canadians often made the law their
instrument through legal brokers. British Columbians often referred to men
like Lew as “Chinese lawyers.”5 They were paralegals who served Chinese
clients and sometimes other nonwhite groups, such as Japanese, First Na-
tions people, and East Indians.6 The brokerage relations of these Chinese
lawyers also illuminate another less visible aspect of legal history: the
profoundly integrated nature of Canadian justice. Ethnic dispute resolution
processes continually interacted with the formal justice system. As legal his-
torians have found elsewhere, formal police and court actions often happened
after the resolution or failure of informal negotiations.7 Chinese immigrants
needed law for their society to function. On a daily basis, Chinese encoun-
tered police, filed legal complaints, and appealed to authorities to use their
discretion on their behalf. In court, the weak often hoped to triumph over
the strong.8 Despite Chinese legal brokers’ informal position, they helped to
make the Canadian state a central institution among Chinese immigrants in
British Columbia.
While the law was an instrument of exclusion, Chinese Canadians’ popu-
lar use of British Canadian justice also made it into a structuring force that
helped to regulate and sustain Chinese migration. Chinese Canadians
perceived legal processes as aiding individuals and groups in several ways.
Immigrants brought from China a custom of informal lawyers, who helped
ordinary people navigate the legal system.9 Chinese lawyers buffered Anglo
discrimination, helped to resolve disputes, regulated economic relations, and
at times checked abuses by the powerful. Like much legal practice, a good
part of their brokerage did not enter the official records of the courts. Further,
these negotiations took place in the shadow of anti-Chinese policies and their
enforcement. Police disproportionately targeted Chinese for crimes such as
gambling, prostitution, and drug use, while often showing more tolerance
for comparable activities among middle-class whites.10 Chinese legal power
brokers backed by wealthy merchants also became influential forces within
the larger legal culture. Their mitigation of anti-Chinese laws made Exclusion
Era Chinese life both possible and tolerable. Lew’s final act involved a legal
contest between two factions of Chinese Canadian businesspeople: a small
group from his ancestral county of Panyu in Guangdong China, and one of
British Columbia’s largest, most powerful Chinese associations, the Chinese
Freemasons. Ultimately, the issues raised by Lew’s murder would prompt public
questioning about the morality of brokers’ power over a dependent majority of
Chinese workers and merchants.11 The wider social aspects of legal practice
helped immigrants to fuse Canadian law with Chinese migrant society.
A Community Made by Laws: The Daily

Work of Chinese Lawyers
Lew’s murder was an exceptional fate for a Chinese broker, but his efforts to
secure dominance in legal brokerage reflected the position’s prestige and
profits. Chinese legal interpreters behaved much like lawyers, though they
could not represent their clients in court. Brokers collected information,
wrote briefs, made arrangements with Anglo attorneys, and interpreted for
Chinese in court. Chinese newspaper reports of trials routinely named the
interpreters, crediting them for their work.12
David Lew’s letterbook from 1906 to 1909 illustrates a typical case. In
1908, a man called Lee Ghia (Li Jia) came to Lew in a state of great anxiety.
He had been using another man’s immigration papers. As a result, Canadian
authorities had instituted court proceedings against him. Lew wrote, “Mr.
Lee, you do not need to worry any more.” An Anglo lawyer would present the
case Lew had prepared, and Lew comforted Lee, “Trust me that everything
has followed as planned, and all will be okay.”13 Chinese advertisements and
immigration department records confirm that Chinese legal interpreters like
Lew often successfully restored “lost” immigration documents.14
These legal negotiations suggest that men like Lew were more akin to
lawyers than they were mere interpreters. Chinese treated legal brokerage as
a different form of leadership than the power rooted in Chinese merchants’
business or social movements or simple bilingualism. Chinese newspapers
portrayed legal brokers as part of the institutions that governed both the
ethnic community and the larger society. Foon Sien Wong’s firm of legal in-
terpreters, the Kwong Lee Tai Company, advertised its partnership with
prominent Anglo barristers. It handled “all cases either civil or criminal,
such as immigration, deportation, merchant certificates, contracts or leases
with occidental people.”15 Won Alexander Cumyow (Wen Jinyou), a police
court interpreter who had trained as a lawyer, also ran a private “negotiating
firm” specializing in the resolution of immigration, commercial, financial,
and property matters.16
From the mid-nineteenth to the mid-twentieth century, Chinese legal
interpreters in Canada strived to compensate for the uneven nature of
Chinese-Anglo relations within the law, especially Chinese Canadians’ lack
of equal access to legal counsel. In 1924, Joseph Ambrose Russell, an Anglo
a rguing c ases | 51
lawyer in Vancouver, termed his thirty-five years of work for Chinese clients
as purely business. They were loyal customers who always paid well and on
time. However, Russell’s ties to Anglo society trumped his legal representa-
tion of Chinese clients. In one murder case, Russell chose not to present
evidence that he believed would acquit his client, a Chinese boy, because it
might embarrass an Anglo friend. The boy was convicted and sentenced to
life in prison. Chinese merchants paid Russell to prevent the boy from being
hanged, which he did, but their wealth could not buy a complete legal
defense.17 Chinese Canadians’ decades of work with Russell suggest that more
reliable legal counsel could not be found.18 As evidenced by this example, the
great differences in legal power between the Chinese minority and the Anglo
majority often undercut Chinese Canadians’ chances of due process.
Chinese legal interpreters helped to offset Anglo power in the legal system
through paralegal help that increased their Chinese clients’ chances of effec-
tive representation. Chinese legal interpreters helped Anglo law firms as
cheap labor. They dealt with clients, gathered information, wrote briefs, and
negotiated settlements. However, interpreters could not file proceedings nor
speak in court as barristers. Anglo lawyers took credit for their cases and
received most of the legal fees. Chinese Americans developed an institution
of Chinese legal interpreting that paralleled Canadian practice.19 In 1907,
immigration interpreter Seid Gain Back Jr. of Portland, Oregon, became the
first Chinese American lawyer to practice on the Pacific Coast. However,
Chinese-Anglo relations continued to be uneven, so Back’s law practice more
resembled Chinese legal interpreters’ informal power brokerage than a con-
ventional Anglo legal career.20 Perhaps because of these issues, few Chinese
Americans became lawyers during the Exclusion Era.
Chinese legal interpreters often attempted to balance uneven Chinese-
Anglo legal power through subterfuge: they often shaded their clients’ testi-
mony and used translation to slow down proceedings. In British Columbia,
even English-speaking Chinese often used interpreters in court. For example,
in 1917, Victoria’s immigration interpreter Lee Mongkow, a fluent English-
speaker, insisted on testifying in court through Chinese legal interpreter
Harry Hastings.21 Interpreting delays gave Chinese more time to compose
their testimony. The prevalence of these subterfuges led to the practice of
hiring extra “checking interpreters” to confirm translations in high-profile
cases.22 Often, legal interpreters located Chinese witnesses in advance
and prepared them for their testimony, sometimes to the extent of guiding
Chinese witnesses through subtle hand signals.23 The exceptional skill and
education required of early twentieth-century legal interpreters made them
prized commodities for Chinese associations.
Like Lew, most interpreters belonged to Chinese associations that added
to their negotiating heft. At the turn of the twentieth century, members of
the Chinese political party, the Chinese Empire Reform Association (CERA),
often distributed legal interpreting jobs among its members.24 Chinese
factions backed by wealthy merchants could also create alliances based on
mutual profits from commercial businesses and illegal activities. In 1907,
landlord Wong Lung came to Lew asking for advice about renting out cabins
to Chinese prostitutes in Steveston, a practice made difficult by the Steveston
city council’s recent zeal for law enforcement. Within six days, Lew and Rus-
sell negotiated an agreement with the Steveston police that they would only
arrest Chinese prostitutes once during the fish-canning season. Wong pre-
ferred to handle business matters in English, so he hired Lew primarily as a
mediator, not as an interpreter.25 Such ongoing business relations with Anglo
officials, police, and lawyers sometimes gave Chinese more influence over the
legal system. These informal ties, albeit bought and therefore precarious,
gave a few legal brokers greater access to make their case. Indeed, Lew spent
much time with Anglo lawyers.26 This exceptional access sometimes earned
Lew’s clients a greater hearing within the justice system.27 Interpreters’
unofficial standing obscured their multifaceted roles in court records, but
they played crucial roles in incorporating Chinese concerns into the justice
system’s operation.
As an institution, Chinese legal interpreting developed alongside the
legal profession. By the early twentieth century, Chinese legal interpreting
had become a profession in major urban centers of Chinese immigration.
Besides training in law, legal brokerage required quick thinking, deft politi-
cal skills, and fluent bilingualism. However, positions for Chinese court,
police, and legal interpreters were few. Thus, legal brokerage often required
political backing in both Chinese and Anglo society. In the frontier days of
the mid-nineteenth century, pioneer Chinese merchants in Canada and the
United States acted as jacks-of-all-trades mediators.28 As British Columbia
became an Anglo settler society, the legal profession as a whole became more
educated. In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, Chinese legal
brokers began to clerk with law firms, the standard apprenticeship for lawyers
which Canadians called “articling,” though Chinese could not practice law
due to their race.29 By the 1920s, British Columbia’s Law Society expected its
new lawyers to be law school graduates.30 These rising standards privileged
Chinese legal brokers who had attended universities or law schools.31 Immi-
grants also brought from China a tradition of informal litigators, unofficial
lawyers who offered popular access to the law.32 Legal brokers’ business
records show that Chinese of all classes frequently turned to the Canadian
legal system. Through the law, they sought to resolve disputes, handle rou-
tine matters, and seek their own power.
Many Chinese immigrants valued legal brokers who could smooth over
relations, resolve their legal problems, help to shape favorable responses to
police questions, or, if necessary, offer bribes at the right moment. An
account book kept by Won Alexander Cumyow shows that police and court
interpreters during the early twentieth century received handsome wages of
Can$2–$5 for each client’s session in their private legal practice. In an hour,
brokers could earn over twice as much as a Chinese laborer received for a day’s
work. Cumyow represented Chinese, First Nations, and East Indian clients.
A typical session involved interpreting and legal advice in the event of an
arrest, court hearing, or civil lawsuit.33 Won Alexander Cumyow’s son Gordon
Cumyow was also an interpreter. Every day, he went to Vancouver’s police
court and found Chinese clients in need of assistance. He recalled, “Always
something there, some kind of scrap or something. Or a white man beat a
Chinese up or something like that. It was always busy.”34
A considerable portion of Vancouver’s legal brokers’ handling of criminal
matters concerned anti-Chinese patterns of law enforcement. These patterns
extended to both Canada and the United States.35 Mary Coolidge, author of a
study of Chinese Americans in San Francisco published in 1909, termed most
anti-Chinese policing as pretexts for extortion, blackmail that made Chinese
appear to be an “exceptionally law-breaking population.”36 Vancouver’s pat-
tern was similar. City authorities appeared most concerned with anti-Chinese
arrests as a source of revenue-producing fines; they wanted to “tax” rather
than halt illegal activities.37 Legal power brokers thus became daily negotia-
tors in contests between Chinese and Anglo institutions over determining a
tolerable level of anti-Chinese law enforcement.
Legal relations also included civil matters. Brokers’ letters record the
kinds of civil business they performed. A number of Chinese in Canada con-
tinued a common Chinese social practice of using multiple names, not real-
izing that discrepancies in naming could lead to legal and immigration
troubles. Immigrants had difficulties figuring out how to apply for business
and driver’s licenses. They wanted help with collecting debts, figuring out
Canadian insurance, and dealing with the consequences of automobile acci-
dents. They also turned to the courts to handle family matters, such as the
custody of the children of Chinese fathers and Anglo mothers who were not
their wives. Immigrants frequently turned to Canadian courts to adjudicate
disputes about breaches of contract, unpaid wages, and divisions of profit
among business partners. Often, the involvement of a Chinese legal broker in
disputes about debts, rents, or wages persuaded the opposing side to pay
without any involvement of a more costly lawyer. Generally, Chinese could
expect fair treatment in civil matters, so they made the Canadian legal
system an important arbiter of social and economic relations related to their
migration.38
Legal Brokerage, Labor Contracting, and Class Relations

One of the most noted aspects of Chinese legal brokerage is its associations
with the commerce of migration, above all, Chinese labor contractors’ efforts
to regulate, control, and protect Chinese migrant workers. During the late
nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the anti-Chinese movement often
denounced Chinese merchants’ role in legal brokerage relations as Oriental
despotism. In 1902, American Federation of Labor (AFL) president Samuel
Gompers and secretary Frank Morrison opened an anti-Chinese pamphlet by
attacking Chinese merchants’ “despotic sway” over Chinese workers. They
quoted an 1876 U.S. legislative report that alleged that Chinese merchants
“levy taxes, command masses of men, intimidate interpreters and witnesses,
enforce perjury, regulate trade, punish the refractory.”39 In 1903, Canada’s
Parliament concurred and outlawed Chinese community “courts” and
“tribunals.”40 Scholarship on Chinese American legal brokerage has built on
the concept of merchant-interpreters’ bilingual rule over a separate monolin-
gual community.41 Granted, Chinese merchants and interpreters exploited
ordinary Chinese, but they also acted as leaders and as patrons of legal chal-
lenges to discrimination. Legal brokerage in class and race relations involved
a deeper interweaving of Chinese and Anglo politics than is captured by most
simple notions of merchant rule.
Legal work helped to structure Chinese labor contracting, a major basis of
Chinese employment and Chinese merchant business. Chinese made exten-
sive use of the U.S. and Canadian legal systems to regulate their financial
dealings. Legal brokers drew up contracts with Anglo firms and suppliers and
prepared contracts to be signed by individual migrant workers.42 Cumyow’s
letters show that he arranged labor contracts for Chinese and European
immigrants with Anglo employers, charging a small commission from each
worker’s monthly salary as a finder’s fee.43 David Lew arranged labor contracts
as well, working for the large labor contracting firm Kwong and Company,
which sent Chinese workers to make bricks at the Columbia Clay Company
in 1909.44 In exchange for the job, transportation, and a local Chinese foreman,
workers typically agreed to purchase all of their housing and supplies from
their contractor, who made the majority of his profits selling food, housing,
alcohol, mail delivery, and remittance services. Chinese migrant laborers usu-
ally lived seasonally at their remote job sites, so labor contractors sometimes
provided other forms of leisure, such as gambling, opium, and prostitution.45
While this relationship was exploitive, it was for the most part mutually
beneficial. When Kwong and Company’s contract workers encountered prob-
lems, Lew became their legal defender.46 This protective legal relationship
between contractors and workers became one of the founding bargains that
structured Chinese migration in the Exclusion Era.47
The entire system of Chinese migration depended on maintaining
Chinese workers’ confidence that immigration offered safe, profitable work.48
When the Columbia Clay Company’s kiln collapsed in 1909, killing two
Chinese workers, Lew pressed the provincial police for an inquest into the
accident on behalf of the Chinese subcontractor which had employed them.49
Before the accident, a Chinese foreman had told his Anglo supervisor at the
brick company that he thought the kiln roof looked dangerous. The supervi-
sor told the Chinese that it seemed fine and that they should keep working.
The workers obeyed. At the inquest, an Anglo judge ruled that the Chinese
workers had knowingly risked their lives, so the brick company was not
criminally responsible for their deaths.50 To deter future negligence, Lew
filed two $1,500 wrongful-death lawsuits against the brick company on
behalf of the dead men’s families. He also handled their probate cases so
that their Canadian savings could be sent to their widows and children in
Guangzhou.51 In matters of industrial accidents and in the handling of estates,
legal brokers represented Chinese Canadian interests which would otherwise
likely not have been fully addressed by Anglo authorities.
Lew’s legal work for Chinese labor contractors also adopted a protective
role to deter labor unions. Contractors often used their control over workers’
debts and their knowledge of workers’ immigration status to pressure Chi-
nese to renounce unionization efforts. Chinese labor contractors did so in
Vancouver Island’s coal-mining strike of 1912–1913, and frustrated white
miners attacked the strikebreakers, including Chinese workers, destroying
and looting their homes.52 Six years later, in 1919, David Lew and other Chi-
nese labor contractors were still pressing Canadian officials to compensate
Chinese for this miners’ “rebellion.”53 By that time, many Chinese workers
had joined labor unions, which challenged Chinese labor contractors’ claims
to speak for all Chinese.54 Lew’s attempts to secure redress for white labor
unions’ past misdeeds helped with the argument that Chinese merchants
would be better protectors.
As long as Canada and British Columbia had weak collective bargaining
laws, labor contractors’ claims to be collective legal protectors appeared to be
somewhat persuasive. However, contrary to Anglo fears that Chinese prac-
ticed “yellow slavery,” labor contractors could not fully control immigrant
workers.55 Indeed, they had to cultivate Chinese workers’ confidence contin-
ually. Dissatisfied Chinese workers would stop work, throw down their tools,
protest, and vote with their feet, taking their scarce labor to better-paid
locales in the United States.56 The Sam Kee Company (Sanji Gongsi), with
which Lew was allied, found that in any given month, about half of its
Chinese lumber workers left for other locations.57 In 1908, the Vancouver
General Hospital demanded that the Chinese Benevolent Association (CBA,
Zhonghua Huiguan) pay all Chinese unpaid bills. However, most of the
Chinese debtors could not be found, so Lew negotiated that their hospital
debts be written off in exchange for an $800 goodwill donation from Chinese
merchants. He asked that in the future the CBA be informed when Chinese
entered the hospital so that they could be tracked before they left the city.58
Legal brokers’ work reveals a dynamic picture of Chinese Canadians’ dealings
with the law and governance of economic affairs, suggesting that popular
uses of the law should be taken into account as fully as Chinese merchants’
court challenges to discriminatory laws.
Canadian Courts, Community Dispute Resolution,

and Intra-Chinese Conflicts
Immigrants also saw Canadian courts as an effective means to compel the
resolution of intra-Chinese conflicts. Chinese frequently turned to Canadian
courts to adjudicate disputes.59 Despite this, most scholars have interpreted
Chinese organizations’ exhortations to resolve disputes internally as evidence
of an unassimilated immigrant population. The majority of Chinese in British
Columbia belonged to community organizations, such as the Chinese Free-
masons and local Chinese benevolent associations, whose charters emphasized
that members should resolve intra-Chinese disputes internally.60 For example,
Victoria’s Chinese Consolidated Benevolent Association (CCBA, Zhonghua
Huiguan) claimed the authority to judge intra-Chinese disputes. It mandated
that each side bring advocates and witnesses to an association hearing for
judgment. The CCBA’s 1884 charter stated that failure to abide by its
rulings would lead to the expulsion of offenders, who would be “handed over
to the police.”61 However, Chinese Canadians faced a situation in which all
processes of dispute resolution had shortcomings. In principle, Vancouver’s
Chinese Benevolent Association (Zhonghua Huiguan) had a mandate to repre-
sent all Chinese. By 1924, though, the CBA had become a battleground for
community control rather than an impartial mediator. Supporters of China’s
Nationalist Party competed with the Chinese Freemasons to control Vancou-
ver’s CBA. Canadian courts had disadvantages as well, but brokers’ business
records reveal that Chinese Canadians readily used the Canadian legal system
to adjudicate disputes.62
Brokers mediated between the informal Chinese and the formal Canadian
justice systems because immigrants often treated these two dispute resolu-
tion mechanisms as parts of a single continuum. Turning to Canadian courts
was an implied critique of immigrant institutions that had failed to meet the
need for impartial conflict resolution. The courts complemented Chinese
community organizations, which often were unable to reach consensus when
mediating disputes and which sometimes favored the strong. The following
two cases show this blended process of dispute resolution.
According to Da Han Gong Bao, on 23 August 1924, police arrested a
man called Chong Sing (Zheng Sheng), whom David Lew accused of assaulting
and robbing two Chinese of $300. One of the robbed Chinese had to be
treated at the hospital. At first, the victim felt that he could not testify in
court against Chong, but with David Lew’s help, the victim swore out a war-
rant against him. Lawyer friends of Lew reported that, afterward, Chong had
the chance to go to “the association” to confess. Da Han Gong Bao does not
specify which Chinese association, but it was probably the CBA. The associ-
ation arranged to slow down the court case in the hope that a settlement
could be negotiated.63 After hearing the facts, the association offered to can-
cel the criminal charges if Chong paid $1,000 to the victims, but Chong’s
friends rejected this offer.64 As a friend of the injured victim, Lew tried to use
Canadian justice as a tool with which to pressure Chong to accept the Chinese
community’s sanctions for his alleged crime, although conflict-of-interest
issues raised questions about the association’s impartiality. The CBA officers
were elected by the heads of all the major Chinese associations in Vancouver,
but at the time of this dispute, Lew’s brother dentist Yick Pang Lew (Liao Ye
Pang) was serving as CBA president.65 Further, if the Chinese robbery
victims had to file charges with the Canadian police to get help from the
Chinese associations, the internal dispute resolution mechanisms may have
been weak indeed.66
The interplay between internal and external forms of conflict resolution
was also evident in a 1933 dispute between Jang Jack and G. Yom over the
ownership of a vegetable-peddling truck. The evidence here comes from the
papers of Yip Quene, a Canadian-born Chinese interpreter, insurance agent,
and all-around fixer who often handled Chinese immigrants’ legal problems
as part of his work for Vancouver’s Wing Sang Company. When Jang Jack
returned to China in 1930 to visit his family, he sold his truck and vegetable-
peddling business to G. Yom for $400. As part of the sale, the two men
agreed that Jang could buy back the business when he returned. To seal
their verbal agreement, G. Yom announced it to members of the Chinese
Peddlers’ Association (Caiye Gonghui). As Yip noted in a brief prepared for
Yom’s lawyer, “It is the general custom of the Vancouver Chinese peddlers
to sell and buy their trucks through verbal agreement. Generally all their
transactions are based on trust and promise.” After the sale, as was custom-
ary, Jang accompanied Yom along his vegetable-peddling route to show
him the business and introduce him to his customers. Jang then left for
China and did not return until 15 May 1933. He then asked to buy back the
business from Yom for $400, but Yom insisted on $450, resulting in an
impasse.67
In August 1933, Jang, with the help of Foon Sien Wong, charged Yom
with the theft of his truck. The Vancouver police then arrested Yom and
seized the disputed truck. Yom’s arrest moved the Chinese community’s
process of dispute resolution into high gear. H. Y. (Hok Yat) Louie, a
prominent Chinese merchant in the fruit and vegetable retail industry,
vouched for Yom. He had heard that Jang sold his business to Yom, and
based on their twenty years of acquaintance in Vancouver, Louie knew Yom
to be an honest man. Louie put up $3,000 of his own money for Yom’s bail.
Louie’s knowledge of the fruit and vegetable retail business carried much
weight, especially because most vegetable peddlers came from Louie’s ances-
tral county of Zhongshan. On the Sunday following Yom’s arrest, Yip and
members of the Chinese Peddlers’ Association conducted an investigation.
Jang’s legal assistant, Wong, told Yip that Yom paid Jang in full for the truck
in 1930. Meanwhile, several delegates of the Chinese Peddlers’ Association
interviewed Jang, but according to Yip, Jang denied that he had ever received
payment in full from Yom. No witnesses or receipts could prove either man’s
account. In the end, Yom offered to resolve the conflict by either keeping the
peddling truck and business or selling it back to Jang for $400. Ultimately,
Jang appeared to get his wish, and here again, Chinese immigrants had used
the Canadian legal system via brokers to force the resolution of an intra-
Chinese dispute.68 As in other legal practice, court action escalated the costs
and risks of continuing the dispute, raising pressure on both sides to negoti-
ate a resolution. Both of these cases suggest that the terrain of legal history
should be extended to better encompass informal negotiations. When juxta-
posed, ethnic and mainstream dispute resolution processes often appear inex-
tricable, pointing scholars toward a broader conception of the legal history of
Canada, one deeply embedded in multicultural negotiations.
Chinese Legal Brokerage as Law Enforcement
Vancouver police did not hire Chinese directly, so they used men like Lew on
the sly to do their detective work. For sleuthing, Lew charged $10 per day
plus expenses for his wages and those of his Chinese helpers who collected
information. The British Columbia provincial police hired a private detective
agency that employed Chinese operatives. Brokers investigated Chinese busi-
ness disputes and crimes such as auto accidents, assault, theft, and murder.
They examined crime scenes, interviewed community members, sent agents
to watch suspects, gathered physical evidence, and translated what they found
for Anglo police and attorneys.69 While police relied on Chinese brokers for
a variety of services, it was difficult to assess the reliability of the Chinese who
were hired to do detective work. Western Canadian cities at times turned to
outsiders in the hope of finding impartial Chinese detectives. In 1909, Lew
warned the Winnipeg police chief, J. C. McRae, that there was little chance
of enforcing the law among Chinese because “[s]ome interpreter[s] may
conceal from the police while pretending to assist them.”70 Chinese legal
interpreters, however, often belonged to political networks which influenced
their appointments within the judicial system.
Legal interpreters had multiple allegiances, and sometimes they aided
extralegal actions that reflected their compromised position as brokers. Polit-
ical appointments strongly influenced the personnel of British Columbia’s
justice system,71 so Chinese Canadian legal interpreters often had political
debts. In August 1924, British Columbia attorney general Alexander Manson
appointed Foon Sien Wong as a court interpreter. The same month, Wong
joined his employer and probable sponsor, the private detective firm Robinson-
Mansfield, in the illegal kidnapping of a Chinese servant, Foon Sing Wong
(Huang Huan Sheng). The provincial police suspected that Foon Sing might
know about the shooting death earlier in the year of his coworker, white
nursemaid Janet Smith. On their behalf, the private detectives kidnapped
Foon Sing and savagely beat him, while Foon Sien translated Anglo detec-
tives’ questions.72 Chinese and English debates over the interpreters’ conflict
of interest ensued.
At the time, many Anglos in the United States and Canada expected
Chinese legal interpreters to be entangled in political dealings related to
their appointments. These arrangements, which usually involved graft and
political patronage, interacted at the same time with widespread Anglo and
Chinese convictions that the courts should be just. The public debate over
Chinese legal brokers’ ethics appeared to recognize their difficult position in
the political structure. The English press exposed Foon Sien as an employee
of a detective agency that did “off the books” work for local police agencies.
Foon Sien also had negotiated a written contract among himself, a Chinese
drug dealer called Wong Ming Choo, and Oscar Robinson, a private detec-
tive involved in the kidnapping, to “deal in opium and other drugs.” Yet,
Foon Sien’s actions were not unprecedented. Several other prominent Chinese
legal power brokers had criminal convictions, so this revelation alone did not
appear to tarnish his business.73 However, Chinese and Anglo outrage at the
kidnapping prompted unnamed “older Chinese merchants” to hire David
Lew to draft an official complaint to the attorney general about Foon Sien’s
actions. Hundreds of ordinary Chinese and the Vancouver Sun, an Anglo news-
paper, donated to Foon Sing’s legal defense.74 Foon Sien’s subsequent actions
seemed to indicate that he felt the Chinese community’s pressure to treat
Foon Sing better. When requested in court to ask Foon Sing whether he had
loved Janet Smith, Foon Sien replied with a lie: he could not translate the
question because “there was no word for ‘love’ in Chinese.”75 In actuality,
Foon Sien was a Chinese matchmaker and published poet, so he spoke the
language of love with both verse and verve.76 Like Foon Sien Wong, Chinese
legal brokers often became collaborators with the Anglo legal system to
access influence, while also mitigating anti-Chinese measures. In doing so,
brokers walked a political tightrope.
The Politics of Policing Chinese Gambling

Scholars have used the historical term “tong war” to describe a range of po-
litical conflicts involving Chinese associations seeking to control and protect
illegal activities. Most U.S. scholars interpret tong wars as organized crime.77
David Lew’s murder mystery underlines the different Chinese Canadian
perspectives of the associations and their legal brokers. Chinese Canadians
recognized their compromised nature, but they also respected that the asso-
ciations met their members’ needs for legal representation. Thousands of
Chinese Canadians came out to honor Lew during his funeral procession.
Men, women, and children dressed in their Sunday best packed more than
seven blocks of Vancouver’s streets to honor him as a legal hero. Da Han Gong
Bao described Lew as an oppressor, but reported that even his Chinese enemies
felt obligated to pay their respects. Today, Lew lies in an unmarked grave,
remembered only briefly by historians as a murdered corrupt interpreter.78
In British Columbia, as in the United States, gambling’s staggering
profits united legal brokers, influential Chinese, and white law enforcement
officials in exploiting a captive Chinese market for recreation. Liang Qichao,
a political leader from China who visited in 1903, estimated that Chinese in
Vancouver spent over $300,000 annually on gambling. In British Columbia
as a whole, Chinese gambling was a million-dollar industry.79 In 1924, Van-
couver had twenty-six big gambling houses, where Chinese went to eat,
drink, socialize, gamble, and smoke opium.80 The clientele for Chinese gam-
bling clubs in British Columbia also included white, Japanese, and black
workers.81 By the 1920s, Chinese gambling had become a popular pastime
across racial, gender, and class lines. The Vancouver Sun published stories
about English society matrons in Vancouver and Victoria holding mah jong
parties, where they gambled with friends while dining on homemade Chi-
nese dishes made from recipes published in the newspaper, such as egg foo
young, almond chicken, and white chopped chicken.82
At the time, social gambling was popular among all classes, but British
Columbia law allowed gambling only in private settings and at horse-racing
tracks. Individuals could place wagers with each other, but public gaming
was restricted to licensed private clubs. These private clubs were not permit-
ted to profit from members’ private games. Effectively, the law permitted
middle-class whites to gamble while making most lower-class public gaming
illegal.83 The police especially targeted Chinese for gambling arrests.84
The political conflicts preceding Lew’s murder began when his association
of Chinese from Panyu, the Yue Shan Society (Yushan Zongxinju), joined Chi-
na’s Nationalist Party in challenging the Chinese Freemasons for dominance in
legal brokerage over Chinese gambling.85 By 1918, British Columbia’s gam-
bling policy had begun to change. Lew’s lawyer ally J.W. de B. Farris had
become attorney general of the province in 1917 (he would serve until 1922).
Farris began to grant licenses to some Chinese gambling clubs.86 Chinese
Freemason complaints in Da Han Gong Bao suggest that the new licensing
policy favored Lew’s faction.87 Gambling club licenses conferred great
competitive advantage, the security of state sanction. Most Chinese clubs
remained unlawful and were thus obliged to bribe police and officials lest
their patrons become targets of the frequent anti-Chinese gambling raids
of the era.88
For Chinese, the selective nature of police enforcement directed customers
toward gambling houses owned by powerful people whose arrangements
with the authorities could protect clients from arrest.89 The police court often
fined Chinese a month’s wages for being “an inmate of a gambling house.”90
Business records show that many successful, legitimate Chinese entrepre-
neurs also ran gambling dens, including the Yips, Lee Saifan, Chang Toy, and
Lee Mongkow.91 Vancouver police cracked down sporadically, but made no
sustained effort to root out Chinese gambling because the payoffs were so
profitable.92 In his final days, Lew was planning to ask for a British Columbia
provincial inquiry into Chinese gambling to override local corruption.93 By
appealing to a higher level of government, Lew sought advantage within a
larger political arena that was less easily manipulated by local officials. Polit-
ically, he intended to destroy not only his Chinese opponents but their Anglo
allies as well.94
Transnational and domestic rivalries amplified Lew’s British Columbia
disputes over gambling into a wider struggle for legal brokerage power. Dur-
ing the early 1920s, China’s Nationalists saw North America as a rich source
of revolutionary funds. Along the Pacific Coast, from Mexico to Canada, the
Nationalist Party and the Chinese Freemasons engaged in a bitter rivalry
over the control of Chinese immigrant communities. At the same time, a
tong war broke out in the United States between Hip Sing Tong (Xie Bang
Tang) and On Leong Tong (An Liang Tang), both affiliates of the North Amer-
ican Chinese triad federation to which the Chinese Freemasons belonged. Da
Han Gong Bao printed allegations that David Lew’s brother, a Chinese inter-
preter at New York’s port, had been involved in these U.S. tong
conflicts.95 However, despite the larger backdrops, Lew’s struggle also contin-
ued an earlier competition among factions of Chinese businesspeople from
his minority Sanyi and the majority Siyi regions of Guangdong. The other
two dominant forces in Chinese legal brokerage over gambling, the Chinese
Freemasons and the Chinese Nationalists, had stronger, broader member-
ships. Lew sought a middle position in the quarrels between these two larger
associations, playing them against each other.96 Thus, ongoing Pacific world
ties and continuing Chinese-Anglo negotiations both shaped the exercise of
legal brokerage power.
Initially, Lew’s much smaller but wealthy faction held sway. Lew helped
police to crack down on Chinese Freemasons’ gambling businesses in Victo-
ria, in Vancouver, and on Vancouver Island. Da Han Gong Bao alleged that his
actions destroyed hundreds of thousands of dollars of gambling revenue.97
Lew also targeted the Chinese Freemasons’ illegal immigration, labor con-
tracting, prostitution, and bootlegging businesses. In Vancouver, Lew acted
as a powerful Chinese representative to city officials and police, relentlessly
pressuring the Chinese Freemasons.98
Strife between Chinese merchant factions in the Chinese Freemasons and
the Yue Shan Society also led to clashes on Vancouver Island over business
territories for the Chinese commerce of migration.99 In 1920, Lew’s Yue Shan
Society had attempted to challenge the powerful Lun Yick Company (Lianyi
Gongsi) of Nanaimo, which controlled much of the Chinese commerce in that
city.100 The Yips were part owners of the company and collected its rents.101
The company had built a gated Chinatown, and it exercised great control
over Chinese jobs, housing, and gambling services.102 Lew helped to establish
a rival enterprise and used his own money to make loans for Chinese illegal
immigrants’ passage. The illegal immigrants worked for Lew’s labor con-
tracting firm, lived at his boardinghouse, gambled at his gambling club, and
bought supplies at his company store until they paid off their debts. The Lun
Yick Company did not want a rival, and it harassed Lew’s firm. It built a
house that blocked his front door until Lew persuaded the city of Nanaimo
that his property was on a public road, which forced the house’s removal. The
Lun Yick Company had Lew arrested in 1922 on trumped-up charges that he
had removed a surveyor’s post.103 Lew was acquitted in 1923 and counter-
sued his opponents for false testimony and malicious prosecution. A jury
awarded Lew an immense $10,000 settlement against Wing Lee (Rong Li),
the Lun Yick Company’s president. Canada’s supreme court planned to hear
the case only weeks before Lew’s death. The chance that Wing might lose to
Lew on appeal was one possible motive for the killing.104
By the summer of 1924, it appeared that Lew’s probable alliance with the
provincial Liberal government had ended. He hired a spy to infiltrate a
Chinese Freemason bootlegging operation whose exposure would have dam-
aged the ruling provincial Liberal Party. His espionage targeted an unnamed
Chinese liquor store owner who was the powerful concubine of an unnamed
wealthy Chinese Freemason leader. The Vancouver Daily Province described
this leader as an “influential old tyee,” a Chinook term which referred to a
respected Chinese chief.105 The infiltration of the Chinese woman’s liquor
business, which involved either false or stolen British Columbia Liquor
Control Board seals on the bottles of alcohol, coincided with a wider public
scandal over bootlegging.106 This scandal involved allegations of patronage,
corruption, and graft at the Liquor Control Board.107 From mid-June 1924
through 20 September 1924, Lew and his allies taunted their opponents in a
signed front-page Da Han Gong Bao advertisement stating that the city of
Vancouver had snared the woman’s Canadian Oriental Wine and Liquor
Company for illegally selling alcohol without paying the proper taxes.108
Vancouver city officials penalized the Chinese liquor store owner’s business.
However, she appeared to have powerful protectors; police declined to arrest
her until four months later, on the night of Lew’s death.109 The contradictory
pattern of events—official action but police delay—suggests there was a
power struggle among Chinese for influence with Vancouver’s authorities.
Chinese merchant factions in the Freemasons and Yue Shan also clashed
over the control of illegal immigration to the United States. In 1920, Sanyi
and Siyi competed for the CPR’s favor, seeking to secure the lucrative
position of Hong Kong ticket agent. The CPR awarded the position to Sanyi
Lee Mongkow, taking it away from Siyi Yip family businesses. The Hong
Kong ticket agent sold steamship and rail tickets to Chinese passengers trav-
eling to Canada, the United States, and the rest of the Americas. By the
interwar era, many settlement nations in the Americas had implemented
anti-Chinese immigration policies, ranging from exclusion laws to informal
deterrence. The global creation of barriers to Chinese migration meant that
the CPR’s continued profits increasingly depended on Chinese Pacific world
political networks. The continuity of Chinese migration in the Exclusion Era
involved more than economic or cultural factors. It depended on political
initiatives by Chinese resident in the Americas. Their political alliances at
ports and borders made Chinese migrations possible. Presumably, the CPR
judged Lew’s faction as being better able to deliver the political goods. Lee
retired from his post as Victoria’s official Chinese immigration interpreter,
and he returned to Hong Kong to set up his CPR ticket agent business,
which Chinese on both sides of the forty-ninth parallel regarded as a “most
desirable commercial position.”110 Shortly afterward, David Lew began work
as the official immigration interpreter at Victoria, screening Chinese entering
Canada and the United States.
Given the unsettled situation for Chinese in Canada and abroad, Lew’s
faction moved quickly to consolidate its position as a premier legal broker. It
targeted a faction of Chinese Canadian businesspeople within the Chinese
Freemasons. While working as an immigration interpreter, Lew gathered
evidence of a Chinese human-smuggling ring that made “huge profits”
through the evasion of Canadian and U.S. immigration laws. Lew then
revealed his findings to U.S. immigration authorities, enabling them to crack
down on the ring in the United States. As a result, federal authorities arrest-
ed David C. Kerr, the U.S. vice consul in Vancouver, for accepting bribes
from Chinese in Canada to evade the U.S. Chinese Exclusion Act through
fraudulent entry as “students” and “merchants.”111 Lew also attempted to
expose the smuggling ring’s involvement in the Chinese “slave girl traffic.”
Lew claimed that a ring of Chinese businesspeople in larger Pacific Coast
cities of both Canada and the United States had organized this illegal
sex-trafficking scheme.112 Lew told his Anglo lawyer friends that these busi-
nesspeople would kill him if he revealed his discoveries to the Canadian
authorities.113 If Lew’s revelations about Chinese prostitution had become
widely known, there would have been Anglo outrage, fueled as much by anti-
Chinese sentiment as the truth about forced Chinese female immigration.114
Such a public uproar might have forced authorities to back off from their
protection of Lew’s rivals.
Minutes before Lew was shot dead, he had arranged to speak with a Vancouver
Sun reporter about prominent Chinese merchants’ involvement in “female
slavery.”115 Perhaps Lew’s last act came from the heart rather than from his
survival instinct. Maybe, like many Chinese, he disapproved of the abuse of
these women.116 Still, public scrutiny after Lew’s death did not fundamen-
tally change the institutions that backed Chinese political and legal broker-
age. Given anti-Chinese laws, many immigrants believed that, despite being
less than ideal, Chinese-Anglo alliances were necessary to sustain their way of
life in both Canada and the larger Pacific world.
The political processes of legal brokerage survived Lew, despite a swift
crackdown on all Chinese associations in British Columbia following his
murder. In Vancouver, police raided gambling clubs, strictly enforced all
health regulations, and warned that any Chinese restaurant which sold illegal
alcohol would be shut down. Vancouver mayor William Owen attributed the
murder to Chinese disputes over gambling. Most people at City Hall agreed,
believing that an unnamed wealthy local Chinese association had hired an
assassin to kill Lew.117 The graft of both police and officials had long been an
open secret in Vancouver, but Owen blamed the Chinese for their corrupting
influence more so than the city authorities who had lined their own pockets.
Meanwhile, the Da Han Gong Bao reported that the illegal alcohol trade in
non-Chinese areas flourished unhindered. Within three years, the corruption
of police and officials returned to business as usual.118
Chinese also continued to use the law as a tool to resolve internal disputes.
On Vancouver Island, David Lew’s attempt to force the Lun Yick Company
to share power with other Chinese merchants ultimately worked. David Lew’s
brother Yick Pang Lew inherited the lawsuit against Wing Lee of the Lun
Yick Company. The two Chinese merchant factions appealed it all the way to
the British Empire’s highest court, the Judicial Committee of the Privy
Council in London. The law lords ruled that the case survived the death of
Lew, but ordered that a new jury trial be held to set the award at a more
appropriate level.119 By the mid-1920s, other Chinese companies in Nanaimo
had developed the area around Lew’s former leasehold, creating an expanded
Chinese district on Machleary Street.120
Lew’s murder remains a mystery, though his Panyu friends believed that
a Chinese Freemason assassin was responsible. Lew’s friends found the man
they believed to be the shooter, Chong Sing, in Victoria on 3 November
1924. Chong, they alleged, wanted revenge for Lew’s involvement in bring-
ing robbery charges against him.121 In court, Chong seemed an improbable
shooter because he was in his fifties and appeared “old and slow.”122 However,
in 1924, Da Han Gong Bao reported that Chong had assaulted with a hammer
two gamblers patronizing a rival establishment, putting one in the hospi-
tal.123 The Chinese Freemasons hired a legal team to defend Chong and
brought J. P. Sam, a Chinese Canadian legal interpreter, from Toronto to
assist with the case.124 Chong’s lawyers claimed that he was a victim of a
Yue Shan Society conspiracy to frame him for murder. The Vancouver police
forgot to check for fingerprints on the assassin’s revolver, so no physical
evidence connected Chong to the crime.125 At trial, eyewitnesses to the
shooting appeared unconvincing, so an Anglo jury acquitted Chong on 24
April 1925.126
The surviving evidence does not clearly indicate the identity of David
Lew’s successor. Lew’s death left a power vacuum among Vancouver’s Chinese
legal brokers. During 1925, Tom Whaun (Huang Song Mao), a court inter-
preter and a student at the University of British Columbia, clipped an English
newspaper article that reported that two unnamed young Chinese men had
engaged in a fierce rivalry to replace David Lew as “the gamblers’ lawyer,”
though whether the article was referring to Whaun is unknown. Each man
sought to demonstrate his legal virtuosity. The first young man intended
to legalize Chinese gambling through court challenges. The second young
man chose to demonstrate his skill through legal fights between Chinese
associations.127 The struggle to replace Lew underscored that legal brokerage
relations involved more than structures and institutions. Brokers also relied
heavily on their individual leadership, skills, and idiosyncratic improvisa-
tions on their informal “Chinese lawyer” role.
Conclusions
Much like other forms of brokerage politics, legal brokerage relations
became a structuring force for Chinese immigration during the Exclusion
Era. Nevertheless, Chinese legal brokerage’s frequent association with
Chinese community power had an uneven effect. Chinese women and workers
had lower positions in Chinese Canadian community hierarchies. In 1921,
only one out of ten Chinese in Vancouver was female.128 Consequently, when
Chinese women engaged in disputes with Chinese men, they more readily
turned to outsiders, such as European Christian missionaries, to act as their
legal brokers.129 Likewise, Chinese workers sometimes used labor unions as
alternate legal advocates. Relations between these outsider and insider forms
of dispute resolution merit future research.
The study of Chinese brokerage relations also suggests the promise of
studying a multicultural legal culture that takes ethnic minorities’ alternative
public spheres and informal dispute resolution processes more fully into
account. Chinese in British Columbia also had many legal dealings with
non-European peoples, especially First Nations people and Japanese Canadi-
ans. A more complete legal history of British Columbia reflective of its popu-
lation would require exploring brokerage in relation to other minority groups
as well.
Last, Chinese legal brokerage should be studied more in its transnational
contexts. The field of U.S. legal history suggests promising avenues. In
Canada, neither Chinese immigration files nor Chinese civil law cases have
been systematically studied, so much remains unknown. China’s practices
also inform much of Chinese Canadian legal interpreting as a profession.
Future research in Canada and the United States may wish to explore how
legal culture, institutions, and personnel emerged from a Pacific world con-
text. Ultimately, Chinese-Anglo legal relations and the Pacific world could
not often be separated.
three
| Popularizing Politics
The Anti-Segregation Movement as Social Revolution
F or one year, from september 1922 to September 1923, at least

3,000–4,000 Chinese in British Columbia joined an anti-segregation
movement, defying both white authorities and powerful Chinese leaders to
demand equal education in the public schools.1 Through civil disobedience,
protesters challenged pro-segregationists determined to separate Asian and
white children. In Vancouver, organizer Joe Hope (Liu Guangxu) described
the stakes to 500 Chinese attending an Anti-Segregation Association speech
day. Without equal education, he said, “Our people’s body could die. Our
wealth could be stamped out. When our people’s roots are cut off, we have no
choice but to resist.”2 To Chinese, rising calls for their exclusion felt like a
fenghu, a political movement as potent as the winds and tides.3 In Da Han
Gong Bao, Chinese declared that world history was on their side. Many pro-
testers believed the Pacific world to be in the midst of egalitarian social
revolutions, and these global events gave their cause a moral force more
powerful than their white opponents’ votes and laws.4 Their opponents, who
were both Anglo and Chinese, viewed these revolutionary trends as danger-
ous.5 Thus, a protest that started with a school boycott grew into a greater
struggle over defining the limits of popular democracy.
Historians have studied the anti-segregation movement mainly in terms
of domestic race relations, seeing clashes between the “Chinese” and “white”
sides. In their readings, school segregation policies expressed an overwhelm-
ing white supremacy that Chinese resistance could at times temper but not
entirely halt.6 This reading, while broadly correct, presumes a racial unity on
both sides that Chinese news reports from the time do not support. Accord-
ing to Vancouver’s Da Han Gong Bao, Chinatown’s power brokers sharply
differed in their opinions about how best to manage the school segregation
problem. As collaborators with white power, and as leaders of resistance to it,
many had been cautious about antagonizing their white allies. Most Chinese
power brokers worked quietly to mitigate racial discrimination, fearing that
public confrontation would only make things worse.7 This time, several
thousand ordinary Chinese, and a good many but not all brokers, would take
a stand against social injustice.
Following the First World War, new popular social movements trans-
formed brokerage relations across Canada’s Pacific world. The entry of great
numbers of ordinary people into politics had a profound impact.8 As a
result, brokers who derived their power from traditional entrepreneurial
structures had to deal with a more restive, demanding populace. Many of
these traditional brokers, including the anti-segregation movement’s
leaders, adapted to social movement politics. Social movement politics also
expanded the personnel of brokerage relations. New groups of Chinese
power brokers, such as students, intellectuals, workers, and women, also
contended to manage race relations. These movements sparked a series of
challenges that rapidly altered Chinese Canadian politics; they also started
to transform race relations.
The challenges occurred during an era of intense Anglo racial prejudices
toward Chinese Canadians. Da Han Gong Bao reported that a political move-
ment of 1,000 European Canadians (xiren) had expanded the segregation of
Chinese children at public schools in the nearby city of Victoria. The pro-
segregation movement leaders then traveled to Vancouver. Only with the
yellow and white races segregated, they argued, would they be able to pre-
vent future Chinese and Japanese dominance in Canada’s government and
industries.9 In response, school boards in North Vancouver and Vancouver
started to investigate the issue. At a meeting of North Vancouver’s school
board in October 1922, European parents denounced the presence of older
Chinese immigrants in elementary grades and demanded that they be segre-
gated.10 In Vancouver, Anglo demands for expanded public school segrega-
tion prompted the city’s education department to revisit the idea of fully
segregating Asian children.11 The question had come up in 1920, but had
been defeated when Vancouver’s school principals refuted the accusation
that Chinese pupils hindered their classmates’ progress.12 In 1922, the anti-
segregation movement had greater Anglo support. A “political storm for seg-
regation” had arisen, said Da Han Gong Bao, and its “drenching had not yet
stopped.”13 Seeing Victoria as the thin edge of the wedge, Chinese Canadians
organized an anti-segregation movement, bringing the Pacific world’s pres-
sures into their local struggle.
Between the late 1910s and the late 1930s, Canada’s exclusionary policies
peaked. Most scholars have viewed this era as a time of nativism, dominated
by political movements to expel immigrants whom mainstream Canadians
felt threatened the nation. Most West Coast historians have examined this
struggle to halt the expansion of segregation by focusing on how a local-born
“second generation” of Chinese engaged in the politics of defining the mean-
ing of Canadian or American citizenship. They attempted to establish the
principle that all citizens deserved equal rights to opportunity.14 But another
type of politics also became relevant to all sides of the school segregation
struggle: the popular movements for anti-imperialist nationalism that were
sweeping the Pacific world.
I argue that the social movements of the late 1910s and 1920s profoundly
influenced Canada’s race relations. In China, these movements included the
May Fourth movement (1917–1925), the Nationalist revolution (1923–
1928), and the founding of China’s Communist Party (1921).15 All three
struggles mobilized ordinary workers to boycott and strike in protest against
foreign domination. These struggles emerged as part of a global set of move-
ments for anti-colonial nationalism after the First World War’s victors did not
fulfill their promise of liberation for colonized peoples.16 Concurrently, the
global rise of socialism inspired workers to organize themselves as political
actors and to demand greater power in class relations. Moreover, new dis-
courses of national identity in the United States and Canada began to imagine
immigrants’ place in more pluralistic terms. A growing Anglo receptivity to
second-generation immigrant youth expressed a nascent cultural pluralism
in social understandings of citizenship. Collectively, all three movements
helped to popularize politics. In doing so, they diversified brokerage author-
ity and expanded routes to political integration.
This chapter explores the Chinese anti–school segregation movement
from transnational and regional perspectives in order to balance the existing
scholarship’s focus on school boycott activities in Victoria. Particularly, this
account of the anti-segregation movement challenges a view about Chinese
in Canada and the United States that sees protests for equal rights as an out-
come of assimilation, rather than as a product of Pacific world experience,
when often it was both.17 Moreover, this literature has often missed the ways
that global anti-colonial nationalist protests affected immigrants and race
relations after the First World War.
Copious documentary evidence situates the anti-segregation movement
in relation to Canadian encounters with Pacific world events. In the years
p opularizing p olitics | 71
shortly after the First World War, the pages of Da Han Gong Bao demon-
strated a pattern of expansive hopes about the social revolutions coursing
through China and Canada, followed by defensive retreat.18 Most historians’
retrospective analysis views the postwar period as one in which social justice
movements were defeated by counterrevolutionary forces. Many Canadian
historians see the period through the white labor movement’s apparent fail-
ure to embrace a working-class solidarity that transcended racial divisions
and its expression of anti-immigrant nativism.19 An examination of the
school boycott in the context of social movements helps to reconstruct the
political contingencies of the moment. Inside this political maelstrom, a
third generation of Chinese brokers in Vancouver and Victoria came of age.
Many of these social movement leaders were merchants and interpreters who
transformed their leadership of traditional institutions like Chinese benevo-
lent associations20 to meet changing Chinese Canadian public expectations.
However, Chinese brokers in British Columbia divided on questions about
the proper extent of popularizing politics. In China, Nationalist Party and
Communist Party members often led the anti-colonial protests and boycotts
that mobilized ordinary people, making some established Chinese merchants
wary of the anti-segregation movement’s leadership. Chinese political bro-
kers had built their power through managing Chinese relations with Anglo
institutions. Mass politics threatened to redraw those borders, reshaping the
territory for leaders who collaborated across them. Local politics were forged
within the dueling forces of global revolution and counterrevolution.
Contexts of Anti-Segregation Protest: Canada, the

United States, China, and the British Empire
The anti-segregation movement of 1922–1923 began when Chinese in
Victoria boycotted public schools to protest against the expansion of racial
segregation, but over the course of the year, it grew into a regional protest
movement for equality. It was a response to Anglo pro-segregation pressures
across the West Coast in the 1920s for more complete separation of the
Chinese and white races in public schools.21 At the time, Vancouver and
Victoria practiced partial segregation by separating Chinese children from
white children in the lower grades and by separating the “over-age” immi-
grants whose English was behind their grade level. San Francisco and Oak-
land, California, did likewise.22 However, pro-segregation activists wanted to
extend segregation to the few Chinese students who reached higher grades
in both British Columbia and California.23 In 1922, Victoria’s school board
expanded Chinese segregation to the first seven grades, drastically reducing
Chinese children’s opportunity to interact with English-speaking children.24
Other immigrants, including Japanese, did not attend segregated schools.
The majority of Chinese left school to work at age fourteen, so the new policy
effectively excluded them from mingling with other Canadian children.25
Enraged, Chinese Canadian parents organized a boycott of the Victoria public
schools, creating a political crisis that neither side could easily resolve.
On 6 September 1922, the Victoria Daily Times reported that Chinese had
“rebelled” over attending segregated public schools. At the Boys’ Central
School, Principal Cunningham ordered Chinese children out of their regular
classrooms. As he started to lead the Chinese students away, a Chinese boy
called out “in the Oriental lingo” and, in a flash, all of the Chinese students
suddenly dispersed on cue, starting a citywide “school strike.”26 During
1922, over 125 similar politically motivated school strikes occurred in China.
Three institutions organized the boycott: the Chinese Consolidated Benevo-
lent Association (CCBA), the Chinese Chamber of Commerce, and the Chi-
nese Canadian Club (CCC).27
Public pressure, boycott organizers hoped, would force the school segre-
gation conflict into more favorable arenas than municipal politics. Chinese
Canadians in Victoria raised money throughout British Columbia and Cana-
da to support the boycott and to fund a court challenge. Simultaneously, they
appealed to their Anglo allies in Canada. To Victoria’s school board, Chinese
boycott organizers submitted a petition with “the strongest possible objec-
tions to segregation.”28 As disenfranchised residents, they were legally pow-
erless, so they appealed on moral and diplomatic grounds. “We are bitterly
conscious of our helplessness so far as legal and constitutional redress are
concerned, and we can only invoke the world reputation earned by the British
Empire for justice and ‘fair play’ and the close friendship which has existed
for many years between the British Empire and China.”29 The letter encapsu-
lated the organizers’ transpacific strategy, creating public pressure not only in
Canada but also in China and the United States.
Locally raised Chinese youth in Victoria’s Chinese Canadian Club (also
known as the Chinese Canadian Citizens’ Alliance and, in Chinese, as the
Tongyuanhui, or Common Origins Association) also exerted public pressure
on sympathetic Canadians.30 In the Victoria Daily Colonist, Hope asked, “What
can be the purpose behind this movement [for segregation]?” “Can it be the
intention to prevent us securing an English education so that our children
can be permanently ignorant, so that they must remain laborers to be
exploited?”31 His strategy tapped into a larger shift in public discourse about
immigrant youth in U.S.–Canadian culture: the second-generation narrative.
By the 1920s, the second generation had become a popular phenomenon, a
stage of assimilation and estrangement that was explored in fiction, films,
popular songs, and social science.32
In Canada, second-generation immigrant youth groups emerged with the
recent social invention of adolescence as a life stage.33 To Anglos, members
presented themselves as assimilated young Canadians and representatives of
China. According to the Da Han Gong Bao, locally born Chinese (tusheng) in
Victoria founded the Chinese Canadian Club in 1914 “to fight discrimina-
tion through dialogue with Western people.”34 In spirit, the club followed its
probable American template, which shared the same Chinese name, Tongyu-
anhui, the Chinese American Citizens Alliance (CACA), also known in San
Francisco as the Native Sons of the Golden State.35 In Vancouver, the Chinese
Students Alliance (CSA) performed a similar function, and memberships in
CCC and CSA often overlapped. Like the CCC, the CSA also had strong ties
to its counterparts in the United States.36
Protesters intended the boycott to press for recognition of youths’ status
as Chinese Canadians. Boycott spokesmen felt that their Canadian and U.S.
educations showed that other Chinese also deserved the opportunity. Chinese
Canadian Club president Joe Hope had graduated from a Victoria high
school. Steering committee member Cecil Lee was a graduate of an American
university. In 1924, the CCC had about thirty male and female members who
had attended Canadian high schools. They were both immigrants and Cana-
dian-born.37 Members combined publicity with private persuasion, enlisting
support from Canadian schoolteachers and education associations against
segregation.38 Boycott organizers also sent cables appealing for help to the
Beijing government and to the British imperial government in London. They
contacted workers’ groups, student organizations, business associations, and
newspapers in Shanghai, Guangzhou, and Hong Kong. Further, they mailed
circulars asking for help from Chinese organizations across Canada.39 In the
spirit of the natural laws of equality, they asked their Chinese compatriots to
boycott Canadian goods and to use public pressure to end Victoria’s “crime”
against the Chinese people.40
Chinese from Canada, the United States, and China responded with sup-
port. Chinese Canadians from across the country raised funds. Sailors from
China on CPR ships sent donations. Da Han Gong Bao’s accounts of political
repression in China reminded immigrants of their freedom in Canada, which
gave Chinese Canadians a duty to become the educated leaders of a future
modern China.41 Vancouver’s CSA wrote a front-page editorial, urging Chi-
nese Canadians to stand steadfast and stick to the boycott despite fears of
backlash: “Too many sides of our movement do not dare speak out. . . . Though
the struggle for equality will not be quick, dare to act with determination.”42
Chinese students also offered their help, coming from as far as McGill and
Columbia universities to advise the boycott organizers.43 Chinese students at
the University of Chicago wrote letters to the Victoria school board, the
chamber of commerce, politicians, teachers, and citizens, asking them to
reverse school segregation in the name of international friendship.44
As residents of the British Empire, the protesters’ tactics also borrowed
directly from Mohandas Gandhi’s noncooperation movement, a peaceful
challenge to British rule in India much scorned and feared in British Colum-
bia’s English press.45 The Anglo newspaper the Victoria Daily Times saw a
striking similarity between the Chinese strategy and the mass protests
recently quashed in British India, noting, “No purchases of Canadian goods
and no patronage of educational institutions fostered by the Canadian
authorities is the plan favored by some of the more radical elements in Chi-
natown. In fact the plan is identical with that adopted by Gandhi and his
followers in Indian to hamper British rule in that country.”46 Noncooperation
also evoked the recent popular Chinese resistance to British imperialism, par-
ticularly the Hong Kong seamen’s strike of 1922. In Hong Kong and Guang-
dong, 120,000 workers had blocked trade at the ports until Chinese seamen
won more equitable pay compared with white seamen and the right to union-
ize.47 China’s Nationalist Party activists targeted race, class, and imperial
relations that subordinated Chinese in British East Asia; by extension, non-
cooperation with segregated public schools in Canada suggested a parallel
challenge to British dominance.
The Chinese protesters’ name for their boycott, the school strike, also
evoked recent labor militancy in British Columbia that had emboldened
Asians to join with Anglo workers to challenge their subordination. Some
Chinese in Vancouver had joined sympathy strikes during the Winnipeg
general strike of 1919, which historian J. M. Bumstead called “one of the
best-known events in modern Canadian history.”48 A great many others had
followed the general strike in Da Han Gong Bao, which covered the events in
Vancouver and Winnipeg in great detail.49 Although large, the literature on
the strike has not yet inquired into its effects on nonwhite workers, who were
often the most subordinated members of the labor force.50 As Canada con-
fronted the prospect of a socialist workers’ revolt, unions provided the first
serious alternative to Chinese labor contractors’ brokerage.51 While the gen-
eral strike did not succeed, Chinese workers attempted to unionize and strike
frequently between 1916 and the early 1920s. Influenced by other events in
Canada, China, and the United States, these workers asserted the power of
noncooperation to claim an independent voice for ordinary Chinese.52 For
example, in 1919, over 1,000 Chinese shingle workers went on strike with
European and Japanese workers. Their actions shocked Chinese labor con-
tractors, who saw unions as a betrayal of trust. The unions forced the labor
contractors to rescind wage cuts and restore the jobs of striking Chinese
workers. The labor contractors also agreed to work together with Chinese
unions to negotiate with mainstream employers.53 The resulting hybrid
system increased workers’ power but did not displace the labor contracting
system as the dominant means of hiring nonwhite migrant labor. Workers
did not always win, but successful strikes suggested that people power might
be able to challenge Chinese worker-master relations with the British Empire
in both Canada and China.54
Setbacks and Leadership Splits: Brokerage

Rivalries and Popular Protests
Mass protest as an instrument of brokerage politics was a confrontation in
which each side hoped to outlast the other, forcing its opponent to blink.
Keeping the school protest together became more challenging when it became
clear that the boycott would not immediately succeed. The boycott started in
high spirits, but one month into the protest, the Chinese protesters’ court
challenge failed, establishing the legality of school segregation.55 Negotiations
stalled, but Victoria’s school board compromised, allowing a few Chinese to
return to integrated classes. The school board announced that five Chinese
students had passed an English-language test, qualifying them to be admitted
to regular, integrated classes. All five were children of wealthy Chinese mer-
chants. For all other Chinese students, there were two options: attend segre-
gated schools or attend no classes at all. They could be declared truants and
have no public schooling for the rest of the semester. George Deane, a school
board member, insisted that a lack of English-language ability was the reason
for Chinese segregation. However, Victoria schools tested only Chinese Cana-
dian children for English-language proficiency. Other immigrant children
continued to attend regular, integrated classes.56 Meanwhile, Chinese picketers
intimidated the boycott-breakers. In October 1922, police had to protect the
handful of Chinese children still attending public school classes. After three
weeks of harassment, the Chinese boycott-breakers gave in and stopped
attending public schools. The school board then canceled all Chinese classes.57
On 28 October 1922, the Anti-Segregation Association established an
alternative community school in Victoria’s Chinatown, where boycotting
students received education in English and Chinese. Two Chinese students
who had graduated from U.S. universities and returned to China, Huang
Zhuo Tang and Huang Xia Sheng, came to Victoria to teach in the Chinese
resistance school and to aid the protest.58 The two returned students sym-
bolically linked Victoria’s struggles with China’s student movement for
anti-colonial nationalism. One European female teacher also taught the
English language to the Chinese students attending the resistance school
so that their Canadian schooling would not be interrupted.59
Sustained mass protest also created dilemmas for political entrepreneurs
striving to make themselves into bridges between British and subaltern pop-
ulations. In October 1922, Da Han Gong Bao recorded mounting political
divisions among Chinese. Organizers’ tones shifted from confidence to defen-
siveness.60 This shift, which historians have overlooked, undermines inter-
pretations of the boycott as an expression of Chinese racial unity. Granted,
Chinese statements to Victorian authorities and the English-language press
almost always claimed unity for strategic reasons. However, internal commu-
nity debates contained more variation. Da Han Gong Bao printed only stories
friendly to the boycott, but even within its partisan pages, boycott organizers
increased their pleas for solidarity. The Victoria CCBA called for a unified
strategy to fight for equal education that would involve all Chinese workers
and merchants in Victoria and beyond. “If we can unite our hearts, we can
join our powers into one resistance struggle,” wrote Joe Hope to Vancouver
Chinese. “If we give an inch, they will take a mile.”61 As powerful Chinese
brokers divided over the wisdom of continued mass protest, Hope implored
Vancouver Chinese for support in Da Han Gong Bao. “Stopping the boycott
now would be a one hundred percent loss. We would step backward and see
intellectuals’ progress dissipate.”62 However, Chinese depended on Anglo
goodwill for their prosperity in Canada. They wondered whether they could
afford to offend their hosts.63
The fissures among Chinese leaders reflected intense competition over
political power within Chinese migrant communities. The Da Han Gong Bao
never revealed the names of the wealthy Chinese leaders whom it alleged
opposed the boycott. Like ordinary Chinese, the newspaper feared leaders
with influential brokerage ties to Canadian government and business institu-
tions. To combat these brokers’ power, boycott organizers turned to the egal-
itarian language of mass politics. “For the future equality of all people,” wrote
Hope, “do not follow a policy of yielding because stopping in the middle
when we are very close to reaching success humbles the hopes of every sac-
rifice and the currying of every favor except wealth.”64 These appeals to
popular power and critiques of wealthy, self-interested community leaders
soon injected new life into the movement. Leaders had already framed the
movement as a clash between global revolution and counterrevolution. They
now presented the rivalries among Chinese leaders as similar battles.
A stunning betrayal within Victoria’s Anti-Segregation Association pro-
voked Hope to reframe the movement in even more revolutionary terms. The
Da Han Gong Bao described the event in a story titled “Because of the Reck-
less Rash Actions of an Overseas Chinese Corrupt Leader.” Negotiations
between the Anti-Segregation Association and the Victoria school district
had been on the verge of success when an unspecified Chinese leader betrayed
the resistance. Boycott leaders felt that “attaining justice would come from
discussions, negotiations, legal challenges, organizing associations, and ask-
ing for help. Each would add to the weight of the resistance’s hand.”65 Rival
brokers, identified in Da Han Gong Bao only as wealthy merchants, viewed
the school protest leaders as dangerous radicals. In October 1922, Vancou-
ver’s Da Han Gong Bao claimed that a “cunning, adulterous criminal” had
envied resistance leaders’ success so much that he had spied for Victoria’s
government. This Chinese leader had many friends in Victoria’s governing
party. Secretly, he met with them to “destroy our overseas Chinese plan to
resist segregation.”66 The paper did not disclose exactly how this leader alleg-
edly betrayed the boycott movement’s negotiations. This leader may have
been Harry Hastings, a Chinese British legal interpreter who had been hired
to represent the boycotters in negotiations with the Victoria school board. In
1924, Hastings told Winifred Raushenbush, an interviewer for the Survey of
Race Relations, that he had curbed the school boycott’s radicalism. His public
admission suggested that he believed that his actions needed no defense.
Hastings had advised a British Canadian politician friend not to give in so
that Chinese protesters “would not feel their power.” He claimed to have
stopped Chinese “hotheads” from bringing the radical politics of the Hong
Kong seamen’s strike to the school protest. He especially discouraged nonco-
operation, dissuading Chinese workers who wanted to punish segregation
supporters through labor strikes.67 Whether it was Hastings or not, the
unnamed informer’s actions immediately led to a sterner school board posi-
tion, possibly because the informer revealed the Chinese community’s strike
fund. After the betrayal, the Chinese and English press dropped all mention
of noncooperation except for the school boycott itself.
Further, this rival Chinese broker informed his white friends that the
school board should win. The boycott, this leader claimed, did not spring
from the “public will” but from agitators who stirred up ignorant Chinese to
revolution (qiao qi fenghu). To crush the school boycott, he advised, the board
had to become sterner. It had not used terror, and it had to cause more fear to
bring Chinese to heel. “Among Victoria’s Chinese, promised this ‘headman’
and also among Canada’s Chinese, there existed the utmost degree of loyalty
and obedience to white people,”68 wrote Da Han Gong Bao. He implied that
the character of Chinese abroad (qiaobao) made them easy to manipulate and,
in any case, they had little influence within Canada’s political system. The
Anti-Segregation Association’s noncooperation plans only would anger Cana-
dian businesses and employers. For the sake of the Chinese themselves, he
advised, Victoria’s politicians had to stand firm on school segregation and
crush Chinese resistance.69
The fragmentary Chinese newspaper record cannot independently con-
firm this account of betrayal. To many Chinese Canadian readers, however, it
appeared plausible. Many Chinese power brokers routinely collaborated with
white political and economic elites through backroom brokerage. For Chi-
nese merchants who acted as economic middlemen, an indefinite boycott
with prospects for noncooperation through Chinese strikes and boycotting
Anglo businesses would have strained their relations with their Anglo
patrons. The boycott organizers, however, also would have had a motive to
deflect attention away from their protest’s lack of success. Regardless, the
betrayal accounts brought new energy to the boycott, making it a struggle
over egalitarianism both within and beyond the Chinese population.
Revolutionary Politics
To fight fear, Hope and a young Vancouver leader, Foon Sien Wong, appealed
to the exuberant mass politics of the age in the indelible language of revolu-
tions. Young Chinese boycott leaders rallied their Vancouver followers with
calls for national awakening that echoed both China’s revolutions and Canada’s
class politics. Hope appealed to Gold Mountain sojourners’ (jinshanke) manly
responsibilities for their families and their nations in Da Han Gong Bao:
If this policy is implemented, our people will have no room to move

here, so our strong resistance is just. . . . We act, legally, not with any
ill intentions, nor do we evade danger. We do this to show our coun-
try’s struggle and to show the character of overseas Chinese.70
Hope urged Chinese to conquer fear by standing up for themselves. If Chi-

nese continued to defer to Europeans and to Chinese leaders allied with them,
Chinese “without money” would have no future in Canada. Only protest
would reveal their hidden strength: “Like an underground spring, whose
deep waters only bubble up on the surface, I call on you to flow forth boldly.”
With mass protests, “we will become the River Han,” the birthplace of Chi-
nese civilization.71 China’s Nationalist Party revolutionaries frequently made
similar allusions.72 To his audience, Hope’s equation of the masses with Chi-
nese political and cultural authority evoked a revolutionary populism.
From a Chinese newspaper’s perspective, the school strike protests took
place on greater global stages than did domestic relations, yet these interac-
tions gave regional Chinese politics their distinctive shape. The prospect of
longer-term struggle and a divided Chinese leadership in Victoria prompted
Hope to request help from Vancouver Chinese. On 2 November 1922, he
appealed for support in Da Han Gong Bao: “In the past, Chinese coming here
had this fate: we were swept into a corner. However, we slowly crept in,
extending our community across the entire country. In this situation, in this
place, we therefore stand determined to defend our territory.”73 This move-
ment for equality mobilized the Chinese population of both greater Vancou-
ver and Victoria on a mass scale. As the strike dragged on into November
1922, Chinese in Victoria held a community speech day to protest school
segregation. Da Han Gong Bao reported that over 2,500 Chinese braved
drenching rain to gather in a white-owned theater to hear speeches protest-
ing school segregation.74 In the past, Chinese meetings usually had been held
in Chinese theaters. White theaters usually segregated Chinese, so the meet-
ing site itself symbolized Chinese claims to Canada. Men, women, and chil-
dren packed the theater. Speakers included Joe Hope, Vancouver’s Seto Ying
Shek (Seto More, Situ Mao), and a woman named Li Yun He. After hearing
speeches, the assembled Chinese decided to petition as a group for help from
the government. They sang Chinese and Western patriotic songs. A Chinese
resistance school choir of boys and girls then performed the songs “National
Shame” and “Citizens Come Together.”75 Da Han Gong Bao described the
meeting’s stirring conclusion:
When the meeting came to a close, all of the Chinese seated at the
meeting rose to their feet. In unison, the great sea of Chinese shouted
that they pledged their lives to resisting until the Anti-Segregation
Association had won victory. Then they shouted three times: “Long
live China’s great Republic!”76
The movement had started with a school boycott, but it had become
greater than a stand against British Columbia’s anti-Asian movement. Their
pledge to resist to the death was more than rhetorical. In China during this
era, boycotts to protest against repressive governments had led to the jailing
and injury of activists.77 In Canada, too, Chinese had experienced violence
when they attempted to move beyond the margins. In addition to Vancou-
ver’s two anti-Asian riots, violence often happened between Chinese and
white individuals, even among children in the public schools.78
Chinese Canadians in Vancouver also mobilized to support the anti-
segregation movement through the popular culture of China’s anti-colonial
nationalism. In February 1923, Chinese students in Vancouver performed a
fundraising play written in baihua, vernacular spoken Chinese. The students
titled their play Virtuous Women Avenge a Grievance (Lie Nu Bao Jiao Chou).79
Other Vancouver Chinese groups also performed plays to support the boy-
cott. In March 1923, Da Han Gong Bao reviewed one fundraising theater
performance, a new Chinese drama to help education in the “new world soci-
ety” of the homeland. This “great” play, wrote the paper, told the story of a
young concubine’s son in love.80 Vancouver Chinese-language school students
also performed a fundraising baihua play, Man in Black (Hei Yi Ren) in Can-
tonese.81 At the performance, over 200 Chinese households and firms donated
funds to fight school segregation.82
At a second Victoria mass meeting at a white people’s theater in November
1922, school boycott organizers again framed the school protest as a vital strug-
gle against a rising anti-Asian movement in Canada. Meeting chair Ma Yu Ru
addressed an audience of thousands. If Chinese permitted school segregation to
be expanded, “every class of overseas Chinese” would face diminished future
opportunity. The public schools produced most brokers and community leaders.
He urged Chinese to defend their freedoms in Canada and to resist segregation
in the name of China’s national honor. Joe Hope pleaded for unity, claiming
that only a show of strength would force Victoria’s school board to back down.83
A white lawyer informed the crowd that Canada’s Parliament was considering
a proposal to end Chinese immigration.84 The anti-segregation movement
brought together international ideas about revolution with the local politics of
school protest, so ties to the Pacific world added more than diplomatic pres-
sure; they also contributed to the anti-segregation movement’s ideas.
The Anti-Segregation Movement Spreads to Vancouver:

Brokerage Politics in Regional and
International Perspective
Vancouver Chinese power brokers formed the Anti-Segregation Support
Association, led by Chinese Benevolent Association (CBA) leaders who
had halted Vancouver’s earlier attempt to expand school segregation.85 On
5 November 1922, the Vancouver Anti-Segregation Association and local
Chinese merchants sponsored a speech day at Chinatown’s 500-seat theater.
Joe Hope explained that Europeans feared Chinese as economic competitors,
so they treated Chinese like “criminals.”86 After the speech day, interpreter
Lambert Sung (Song Lang Bi) wrote about the anti-segregation movement’s
importance in a front-page editorial in Da Han Gong Bao. Chinese must
“stamp out” the anti-Asian movement, Sung warned, because it threatened
Chinese Canadians’ future. “We need unity that puts public interests above
personal interest because it will affect every family and every person,” he
wrote, alluding to Chinese merchants who had collaborated with Victoria’s
school board against the boycott.87 Chinese Canadians also had to strengthen
China, because its chaos led other nations to disrespect Chinese immigrants.
Sung described the work of the Vancouver Anti-Segregation Support Associ-
ation leaders as negotiation and education. Its leaders included the famed
legal interpreter Won Alexander Cumyow, the scholarly travel agent Seto
Ying Shek, and dentist Yick Pang Lew. Swiftly, these Chinese leaders lobbied
sympathetic European contacts in Vancouver.88 They also wrote to English
newspapers and to papers in China. Further, they requested that China’s gov-
ernment send a representative to negotiate the issue.89 Perhaps as a result, Da
Han Gong Bao reported no further action by Vancouver’s school board. Still,
Chinese consul Lin warned Chinese children to behave. They should avoid
fighting with European children because disputes would fuel calls for segre-
gation.90 Ultimately, the threatened European boycott of Vancouver’s public
schools to force full Chinese segregation never materialized.
In Vancouver, as in Victoria, the school protest provided a platform for new,
populist political brokerage relations against the backdrop of divides in both
the Chinese and Anglo populations. University student Foon Sien Wong helped
to organize a new Vancouver Chinese Students Alliance (CSA, Zhongguo
Liuyun Xuesheng Hui), based on May Fourth movement models, to deal with
the school segregation issue.91 Given divisions within the Chinese population,
Wong’s new CSA appeared to be a temporary off-shoot of the larger, older Chi-
nese Students Alliance. The original CSA had included those with high school
educations and those with college educations in Vancouver and Victoria since
at least 1916.92 As Victoria’s school board mused about a law that would force
Chinese boycotters back to school, the CSA quickly organized a mass speech
day in Vancouver. The Chinese students explained the boycott movement to
readers of Vancouver’s Chinese newspaper, Da Han Gong Bao: “We know that
this policy’s goal is to separate Chinese, first employing measures to separate
Chinese children and then the rest of the overseas Chinese. Malice lies in its
heart. . . . Only united together will we be strong. Fight for justice.”93
Besides rallying support within the Chinese population, CSA members
planned a campaign of personal diplomacy. They met with individual Ang-
los, such as high school principals.94 Local merchants sponsored Chinese
banquets at which CSA members mingled with Anglo politicians, includ-
ing the mayor, other officials, and police.95 The CSA also sent a delegation
to Victoria. Speakers at a CSA speech day included Consul Lin Bao Heng
and representatives from the leftist Chinese Workers’ Party (Zhonghua Gong-
dang), which was affiliated with China’s Nationalist Party, the Vancouver
Anti-Segregation Support Association, the Guangzhi school, and the Xian
Xiang Theatrical Society. The groups also sent a joint request to China’s gov-
ernment asking for its assistance in the resolution of the issue.96
Within days of the CSA petition, China’s consul general, Zhou Qi Lian,
arrived in British Columbia to negotiate with Victoria’s school board. The
Beijing government only controlled the northern part of China, so Zhou
threatened Canada with both an official economic boycott and a popular
boycott by China’s citizens, which together would cut off Canadian business
relations with China.97 But Zhou’s negotiations proved fruitless.98 The
paucity of scholarship on early China-Canada relations makes it difficult to
determine the immediate impact of Zhou’s boycott threat. Canada’s officials
sent an emissary to check with ruling warlords in Beijing, Shanghai, and
Guangzhou about whether an economic boycott might result if Canada’s
Parliament cut off Chinese immigration. The warlords reassured the emissary
that no boycott would happen; they could contain China’s Nationalist Party.99
However, the Nationalist revolution caught the warlords by surprise.
In 1925, the Nationalists in China rose to power on a wave of anti-colonial
nationalism. Chinese in China boycotted Canadian and British goods. With
help from Chinese Canadian funds, the Nationalists also organized strikes to
impede all economic relations with Canada and Great Britain, which greatly
harmed trade.100
In the spring of 1923, a more dire threat emerged: a proposed national
law to end Chinese Canadian immigration. Besides barring future Chinese
entry, the bill would deport all Chinese who were unable to speak English
and all illegal immigrants. Further, the law required all Chinese to register
with the immigration department and to carry special photo identity papers.
Even naturalized and Canadian-born Chinese had to register.101 Previously in
Canada, only African slaves and First Nations people had been subject to
this kind of “pass system.”102 Zhu Bo Ran advised the readers of Da Han Gong
Bao that “personal friendship diplomacy by individual citizens” would be
necessary to combat the new Chinese Immigration Act. Chinese who were
fluent in English should lobby the major party leaders, the legislators, the
white business community, and newspapers across Canada. Labor leaders,
too, should be lobbied, wrote Zhu, because organized labor was the main
opponent of Chinese immigration. Chinese in Canada wrote to allies in
Shanghai and Guangzhou for help. They appealed to Chinese workers, busi-
nesses, and student groups. However, China had no effective national govern-
ment so international pressure had little influence. Newspapers in China also
published Chinese Canadian letters urging boycotts of Canadian goods.103
As Parliament debated the anti-Chinese bill in 1923, Chinese Canadians
were isolated from the mainstream political system. Power brokers could at
times make backroom arrangements to mitigate anti-Chinese immigration
laws, but they had little influence over the formal legislative process. By the
1920s, many Anglo and French Canadians believed Chinese to be not assim-
ilable based on an ambiguous set of ideas about supposed racial, cultural, and
national differences that suggested incompatibility with the “white Canada”
ideal. Many white Canadians also opposed Chinese as economic competitors,
while China’s political instability reduced the value of Chinese Canadians’
Pacific world ties.104 Hoping to stop the bill, British Columbia Chinese sent
two representatives to Ottawa, Joe Hope and Seto Ying Shek. They lobbied
legislators for several days, handing out eighteen-page briefs, which the MPs
did not read.105 Canada’s elected House of Commons passed the bill with a
requirement to deport all Chinese who could not pass an English test, which
Canada’s unelected Senate later removed.106 Hope and Seto returned to British
Columbia, disappointed that the anti-segregation movement could not
prevail on the national stage.
The anti-segregation movement had more impact in British Columbia,
where most Chinese Canadians lived. After one year, Chinese protest in
the Vancouver-Victoria region stopped school segregation’s advance. On 4
September 1923, the Da Han Gong Bao announced that “Resistance to School
Segregation Achieves Victory.” All Chinese students in Victoria returned to
regular classes in their neighborhood schools except for seventeen students
who did not know English. However, the school board insisted on returning
to the pre-boycott segregation policy. Chinese children living in the North
Ward District would have to attend a separate segregated school for the first
four years of their elementary education. The board also renewed its offer that
Chinese children who succeeded in rapidly learning English could be pro-
moted earlier to integrated schools at the discretion of the teachers and prin-
cipals. When the boycott had started in September 1922, the school board
had insisted on increasing Chinese school segregation to grade seven. Given
the unfavorable political climate, returning segregation to just the first four
elementary grades was remarkable. At a Chinese community meeting to
discuss whether to accept the school board’s offer, resistance leaders explained
that a compromise without any school segregation was unacceptable to the
school board, so parents voted that Chinese children would return to the
public schools.107 Partial Chinese school segregation in Victoria continued
until after the Second World War; in Vancouver, it lasted until 1936.108
Conclusions
Scholars of Canada have often debated whether the brief egalitarian moment
after the First World War had any lasting impact. Most of these discussions
stress Canada’s domestic labor movement.109 Despite the fact that many non-
British immigrants participated in this radical moment, scholars have over-
looked its racial/ethnic dimensions. Like Yip On in the generation before
them, these new brokers constructed political strategies that built on larger
social movements, both local and global. Thus, a Chinese minority amplified
its claims to more inclusive visions of immigrant nation-building. New bro-
kers also tapped into larger unease about tensions between British imperi-
alism and democracy. They desired an expansion of Chinese rights in Canada,
but they also spoke as part of the anti-imperialist movements for self-
determination that were challenging the British Empire in Asia.
Political responses to Canada’s diversifying population included more
than Anglo nativism. Granted, shortly after the First World War, anti-Asian
movements triumphed in their quest to restrict immigration, and the Ku
Klux Klan established itself in Canada’s West.110 Still, a nascent Canadian
liberal, pluralist ideology of society had a measurable influence on the school
segregation debates in both the English and Chinese press. When the boycott
began, Victoria’s Daily Colonist first took a neutral position, but it also gave
Chinese Canadians an unusual opportunity to reach the English public on its
letters page.111 In April 1923, the Colonist’s editors denounced discrimination
in the public schools as “narrow-minded visions which sowed the seeds of
international strife.”112 Chinese-language newspapers also reported that
European Canadian allies’ quiet support helped to stem the tide of school
segregation.113 The steadfast conviction behind Chinese protests and their
ultimate victory showed that a deep well of sympathy existed.
The new populist political brokers of the 1920s had seized initiative just
as Chinese immigration exclusion altered brokerage’s political context. In
1923, Da Han Gong Bao offered the following “plain talk about overseas Chi-
nese resistance to harsh immigration regulations”: Chinese needed to develop
more extensive political alliances in Canada.114 Still, Canadian-raised brokers
who projected second-generation immigrant identities operated within both
transnational and local contexts. Their calls for the oppressed Chinese masses
“to flow forth like the River Han” resonated with the age’s revolutionary
spirit.115 Canadian-raised Chinese leaders also readily forged social ties with
Anglo Canadians, but like their elders, their efforts to position themselves as
crucial links between ordinary Chinese and the greater powers required
constant maneuvering. The second generation’s political power still depend-
ed largely on the first generation’s goodwill. To lead, the younger generation
had to mobilize both Chinese immigrant followers and capital. Second-
generation Chinese political brokerage thus remained rooted in Chinese dias-
pora, Canadian, and U.S. identities.
The outcome of British Columbia’s anti-segregation struggle paralleled
events on the U.S. West Coast. In 1926, Chinese Americans in San Francisco
also stopped an expansion of partial school segregation. Scholars interpret
their struggle as a product of second-generation leadership.116 From the frag-
mentary surviving Chinese American newspapers, researchers believe that
more populist aspects of China’s May Fourth movement and Nationalist rev-
olution did not have great force in the United States.117 Since West Coast
Chinese communities shared newspaper content, Vancouver’s complemen-
tary set of surviving Chinese immigrant newspapers suggests a more pro-
found shift and split in the political landscape. New social movements helped
to popularize political power, altering relations among immigrants and in
the larger society. Future research may expand the implications of this global
and local moment for evolving senses of immigrant nationhood in Canada
and the United States.
The political organization of Chinese Canadian intellectuals also marked
a turning point in Vancouver’s history. For many years, merchants and inter-
preters with entrepreneurial motives had dominated Chinese community
life. Their economic alliances with mainstream society, however, proved
vulnerable to changing business conditions. By 1926, British Columbia’s
slackening economy and a minimum wage law made many Chinese workers
more disposable, weakening Chinese unions.118 Chinese workers also lost
the support of China’s Nationalist Party, which purged leftist members.119
Meanwhile, the Canadian Parliament’s ban on Chinese entry and China’s
boycotts imperiled merchant brokerage that depended on the commerce of
migration.
Nevertheless, revolutions in China and exclusion in Canada had begun to
change the terms of political leadership. The injection of mass politics into
immigrant communities shifted power relations between ordinary people
and their leaders. Educated youth and the labor union organizers of social
movements added new alternatives to the dominance of wealth. Further,
debates over China’s future brought new urgency to intellectuals’ public ser-
vice within emigrant communities.
By June 1924, Vancouver Chinese leaders had exhausted every legal and
political strategy to overturn the Chinese Immigration Act of 1923, which
they called the “forty-three harsh regulations” and the “exclusion act.” Zhou
Chi Zhu wrote in Da Han Gong Bao: “Canadians should ask in their hearts,
would it not be more virtuous to treat overseas Chinese kindly? The forty-
three harsh regulations’ passage oppressed us overseas Chinese, humiliated
our entire country, destroyed our way of life, and took away our freedom.”120
In the aftermath of the passage of Canada’s Chinese exclusion law, Chinese
Canadian intellectuals decided to take another page from the strategy of China’s
May Fourth movement. In China, reformers had decided that the nation
needed to change its social relations by fundamentally altering its way of
thinking.121 Chinese Canadian intellectuals regularly debated the merits of
particular incidents of discrimination in letters to the editor in English news-
papers. Perhaps, if they could change the premises of knowledge about Chi-
nese immigrants, they could alter the terms of the debate in their favor. As
we shall see in the next chapter, their actions would influence future scholarly
perceptions of immigrant brokers for longer than they ever imagined.
four
| Fixing Knowledge
Pacific Coast Chinese Leaders’ Management of
the Chicago School of Sociology
I n 1924, robert park, a sociologist from the University of Chicago,

directed a study that asked: are Asians more like blacks or whites?1 To find
the answer, Anglo American researchers interviewed Chinese from British
Columbia to California, starting with Vancouver, Canada.2 West Coast Chi-
nese felt that Park’s answer could not be left to chance, so they mobilized the
Chinese community to steer the researchers in a specific direction. Chinese
leaders hoped to win white scholars’ sympathy and turn the power of social
science against anti-Chinese policies. Chinese regarded the study as a battle
of wits, a battle that the researchers did not know they were fighting.3 This
meeting of community activists and scholars would help to shape a pivotal
set of ideas about immigration and race that would become known as the
Chicago School of Sociology.4
During the early twentieth century, sociologists often depended on
local ethnic leaders for access to foreign-language research data.5 Studies
of the Chicago School do not completely take into account these collabo-
rations. They favor the perspectives of the researchers but do not
fully consider the possibility that their subjects could also be creators of
expert knowledge. While researchers often imagined interviews as trans-
actions between individuals, their nonwhite immigrant subjects often
approached them as political exchanges between two groups.6 Ethnic leaders’
mediating role in community-academic relations made them the unsung
coauthors of some of the twentieth century’s most influential ideas about
human migration.
I explore these collaborations in intellectual history through a new
interpretation of a foundational study about Asians in Canada and the
United States, the Survey of Race Relations. Most scholars treat the sur-
vey as a uniquely rich archive of early Chinese and Japanese life on the
West Coast.7 However, the survey can also be read as an exceptional record
of brokered knowledge between Chinese and Anglo elites.8 Henry Yu
argues that white American scholars’ Orientalism, beliefs that cast Asian
Americans as exotic informants, defined this meeting.9 The racial
dynamics within the ivory tower, however, had different valences out in
the field. The survey’s researchers could not speak or read Chinese, so they
needed ethnic leaders’ help.10 In West Coast Chinese communities, Anglo
researchers were the outsiders. Chinese newspapers reveal what interview
subjects chose to say—and what they left out. The personal papers of
some Chinese further illuminate the men and women who spoke with the
survey as part of the community plan. In British Columbia, where the
survey began, two-thirds of Chinese Canadian interview subjects were
brokers.11 These brokers hoped to “fix knowledge” by shading the data
that researchers would find.
In 1924, Vancouver’s Da Han Gong Bao told its readers about a community-
wide plan to manage visiting American researchers conducting the Survey of
Race Relations. “This matter involves every Chinese person’s future,” wrote
the paper.12 Most Chinese leaders knew it would be dangerous for the survey
to discover the “truth”: the majority of the city’s Chinese residents were tem-
porary workers who intended to return to China or move to the United
States.13 If the researchers saw Chinese as temporary migrant workers, then
Canada’s anti-Chinese movement might be strengthened.
At the time, most white West Coast residents assumed Asians to be
undesirable strangers. British Columbia Magazine described the “Oriental”
character: “Racially he is opposite to the Anglo-Saxon in life, thought, reli-
gion, temperament, taste, morals, and modes, as ice is to fire.”14 Many Cana-
dians believed racial differences to be immutable, even biological, so even a
small number of Asians posed a threat to maintaining a “white Canada.”
Following this logic, British Columbia denied all Asians voting rights
regardless of their citizenship. In 1924, racial conflicts over Asians’ alleged
inability to assimilate had reached a fever pitch as Canada and the United
States took further steps to exclude new Asian immigrants. Now, leading
American scholars within the new field of immigration studies planned a
scientific study of Asian immigrants’ capacity to assimilate.15
In response, the Chinese Benevolent Association (CBA) organized a public
meeting to discuss how to respond to the researchers. The CBA president,
Yick Pang Lew, presided. Two co-chairs, the interpreters Seto Ying Shek and
Lambert Sung, helped to organize the strategy.16 Many of the power brokers
attending the meeting guided and guarded the junctures between societies.17
They included Chinatown’s most politically skilled leaders, scholars, legal
assistants, interpreters, professionals, businesspeople, and clergy. According
to the Da Han Gong Bao, all Chinese questioned by the researchers were to
emphasize their assimilation in Canada. Any contrary evidence should be
explained as a result of racial discrimination.18 Chinese leaders also controlled
the researchers’ access to interview subjects. Their influence ensured that
ordinary Chinese would comply.19 According to the Da Han Gong Bao and
survey records, Chinese management of the researchers extended beyond
Vancouver to Chinese community power brokers in Victoria, Seattle, and San
Francisco. Brokers believed that, by controlling the premises of knowledge
about Chinese immigrants, they could alter the terms of West Coast racial
politics in their favor.20
Surveying the “Oriental Problem”

The survey’s efforts to find the truth about the “Oriental problem” unfolded
against the backdrop of a growing public faith in science as a nation-building
guide.21 It was the first major social science study of Asians in Canada and the
United States.22 Though much ink had been spilled about West Coast racial
conflicts, few scholars had included Asians’ viewpoints in their research prior
to 1924. Chinese Canadians felt even higher stakes: no scholarly book about
them ever had been published. Given Park’s stature, Da Han Gong Bao
expected that his planned book about East Asian immigrants would be used
by educational institutions across the United States and Canada.23
At the time, most scholars viewed Asian immigration as an issue that
affected the United States and Canada jointly.24 Canada thus provided a
means to test the global relevance of the researchers’ approaches to immigra-
tion. The survey’s ultimate goal was to compile a hemispheric account of race
relations on the Pacific frontier from Canada to Mexico. In this grand project,
the survey’s interviews with East Asians in Canada and the United States
served as the first stage.25
As planning for the survey began in 1923, the researchers found broad
support in British Columbia. At the time, Canada offered little funding
for social science research. The University of British Columbia, a survey
f ixing k nowledge | 91
cosponsor, had been open only since 1915. It operated out of church base-
ments, makeshift shacks, and tents in downtown Vancouver because the pro-
vincial legislature had never fully funded its construction.26 The survey was
sponsored by a New York–based foundation, the Institute of Social and Reli-
gious Research, adding to its prestige. Da Han Gong Bao reported that the
survey had a budget of US$25,000 to $30,000, an astounding amount from
a Canadian perspective.27 In British Columbia, the survey recruited Anglo
supporters among both friends and foes of Asian Canadians, including orga-
nized labor and middle-class reform groups. Mainstream corporations like
the Hudson’s Bay Company donated funds. Institutions as diverse as the
Catholic Church, the Vancouver Sun, and the Asiatic Exclusion League all
endorsed the research.28 The survey appointed John Nelson, a journalist and
political leader in British Columbia’s Provincial Party, as its British Columbia
regional director.
Nelson was one of Canada’s most influential opinion shapers on Asian
immigration issues. In 1921, he wrote in Maclean’s, English Canada’s
national news magazine, that Asians showed little sign of being able to fully
assimilate to Canada’s European “national type” and heritage. Therefore, he
advised denying Asians the franchise and restricting their numbers, lest their
race supplant Europeans and “occupy Canada’s one strip of Pacific littoral.”29
His new Provincial Party (1922–1924) and another new organization dedi-
cated to political reform, Vancouver’s Ku Klux Klan (1924–1925), targeted
party machines’ corruption.30 The English press often linked Chinese to this
political graft, portraying brokers as a corrupting force.31 However, Nelson
could contribute only modest time to supervising the survey’s research. His
other work as an editor of the Provincial Party organ, the Searchlight, and of
the farm journal United Farmer came first.32 The survey needed an early suc-
cess to ensure future fundraising, so Park sent a trusted doctoral student,
Winifred Raushenbush, to British Columbia for six months to conduct the
survey’s Chinese field research.33
Vancouver’s Chinese brokers felt that Raushenbush’s inquiry required
careful management. She had a sharp intellect and tongue, along with cutting-
edge research experience in the new science of sociology. She had assisted
some of the United States’ most brilliant scholars of immigration and race
relations. In 1919, she had worked with William I. Thomas on The Polish
Peasant in Europe and America, a groundbreaking study of ethnic conscious-
ness that drew heavily on personal letters and life histories. Raushenbush also
had worked with immigrant leaders across the United States on Park’s 1922
book, The Immigrant Press and Its Control.34 During the first six months of
1924, she conducted the survey’s British Columbia field research. She also
planned to write a dissertation about Chinese Canadians.35 In the battle of
wits, Chinese Canadians quickly found that she was no fool and a far more
prepared researcher than they had anticipated.
Like many of their Anglo counterparts, Chicago sociologists presumed
racial difference, though they often appeared somewhat agnostic about its
source. Robert Park’s early research had focused on the “Negro problem” in
the United States. Before coming to Chicago, he had worked with Booker
T. Washington at the Tuskegee Normal and Industrial Institute. In the
southern United States, Park puzzled over the seeming inability of African
Americans to assimilate to white cultural norms. He also wondered about the
causes of their subordinate status in U.S. society. Park’s scholarly articles sug-
gested a combination of social, historical, and cultural causes for Africans’
apparent slowness in becoming part of the mainstream. In Park’s time, his
belief that racial differences might be socially constructed was relatively pro-
gressive, though he did not expect white and nonwhite to become equal.36
The effort to steer the survey counted on three Chinese organizations to
produce interview subjects. Each group had a roster of experienced cultural
brokers. They included CBA regulars, a stable of men and women who rep-
resented traditional Chinese Canadian power in the business, legal, and pro-
fessional realms. (The CBA did not invite Chinese workers’ groups to
participate; at the time, Canada was deporting leftist European immigrant
leaders.)37 They also included two new youth groups that had proved effec-
tive in the anti-segregation struggle, the Chinese Students Alliance (CSA)
and the Chinese Canadian Club (CCC). The CSA and CCC represented them-
selves to the survey as the first fruits of their people’s future destiny as assim-
ilated settler-citizens. In Chinese Canadians’ alternate public sphere, these
youth groups appeared to be as transnational as their elders, but to Anglo
Canadians, their Canadian education opened doors.38 The CSA lodges
extended across the United States and Canada, and members were repre-
sented as survey subjects on both sides of the border.39 The CCC appeared to
share a strategy with its U.S. counterpart, the Chinese American Citizens
Alliance (CACA).40 These brokers made themselves the medium for their
message: the assimilation of Chinese leaders and youth justified their pres-
ence in the Pacific Coast’s maturing white society.
Collectively, Chinese brokers attempted to control the survey’s access to
information, while persuading the researchers that their personal lives served
as compelling evidence of racial injustice. The survey’s desire to collect Chi-
nese Canadian life histories required Raushenbush to build relations of trust
and reciprocity with her subjects. But Chinese Canadians brought mixed
motives to the exchange. Brokers attempted to convince Raushenbush that
their partial performance conveyed the most important part of the Chinese
Canadian story and that their loyalty to the Chinese plan did not diminish
their sincere affinities with their Anglo peers.
The researchers knew that collaboration involved conflicts of interest.
They did not trust Chinese to collect objective information. Anglo researchers
always asked the questions, even when a Chinese interpreter was present.
Park and Raushenbush recognized that Chinese Canadians saw the survey’s
field research as an opportunity for public relations. However, as social scien-
tists, they felt confident that they were more sophisticated than their sub-
jects.41 Together, American researchers and Chinese Canadian subjects would
determine which of their particular ambitions would triumph. As the sur-
vey’s first major community study site, British Columbia set the precedent.
Later, when the survey moved on to U.S. cities, Chinese and Japanese brokers
continued efforts to manipulate its findings. Indeed, over nine-tenths of the
survey’s Chinese American interview subjects would be brokers.42
East as West
For Chinese Canadian leaders, the first challenge was to decide what “truth”
Raushenbush should discover. On 13 February 1924, Vancouver’s Chinese
Benevolent Association held a large Chinese public meeting to discuss what
to do about the American researchers. The meeting co-chairs, Y. P. Lew, Seto,
and Sung, translated the survey’s English-language circulars.43 The researchers
were asking for Chinese life histories from all classes.44 Ordinary Canadians
viewed Chinese as inscrutable strangers, wrote Winifred Raushenbush. The
survey hoped that life histories such as “the struggle to make a living, adven-
ture, hardship, romance” would make Chinese intelligible to white society.
The researchers strived to find the truth about Chinese assimilation, Anglo
anti-Chinese prejudices, economic competition, tongs, female slavery, inter-
marriage, human smuggling, drugs, and gambling. Only the best Chinese
life histories would be printed in the survey’s forthcoming book.45
Brokers knew that it would be impossible to conceal all negative informa-
tion. Much of it was public knowledge. Further, the researchers had been
consulting with white Christian missionaries, wildcards beyond Chinese
community control, especially in Vancouver where less than 5 percent of the
Chinese population was Christian.46 The CBA would host welcome dinners
for Raushenbush and Park, introducing them to articulate interview subjects
who could craft vivid, quotable self-narratives. No Chinese would approach
the survey independently.47
Originally, the survey planned a detailed study of Chinese male sojourners,
but the self-selection meant that the more eloquent Chinese brokers captured
the lion’s share of Raushenbush and Park’s attention. Poorer Chinese gener-
ally spoke less English, limiting the subject pool to the strongly acculturated
portion of the population who self-selected into the project. Raushenbush
felt sympathy for workers’ tales of toil and separation from families in China,
but she did not find them very interesting. Most workers possessed only a few
grades of Chinese education, so they had difficulty establishing a rapport
with Raushenbush.49 In contrast, Chinese brokers dedicated a great amount
of time to cultivating her sense of affinity and friendship with them.50
The Chinese brokers’ strategy involved two discursive performances.51
Both argued for Chinese capacities to assimilate. Brokers presented them-
selves as natural counterparts of their white, middle-class, educated peers.
Through social affinities, brokers hoped to demonstrate their loyalties to
Canada and the British Empire. They reframed their community’s transna-
tional ties. Brokers also spoke of China as a nation becoming Western, with
democratic, educated, modern, and free characteristics. This imagined trans-
ference of the modern goods of Canada to the homeland framed Chinese
leaders in the West as China’s vanguard.
Their East-as-West performances also countered white fears that Chinese
could not assimilate with evidence of Canada’s transformative power. Brokers
presented themselves as passive, receptive, and reactive subjects molded by
British Canada. They acted as enlightened leaders whom ordinary Chinese
gladly followed. They argued that Chinese leaders were not the Oriental tong
despots of pulp fiction and films.52 They were not engaged in “yellow slavery”
of Chinese workers, as white unions often feared.53 Leaders projected a sim-
ple, even naïve, faith in Canada. They were not foreigners who threatened
British democracy, but Chinese who had become Canadian at heart.
The Chinese Benevolent Association secured the backing of powerful
merchants, such as Yip Mow, Yip Sang’s eldest son and the chief manager for
the Yip family firms, to direct all Chinese Canadians to perform according to
the plan’s script.54 Da Han Gong Bao printed the official position. Brokers
acknowledged white objections to Chinese immigrants, and then attempted
to explain away each concern. They could not deny, for example, that most
Chinese workers had not fully assimilated.55 In reply, Chinese intellectuals
presented themselves as evidence of their race’s adaptability “in society, cus-
toms, and lifestyle.” With education, they argued, Chinese everywhere would
embrace modernity.56 As for social problems like gambling, opium use, and
prostitution, brokers blamed racial exclusion. Lonely immigrant men engaged
in “bitter pleasures” because they were unable to bring wives and children to
Canada.57 These “improper” activities developed in Canada, not China. As for
interracial marriage, Chinese argued that it was not a social problem but a
matter of personal choice.58
Defusing Anglo fears of Chinese economic competitiveness was a greater
challenge. Racial discrimination in the job market could explain why Chi-
nese workers competed through accepting low wages,59 but the rising success
of Chinese entrepreneurs cut both ways. Most Canadians respected business
success, regardless of color.60 British Columbia’s English newspapers often
printed respectful coverage of West Coast Chinese millionaires, such as Yip
Sang and Chin Gee Hing.61 However, white farmers and small retailers fre-
quently complained about Chinese competition, though Chinese firms had
no shortage of white customers.62 Brokers thus would hedge their responses
to white fears of Chinese economic competition. They proudly asserted Chi-
nese entrepreneurial drive, while lamenting that their assimilating children
had lost their Chinese work ethic.63 As for the nature of race itself, many
Chinese believed that race was biological,64 but the official position would
claim race to be a cultural construct. Vancouver Chinese would conceal all
other potentially damaging information, including the Chinese population’s
spiritual beliefs, the community’s transnational outlook, anti-British aspects
of Chinese nationalism, and illegal immigration.
To the survey’s researchers, the brokers often claimed to be “entirely Brit-
ish” or “completely Canadian,” but Chinese sources show that many pursued
careers as transnational power brokers. Tom Whaun said that he had nothing
to do with Chinese affairs until Canada blocked Chinese immigration in
1923.65 Actually, he had come to Canada to “save China” by getting a mod-
ern education.66 Further, Whaun had been a Vancouver Chinatown leader
since at least 1916.67 In 1918, he joined Chinatown power struggles during
which supporters of China’s Nationalist Party called for a Vancouver police
crackdown on their political rivals’ gambling operations. Whaun also had
won a Canadian political patronage appointment as a court interpreter.68
Most brokers shared this pattern: evident assimilation and deep ties to Cana-
dian society, but also enduring ties to the Pacific world.
Survey interview subjects claimed that Chinese Canadian leaders had
become essentially British while they attempted to explain away inconve-
nient facts. Canada’s recent discovery of 10,000 Chinese illegal immigrants,
interpreter Ko Wing Kan argued, resulted from corrupt officials who
absconded with immigrants’ papers, not Chinese evasion of immigration
laws.69 The inability of many Chinese to speak English came from a lack of
education, not a disinclination to learn.70 Moreover, brokers argued that
Chinese experiences of Canadian rejection had provoked their Chinese
revolutionary politics. Their anti-imperialism was not really anti-British.
Chinese revolutionaries, they said, wanted to make China like Canada.71
Leaders also did not mention Chinese beliefs about their own racial and
cultural superiority.72 Interview subjects emphasized Chinese as settlers in
Canada, but in Chinese-language settings, even the Canadian-born leaders
celebrated by the survey never referred to Chinese as immigrants (yimin).73
Chinese felt deeply connected to Canadian society as long-term migrants,
but they deemed these views as too perilous to share. If they exposed their
transnational world, they might be forever excluded from Canada.
At first, Raushenbush responded with skepticism to Chinese Canadian
brokers’ performances. In a typical British Columbia interview, Tom Whaun
described his vision of identity as beyond racial and ethnic categories: “Among
my friends, and I think the same way myself, we do not care about nationality.
That is all old stuff. We think of ourselves as citizens of the world. ‘A man’s
a man,’ that’s what we believe.”74 Raushenbush responded with incredulity.
Why did Whaun not adopt a more realistic strategy? He must know that
most Canadians did not see beyond his nationality. Surely, the Japanese
figure 4.1. Thomas

Moore Whaun. Photo
from Totem, 1927.
Reproduced courtesy of
the Alma Mater Society
Archives, University of
British Columbia.
immigrant strategy of claiming social privilege on the basis of nationality
made more sense than naïve appeals to universalism?75 However, Whaun, a
member of the University of British Columbia’s Social Science Club,76 had
chosen the strategy intentionally.
Brokers intuited that participating in a shared culture with elite Anglos
created more constructive engagement than did confrontation. Indeed,
Raushenbush was initially surprised that many of the Chinese young men
she met were angry and “sullen” over how the Chinese in Canada were treated.
Almost all young Chinese carried a notebook that documented grievances
that they wished to address.77 Their direct approach alienated Raushen-
bush.78 She did not record many of these conversations in her research
reports.
Socializing and conversing about a wide variety of topics served as a less
threatening way to imply injustices done to the Chinese. Whaun elabo-
rated:
The other day I was riding in a street car with a professor from the
university. We were talking Epictetus, Marcus Antonius, and all our
favorites, especially Marcus Antonius.79 I told him I liked Emerson
very much. He was so delighted, he said: “I must have a talk with you.
Come to my office to-morrow. Do you know this opera they are giving,
Il Trovatore? My daughter is playing a leading role.” When people
have the same ideas, that binds them together.80
When asked about his cultural stance, Whaun said that other Chinese
thought that he was pro-British.81 Personally, he believed that many Chinese
were rapidly assimilating. Countering the popular European belief that
Chinese preferred to live in Chinatowns, he explained that he had never lived
in Chinatown.82 Like Whaun, other brokers who spoke with Raushenbush
presented an image of cultural blending in their social lives. Ko Wing Kan,
a ginseng merchant, drank cream with his tea in the English fashion.83 Cecil
Lee and his wife entertained Raushenbush in an English style.84 Chinese
youth participated in sports, dances, and socializing like their British peers.85
Raushenbush was also impressed with the conformity of young Chinese to
Anglo Canadian fashions and etiquette.86
Still, the high number of brokers among her interviewees in Vancouver
and Victoria made Raushenbush question their claims. “I wonder,” she wrote,
“how many professional trouble-straighteners this town of ten thousand can
really support.”87 She confronted Chinese diplomat Herbert Wang with
rumors that Chinese newspapers had organized a cover-up during her visit.
Wang, who had helped to plan the survey management strategy, appealed to
Raushenbush’s elitism to soothe her worries. Her interviewees had the edu-
cation to appreciate science, but most Chinese did not.88 He admitted that
Chinese had organized a community meeting to discuss the Survey of Race
Relations, and afterward Chinese newspapers “wrote that everyone must be
on the defensive and protect themselves because you were going to find out
everything. But I told them this was to be a scientific study, and that they
should give Dr. Park a chance to understand.” Wang dismissed Chinese fears
as ignorance, saying “They have no ideas.” However, he claimed that the
tradition-bound nature of ordinary Chinese had an advantage; they often
followed more educated modern men like him.89 By that time, Raushenbush
had been interviewing Chinese in British Columbia for three months. She
noted Wang’s explanation in her report and then tested his claims about
Chinese workers. With the help of an Anglo missionary, she interviewed
retired Chinese workers at a nursing home. In broken English, two older
workers described their lives of toil. Raushenbush found them baffling, writ-
ing of one, “I do not understand what he got out of life.”90 She chose to
believe Wang.
Brokers made themselves the proof of their message: educated Chinese
had the same aspirations as their Anglo peers. Lew Shong Kow, a former
president of the Chinese Empire Reform Association’s Vancouver branch,
granted that most Chinese workers sojourned, but he predicted major chang-
es within twenty to forty years. “I think the Chinese think by that time
everything will have changed. Like the Russian revolution. Or like the Alli-
ance between Japan and England. . . . The Chinese and Canadians will be all
mixed up.”91 Already, said Herbert Wang, “everybody in China is European-
ized now, everybody. Only the very lowest class they do not change. They are
very conservative. I suppose it is the same class you have in this country.”92
Cecil Lee, a banker, attributed white anti-Chinese prejudice to Chinese lower
classes. “I do not think that there is any real prejudice against the Chinese,”
he said. “There would not be if the Canadians knew them.”93 These brokers
claimed to lead the Chinese workers, so their assimilation represented the
future of Chinese in Canada.
Throughout the Pacific Coast, survey researchers would find hints of
transnational complexity, but brokers’ testimony would lead them to con-
clude that Chinese conformed to a natural pattern of immigrant assimilation.
Chinese in Vancouver, Victoria, Seattle, and San Francisco similarly directed
survey researchers to educated, assimilated, and successful Chinese. Over 90
percent of Chinese interview subjects in Seattle were brokers, and nearly half
were also native-born U.S. citizens. In San Francisco, all interviewees were
college-educated, American-born Chinese.94 As in Canada, almost all ordi-
nary Chinese Americans refused to speak with the survey researchers.
Both Chinese Canadians’ and Chinese Americans’ testimony steered
researchers away from the open-ended world of Chinese Diaspora migrations.
Rather than the back and forth of global migrations, brokers argued that
their lives demonstrated a propensity toward settlement in their new nations.
In actuality, Chinese of all generations had transnational ties. Chinese inter-
viewees attributed their persistent homeland ties to the distorting effects of
white prejudice, declining to disclose fully their generations of transnational
family life. Seattle businessman Pany Lowe described himself as a spurned
second-generation Chinese American. “Me being citizen I vote in all elec-
tion. Sure I vote every time I get chance. When I young fellow I felt that
I American. I no Chinaman. Now I get more sense. I know I never be American,
always Chinaman. I no care now anymore.”95 Lowe’s personal loss of faith in
America added credibility to his claims that white prejudice caused Chinese
tongs and illegal immigration. Rather than seeing an international migrant
group with a flexible sense of national destiny, which would have described
more than a third of all Canadian residents, the survey researchers saw Chi-
nese in terms that did not fundamentally question the permanent-settlement
ideal.96
Performing Political Power

Brokers had much to gain by disavowing foreign ties, especially in British
Columbia. There, the survey’s Anglo supporters added an extra question to
the study: they wanted to know Chinese Canadians’ fitness for democracy.97
Canadian voters had long regarded Chinese political participation as
undesirable, so judges routinely restricted Chinese access to naturalization.98
Canada’s Parliament reaffirmed in 1919 that British Columbia could
continue to disenfranchise Asian Canadians, a category that included the
Canadian-born, naturalized immigrants and British subjects from elsewhere
in the Empire.99 The 1923 act harshly restricted Chinese immigrants’ political
freedoms: involvement in China’s revolutionary politics would lead to
deportation.100
At the time, Chinese Canadians of all generations had relatives in China,
so most felt homeland politics to be a right and a duty. Beijing did not con-
trol Guangdong province, where Dr. Sun Yat Sen was raising a revolutionary
army to restore his shattered country.101 However, to many British Canadi-
ans, China’s revolutionary politics, from Nationalism to Communism,

sounded subversive, especially as the politics of Sun’s Nationalist revolution
directly challenged the British Empire’s interests in China.102
To the survey researchers, Chinese Canadians described themselves as pas-
sive recipients of Canadian influence rather than as active shapers of Canada’s
and China’s destiny. Tom Whaun’s comments exemplified the strategy. He
defended China’s people power as Chinese Canadians’ only means of leveling
the political playing field. The 1923 Chinese Immigration Act’s denial of
British freedoms provoked Whaun to mount a national letter-writing cam-
paign.103 On 23 June 1923, the Vancouver Sun and the Daily Province printed
Whaun’s warning:
If we cannot stop your discriminative and anti-racial laws against us

here, we can retaliate in many ways. The consequences of your unjust
treatment will reverberate throughout China in the form of boycott
against British and Canadian goods.104
Whaun also privately urged Lord Byng, the governor general of Canada, to
modify the act.105 To the survey’s researchers, Whaun defended his politics by
claiming that Canada’s racial injustice jarred him out of his natural British-
ness.106 In contrast, to Chinese Canadian audiences, Whaun stated that he
emigrated to Canada to acquire a modern education, “determined to do or die
for New China that would again command respect from all.”107 He said to
Raushenbush:
I never belonged to any Chinese organizations until recently. But when

this bill appeared I wrote a letter about it that was translated in all the
Chinese papers. . . .
This is too much. What can they do? They can’t put us all on a boat
and dump us into the ocean.108
His direct appeal to the Canadian public failed, leaving him angry and
disillusioned, but China’s support provided a ray of hope. Newspapers in
China printed his letter and encouraged Chinese citizens to boycott Canadian
goods.109 Whaun warned that China’s people could compel the respect that
was their due:
We’ll have armies and navies too, if we have to, and we’ll take what is
ours. Do they think they can take all the land of the earth? I guess we can
take it too. And we will. Why half of the Chinese here have got a picture
of Jack Dempsey on their walls, and we’re ready to show them.110

However, he hoped that the British Empire would choose voluntarily to right
its wrongs, rather than being forced to do so by a Chinese revolution. He
then alluded to the Hong Kong seamen’s strike of 1922. “Mr. Whaun was
wistful about this,” Raushenbush wrote. “He did not like to think of China
sovietized, he said, and thought the Western world might have the shrewd-
ness enough to realize how much they would lose if they did not make
capitalism conform to the Chinese idea of justice.”111 By portraying Chinese
indignation as a reaction to being excluded from the West’s superior way of
life, Whaun tried to tamp down British unease about anti-imperialist
protests in China.
By framing his Chinese politics as Western, Whaun also attempted to
defend his work for a revolutionary Nationalist newspaper, Jianada Chen Bao
(Canada Morning Post). To Raushenbush, Whaun did not mention its open
advocacy of Communist revolution, which was illegal in Canada regardless of
one’s ethnic origin.112 A surviving issue of Jianada Chen Bao from 1927 shows
that one of the largest Chinese clan associations in Vancouver, the Wong
Kung Har Tong (Huang Jiangxia Tang), to which Whaun belonged, allowed
its Chinese-language school, the Mon Keang school (Wenjiang Xuexiao) to
sponsor a Communist speech day, during which Chinese Canadian children
spoke eloquently about the need for a workers’ revolution.113 To Raushen-
bush, Whaun described Jianada Chen Bao as catering to Chinese readers’
Canadian interests. He described its goals: “Disseminate among the Chinese
in Canada the principles of democratic and constitutional government, the
liberalism and democracy as already established in the west.”114 He did not
mention that the paper’s editors actually came from the Nationalist Party’s
left wing in China.115 Instead, Whaun stressed his own British influence. He
claimed to have added new features to North America’s Chinese newspaper
world, such as police court news and a pictorial section. Vancouver’s other
Chinese newspaper, Da Han Gong Bao, already had these features,116 so
Whaun’s claim that this was new in Jianada Chen Bao was exaggerated. Since
she could not read Chinese, Raushenbush could not verify these claims.
Midway through Raushenbush’s research, she discovered that Whaun and
many other Vancouver interviewees came from the Chinese Students Alli-
ance. Hilda Hellaby, a white Anglican missionary, informed Raushenbush
that the CSA was a pro-Chinese, nationalist, anti-white organization. The
accusation imperiled the Vancouver Chinese community plan. Hellaby
described Vancouver’s CSA:
The younger generation have what they call a students club. I don’t
know why they call it that [since] most of them are not students. The

native born Chinese and the white women who are married to Chinese
belong. They are anti-foreign, anti-missionary, and [against] the gov-
ernment . . . generally.117
Members of the CSA included Whaun and about twenty to thirty other
Chinese who had at one point studied in public high schools, universities, or
normal schools in Canada.118 Earlier, the membership numbers had been
higher, but quite a few men had departed for education in California and on
the East Coast of the United States. Most of the remaining members no
longer attended school.119 In reply, Whaun claimed that his “Chinese student”
politics strived to create a world where British Chinese could belong. By
saving China and raising its stature, students hoped to save Canada. Whaun
quoted from a friend’s letter:
Across the ocean 3,000,000 Chinese students, intellectual pure souls,

are ready to sacrifice—to die if need be—in order to save China from
being dismembered.120
“Yes,” said Whaun to Raushenbush, “the man who wrote that is going back
to China. I am going back. We all are.” But he had become too British to
return. “But what are we compared with the Chinese scholars, we with our
Western education?” In China, “we are nothing.” White missionaries often
promoted a return to China to resolve the problem of Chinese Canadian
“youth without a country.”121 The implied injustice of having no better
recourse made a strong impression on Raushenbush’s sympathies.
Perhaps because Raushenbush had heard about the CSA’s militancy,
Chinese brokers in Victoria afterward performed an even more assimi-
lated version of leadership. Their performance showcased a British
Chinese legal interpreter and merchant, Harry Hastings, and the young,
educated Chinese of Victoria’s Chinese Canadian Club. Hastings report-
edly attended Oxford University, and Victoria’s English press frequently
printed his letters about British Columbia politics.122 In 1922 and 1923,
the CCC had helped to lead a Chinese Canadian public school boycott
against segregation. To Raushenbush, the members described the CCC as
a social club. They proudly displayed the club’s reading room and
she noted that it had a complete collection of Jane Austen’s books.123
However, Da Han Gong Bao reported in 1923 that the CCC had been
founded for a political purpose. In 1914, this group of local-born Chinese
(tusheng) had organized to fight discrimination.124

The CCC members and Harry Hastings portrayed Chinese Canadian pro-
test as nonthreatening. Hastings termed the recent year-long public school
boycott as Chinese Canadian children’s spontaneous act.125 Yet, in actuality,
the largely immigrant leaders of Victoria’s Chinese Benevolent Association
and Chinese Chamber of Commerce had planned the school boycott in
advance, along with CCC leaders and Hastings.126 Survey interviewees also
separated the school boycott from the anti-colonial protest movements in
British Asia that had helped to inspire it.127 Interviewees’ accounts of the
boycott balanced assimilation to British democracy with patient acquies-
cence to white supremacy. Hastings said that, as soon as children walked out
of their classes, he took charge, and all Chinese parents obeyed him without
question. His enlightened control prevented Chinese from making the boy-
cott into a radical challenge like the Hong Kong seamen’s strike. Further,
Hastings claimed that his loyalties toward British society came first; he had
advised British politicians in Victoria not to give in so that ordinary Chinese
“would not feel their power.”128 Da Han Gong Bao portrayed events differ-
ently: an unnamed leader, probably Hastings, had betrayed the Chinese anti-
segregation movement.129 The CCC leaders had been bitterly unhappy about
the betrayal, but they said nothing about it to Raushenbush. They claimed
not to seek confrontation with white society, but professed a patient faith in
Canada’s democratic future. Cecil Lee said, “I think if I had ability enough
there would be no position in Canada that would not be open to me. You
know how the Canadians feel about the French Canadian, and yet Sir Wilfred
[sic] Laurier is Premier of Canada.”130 Overall, Hastings and the CCC leaders
presented themselves as examples of a model minority: patient, assimilating,
nonthreatening, and in control of Chinatown.131
The British Columbian example set a pattern that other West Coast Chi-
nese brokers would follow. To an extent, Chinese Canadians shared their
alternate public sphere with Chinese Americans. Chinese associations in
Seattle and San Francisco often subscribed to Chinese Canadian newspapers,
and the Chinese immigrant press often covered both countries.132 In the
United States, the CCC’s sister organization, the Chinese American Citizens
Alliance, set the survey strategy.133 At the survey’s only other major Chinese
fieldwork site, Seattle, educated brokers monopolized interviews. Asian
immigrants in the United States were ineligible to become naturalized citizens,
but in 1898, the U.S. Supreme Court confirmed that U.S.-born Chinese were
citizens, which included voting rights. Seattle interviewees stressed that
U.S.-born Chinese Americans were good citizens, voters, and businesspeople
who benefited the United States, offering themselves as proof of anti-Chinese
laws’ injustice.134

The Chinese were not the only group who attempted to manage the Sur-
vey of Race Relations. Most Japanese presented shaded testimony to the
survey that downplayed the transnational outlooks prevalent among all gen-
erations of Japanese Americans during the 1920s.135 Chinese Canadian
sources do not mention any formal relationship between Chinese and Japanese
efforts, but the groups’ alternate public spheres overlapped. Highly edu-
cated Chinese and Japanese often read both languages.136 Indeed, Vancouver
Chinese organized to meet the survey right after Park told a Japanese-
language newspaper in California that he saw Asians as more black than
white.137 Chuichi Ohashi of the Japanese consulate responded to Park’s comments
in a letter to the survey, arguing that Japanese should be compared with
European immigrants. He wrote, “Superiority over the Negro does not
amount to anything.”138 Ohashi claimed that racial discrimination blocked
the assimilation of Japanese, a tragic situation for youth who had become
Americans in every way except color. Events in Japan, he said, also showed
“Japanese’ real ability as a race.” For the sake of good trade relations, he
hoped that the ignorant classes of anti-Japanese agitators would not be heed-
ed.139 At Raushenbush’s fieldwork in California, Japanese American commu-
nity leaders pointed her toward Americanized youth, while downplaying the
actual extent of their community’s dual Japanese and American national
identities.140 Survey researchers could not read Japanese-language newspa-
pers, and Raushenbush noted that Japanese American leaders treated the
survey interviews as “public relations.”141 A more complete exploration of
Japanese American approaches to the survey would require research with
Japanese-language sources. In any case, Chinese brokers’ efforts to “fix”
knowledge had a profound impact.
Brokering Knowledge
In the short term, during the 1920s and 1930s, the researchers’ findings did
not convince policy makers to improve the status of Chinese. Park never
wrote his promised book, and in 1925, the Institute of Social and Religious
Research did not renew the survey’s research grant.142 Still, the survey
changed the minds of some influential Canadians, creating avenues for con-
tinuing conversation. In 1926, Theodore Boggs, a University of British
Columbia economist involved in the survey, lobbied for Asians already in
British Columbia to be given voting rights. “Injustice leads to disharmony,”
he wrote, and a “democratic country cannot be stratified either socially
or racially.” Still, Boggs opposed Asian immigration. He felt that Asians’

inability to intermarry made them Canada’s “Negro problem.”143 But Raush-
enbush’s data left him with an abiding curiosity; Boggs became a fixture at
Chinese Canadian community events.144 John Nelson had a similar awak-
ening. Before the survey, he had written many articles condemning Asian
immigrants. Raushenbush’s interviews transformed his thinking about Chi-
nese, inspiring him to join American survey researchers in founding the
Institute of Pacific Relations (IPR) in 1925. That year, Chinese in China
boycotted Canadian and British Empire goods. In the IPR, Canada worked
as a partner with Japan and China to improve international relations. Other
member countries included the United States, Russia, and Australia.145 In
1928, Nelson wrote about the survey’s findings in Maclean’s, a national
Canadian magazine: “. . . for the first time, a real exploration was made into
the human factors and emotions that were involved, the investigators soon
became conscious of a great undertow of racial resentment and prejudice,
difficult to fathom and impossible to explain.” He noted that his past
approach to the “Oriental problem,” treating Chinese as a menace, was wrong.
Only “racial accommodation” would enable the peoples of the Pacific world
“to live together in peace.” Canada must deal with Chinese as human
beings.146 Canada’s future trade prospects depended on understanding China
and Chinese Canadians. The IPR debated these issues, and Nelson also
worked with leading Canadians to press for improved knowledge of Asia.147
At the time, few Canadians had expertise about China. One of Tom Moore
Whaun’s University of British Columbia classmates wrote in his yearbook,
“Thoroughly versed in Chinese affairs, Moore may often be found explain-
ing the situation in the Far East to a group of interested students. We are
truly indebted to him for a broader and truer understanding of China.”148
British Columbia’s universities did not offer any courses in Asian studies
until after 1945, so Chinese Canadian brokers often served as de facto experts
on China.
Chinese Canadian brokers shared the Chicago scholars’ belief in the
transforming power of interpersonal relations. Tom Moore Whaun crusaded
for Chinese Canadian justice throughout the 1920s by speaking to white
labor, leftist, and student groups.149 For men like Whaun, this brokerage
was both personal and political. Years later, in the 1960s, he recalled Raush-
enbush as a kindred spirit, and he wrote a letter asking what had happened
to her planned dissertation on Chinese in British Columbia. Raushenbush
had married and did not complete her doctoral studies. The two rekindled
their friendship, but Whaun never told her about the community plan.150
Chinese Canadians’ influence on the Chicago School’s data has remained
hidden until now.

Conclusion: Finding the “Real” Chinatown
In 1924, Raushenbush’s findings in British Columbia set the stage for the
survey’s future research on Chinese and Japanese immigration. White
researchers felt confident in their sociological ability to “know the whole
people” through English-speaking mediators.151 From that point on, they
would focus more on brokers and the native-born than on the majority of
Asian North Americans, immigrant workers. Above all, the American
researchers felt pleased that their data had affirmed their hypotheses about
the national environment’s power to reshape immigrant culture.152 When
Raushenbush returned to the survey’s head office in San Francisco, she con-
tinued with Chinese and Japanese field research. Park also assigned her the
task of classifying the survey’s entire data pool. The survey would distribute
only items that she deemed important. Before survey researchers drew their
conclusions, Raushenbush’s choices helped to determine what data they
would consult.153
Chinese and Japanese immigrants managed the survey researchers so
effectively that its final data set leaned toward a progressive narrative that
flattened immigrants’ complexity. The data set’s vast size reflected the mag-
nitude of this accomplishment. When the Survey of Race Relations finished
its field research in December 1924, writes historian Eckard Toy, its scholars
had collected 640 life histories and nearly 6,000 pages of data about assimi-
lation and race relations.154 The survey copied major portions of the docu-
ments to associated scholars across the West Coast.155 The resulting archives
became a unique repository of interview data from early twentieth-century
Asian Americans and Asian Canadians. In 1926, the survey published a jour-
nal issue dedicated to its findings.156 The survey data would inform many
of the most influential ideas about immigration. Further, the researchers’
peers would label them the “Chicago School of Sociology” because of these
ideas’ profound influence on American social science, popular culture, and
history.157
Raushenbush’s findings, published in the journal Survey Graphic in 1926,
concluded that youth represented the leading edge of inevitable West Coast
Chinese assimilation. Older Chinese workers remained “remote” from Euro-
peans, but the second generation would determine the community’s future.
In between, she wrote, stood a young Chinese-born generation that identified
with China’s revolution. These “wildly discontented” would-be modernizers
disavowed nationalism, but they needed a strong China to be respected in
North America. In contrast, the “native born,” she wrote, “know little about
the old China or the new; England, especially Victorian England, seems closer

to them than the aphorisms of Confucius or the dreams of Sun Yat Sen.” In
Canada, she argued, second-generation rule was so effective that British
Columbia did not have American-style tong wars over trafficking in illegal
immigrants, gambling, and opium.158 To the Survey Graphic’s U.S.–Canadian
audience of social scientists, social workers, policy makers, and missionaries,
Raushenbush predicted that West Coast Chinese problems would fade as
youth took the helm. Her article ended with a quote from a second-genera-
tion San Francisco Chinese leader, “Just wait until the native-born ride into
power here . . . and you will see a different Chinatown.”159
The survey’s evidence strongly supported Chicago sociologists’ theories
about migration and human cultural transformation. Their earlier studies of
European immigrants had viewed migration as a universal process of uproot-
ing and transplantation, culminating in adaptation to the new environment.
Much like biologists who study the natural world, they desired to chart indi-
vidual sites of assimilation and conflict as distinct local ecologies. The visible
persistence of homeland ties, Chicago scholars argued, was often a temporary
reaction to the new land’s challenges. Ultimately, they believed, assimilation
would triumph, and new groups would reach some sort of accommodation
with established residents.160 Much subsequent research would explore race
relations using plant metaphors from the natural world.
For more than eighty years, the survey’s conception of early Asian immi-
grants as tragically thwarted Canadians and Americans has strongly influ-
enced social sciences and humanities research.161 The survey’s data appeared
in over forty monographs. Its concepts and its data continue to be cited by
sociologists and historians. The survey’s ideas are also taught in American
and Canadian classrooms to the present.162 The Chicago School’s intellectual
history, however, cannot be complete without more scrutiny of its collabora-
tions with local ethnic leaders.
Evidence of immigrants’ malleability helped Chicago scholars to force-
fully argue for North America’s absorptive capacity, while it undercut the
biological premises of more pessimistic “sciences,” such as eugenics and
Social Darwinism.163 The Chinese brokers’ victory, however, came at a price.
They had presented their Chinese ties as so limited that Raushenbush con-
cluded that their culture had no substance. In Chinese culture, she found
“none of the philosophic aura of Hindu mysticism, none of the human and
moving loyalty of the Japanese patriot. The Chinese are realists.”164 Brokers
also downplayed North American Chinese connections to China to the extent
that their transpacific lives became less visible.
Brokers chose to steer the researchers away from their transnational world,
precluding discussion of their political power. They spoke most freely about

their conflicts of consciousness between the two cultures, while saying far less
about their political brokerage as an integrating force. Following the Chicago
School, generations of ethnic studies scholars have explored discourses of
identity.165 However, interviews about personal identity are often manipu-
lated, especially if researchers do not know the subjects’ language and com-
munity. Despite their history of political initiative, Chinese brokers portrayed
themselves as passive, reactive, and patient; these images contributed to the
later popular myth that Asians were a model minority.166
The Chicago School concluded that assimilation was a natural process
akin to plant ecology, a conception that gave little attention to ethnic leaders,
political power, or mediators as parts of stratified immigrant communities.167
Like flora replanted in a new environment, immigrants adjusted to their new
culture and affected its ecology. The researchers believed that consciousness
foreshadowed later social change. They privileged the subjective question of
identity, seeing leaders as assimilation’s leading edge, as “marginal men,” a
term Park coined in 1928.168 The researchers concluded that immigrants’
cultural change is an ecological process dependent on the host society. Park
also conceived of race relations as a cycle of conflict with newcomers. The
survey’s interviews with Chinese suggested that Asians would adjust and, per-
haps, be accepted in the distant future. The Chicago School’s ecological con-
ception of assimilation suggested a natural progression, which removed any
necessity for understanding the political aspects of social change, such as bro-
kers’ mediating roles. Even today, ethnic leadership continues to be a neglected
topic in immigration studies.169 Chinatown’s power brokers, the most visible
members of their communities, became relegated to scholarly obscurity.
Restoring power brokers to their rightful prominence suggests new ways
of thinking about immigrant history. Many popular, mainstream histories
celebrate individual initiative. Ethnic historians, however, have emphasized
collective experiences, such as community and race. This preference for writ-
ing history “from the bottom up” obscures the role of brokers as creative
individuals. Brokers strived daily to shape the spaces between societies. From
the start, Chinese influenced the affairs of their locality, of Canada, of the
United States, and of China. A West Coast Chinese history with brokerage at
its center can no longer be conceived of as a separate, specialized topic. Bro-
kerage also matters because scholars of political incorporation have focused
on immigrants who acted as citizens.170 However, the political integration of
newcomers did not always start or end with citizenship rights. To disenfran-
chised immigrants, leaders’ brokerage took on outsized importance. For
nearly a century, Chinatown leaders’ brokerage profoundly shaped ties
between Chinese and their North American neighbors.171

The development of a model minority myth was perhaps the most influ-
ential outcome of the survey. During the 1920s, West Coast Chinese helped
to write Chinese agency out of their own—and all of our—history. Brokers
constructed a story of assimilation that built upon popular ideas about the
contrasts between China and the West. They often explained their own trans-
formation in terms of Western popular thought. This thought often pre-
sumed that the West had history, reason, and change, while the East had
culture, despotism, and tradition.172 Chicago scholars thus saw most Chinese
brokers as between East and West, between tradition and modernity. They
often elided class, educational, and political divisions within Chinese com-
munities. The resulting model minority myth still survives throughout the
United States and Canada. Scholars have believed the myth to be a product of
the United States during the 1950s and 1960s,173 but it has much earlier
origins. Its narrative of Asian immigrants as achievement-oriented, hard-
working, and deferential to authority plays a large role in both U.S. and
global studies. Presently, over a thousand books and nearly as many articles
discuss the model minority concept.174 But Chinese brokers’ interactions
with the Chicago scholars tell a different story about the interracial politics
of creating immigrant myths.

five
| Transforming Democracy
Brokerage Politics and the Exclusion Era’s
Denouement
B y the end of the Second World War, Chinese power brokers’ efforts
to construct a model minority myth had directly contributed to the
Exclusion Era’s denouement. The myth’s ideas greatly influenced changes
in policy making, and the war was a watershed moment for Chinese-Anglo
relations in Canada and in the United States. However, popular interpreta-
tions of the Second World War as a “good war” that brought about a “triumph
of citizenship” for patient Chinese minorities tell only part of the political
story.1 Chinese Canadian mass protests also helped to transform Canada’s
democracy. Wartime crises forced political brokerage to extreme limits, sus-
pended the usual rules, and forced sudden social change. Canada’s war policies
singled out Chinese Canadians for inequitable treatment, inciting persistent
resistance. Traditional brokers failed to secure adjustments, so many Chinese
turned to wider labor and anti-conscription movements. Together, mass
protests and model minority rhetoric influenced the repeal of anti-Chinese
policies, building a foundation for a new politics of minority human rights and
equality.2
This chapter explores how Canada’s wartime policies led to Chinese Cana-
dian protests that interacted with wider national struggles over redefining
the rights of Canadians. It traces Chinese Canadian calls for “taxpayers’
rights,” “workers’ rights,” and “soldiers’ rights” as part of greater social move-
ments for minority rights. Energized by the labor movement and its affiliated
political parties, these global and local politics challenged Canada to adjust
its British imperial identity. During the Second World War, this nascent
rights culture created openings for both minorities and workers to push for a
more egalitarian vision of Canadian citizenship.
When Canada declared war on Germany in 1939, most Chinese Canadians
did not foresee great changes. The late 1920s and 1930s had been hard. Anti-
Chinese laws drove the Chinese population into the shadows. Canada’s
exclusion law barred new Chinese immigrants, tripling the cost of fraudulent
entry.3 Chinese economic prospects also collapsed during the decade. The
Great Depression (1929–1939) brought Chinese Canadian unemployment as
high as 80 percent in greater Vancouver, over twice British Columbia’s gen-
eral jobless rate of 28 percent.4 Without Chinese customers, the businesses of
Chinese merchants and legal interpreters fell precipitously.5 The overwhelmed
Chinese and Anglo charities left hundreds of hungry, ragged Chinese home-
less during the winter. Government relief programs could not adequately
meet the needs of the destitute.6 Vancouver city agencies provided Chinese
with a lower level of daily food relief than Anglos received.7 Without cash,
Chinatown’s traditional power brokers’ influence diminished. Authorities
cracked down on Chinese gambling and illegal immigration.8 Return to
China provided no escape; the global economic collapse had encompassed
their ancestral homes.9 Japan’s invasion of China also caused Chinese Canadi-
ans great anxiety.10 Further, Canada’s war policies restricted the sending of
relief remittances to relatives in China. The trials and tribulations of the
1930s caused growing numbers of Vancouver Chinese to conclude that the
traditional power brokers had failed.11 This crisis of traditional brokerage—
and rivals’ struggles to replace it—strongly influenced Chinese Canadian
participation in the wartime struggles to reshape race and class relations.
Chinese Canadian workers, a group historically excluded from traditional
brokerage, organized some of the war’s most effective protests against racial
discrimination.12 In greater Vancouver, over 5,000 Chinese workers partici-
pated in mass protests.13 Similar worker protests occurred throughout British
Columbia’s lower mainland and on Vancouver Island.14 Chinese Canadian
men also rebelled against military service, with thousands refusing to enlist
unless Canada granted them equal rights.15 These popular revolts belie Eng-
lish media images of obedient, loyal, allied Chinese. The smiling faces of
Chinese Canadian soldiers in the English wartime press suggested that polit-
ical brokers had become unnecessary.16 In contrast, Da Han Gong Bao argued
in a series of front-page editorials that Canada’s war policies had to be changed
to save Chinese Canadians’ families.17
For most Chinese Canadians, the daily drumbeat of war news about bomb-
ings, destruction, refugees, and hunger in Guangdong provoked profound

anxiety and grief. When Chinese Canadians read about dying children and
elders collapsed by the sides of roads, too weak to walk, they wondered, could
those be their children or their parents? As they joined their fellow Vancou-
ver residents in practice blackouts and air raid drills, they could not help but
think of cities in Guangdong, such as Guangzhou, Taicheng, and Foshan,
where homes had been bombed, looted, and consumed by fire. They could
only imagine the terror and the suffering of their loved ones, and most would
have done anything to save their families in China. They believed that their
families’ lives depended on their aid and that, without urgent help, they
might soon die.18 For many Chinese Canadians, efforts to change war policies
related to race, class, and the regulation of transnational immigrants became
a sacred responsibility.19
In Canada’s ethnic history, the Second World War often appears as the end
of an old era of British imperialism and the start of a new era of pluralistic
Canadian citizenship. Retrospective knowledge of subsequent events has
inspired scholars to seek the causes of these changes in wartime events. Most
present this postwar turn toward multiculturalism and human rights as
resulting from enlightened Anglo attitudes. Some scholarship sees the process
of change as a product of three wartime trends toward consensus: interna-
tional alliances, racial harmony, and working-class solidarity. These accounts
portray Chinese Canadians mainly as petitioners and responders to a more
receptive mainstream. For most historians, the task has been to identify
which moment crystallized Anglo society’s cultural turning point.20 How-
ever, all three consensus views seriously underestimate Chinese Canadians
themselves as a political force for change.
The international alliance interpretation of the Exclusion Era’s waning
captures part of the change, but misses some of the continuities in Chinese-
Anglo negotiations and in Chinese Canadians’ ongoing ties to the Pacific
world. Historians have emphasized that, in World War II, Canada and China
fought on the same side, leading to policies that treated Chinese Canadians
as “allies.”21 Granted, both Canada’s war department and Chinese Canadian
leaders encouraged the Anglo press to celebrate Chinese Canadians as valiant
defenders of their homeland, China, against the common Japanese menace.22
However, the war also led to an expansion of policies that treated all Chinese
Canadians, regardless of citizenship, as foreigners. The federal government’s
strategic concern to support China’s ruling Nationalist Party as an anti-
Communist bulwark led the two states to cooperate in unprecedented interven-
tions in Chinese Canadians’ private affairs.23 International alliances brought
a degree of acceptance but also the state sanction of extraterritorial rule over
Chinese Canadians by a foreign government.
t ransforming d emocracy | 113

The ties between the United States and Canada also helped to shape events.
Chinese Canadians and Chinese Americans kept a close watch on each other
in the Chinese-language press.24 As one Da Han Gong Bao front-page editorial
put it, Vancouver’s protests belonged to the larger Chinese search for effective
means of attaining equality in North America.25 Canadians noticed that the
United States made goodwill gestures toward its ally, China. To counter
Japanese propaganda, the United States repealed its Chinese Exclusion Act in
1943. It also lifted bars to U.S. citizenship for Chinese immigrants and regu-
larized the status of illegal immigrants who served in the military.26 Chinese
Canadians received none of these benefits. The Chinese press, more free of the
censor’s watch than the Anglo press, reported a mood of uncertainty among
Chinese in Canada rather than a triumphant march to citizenship.27
While the international alliance interpretation offers some explanation
for the collapse of the Exclusion Era, the racial harmony interpretation, which
sees change as a process of consensus, has become the most popular explana-
tion. This view comes mainly from English-language sources which celebrate
Chinese Canadians’ integration into the war effort as a heroic quest to earn
equal citizenship rights. Television programs, films, newspapers, books, and
government websites have depicted Chinese Canadians’ military service and,
to a lesser extent, war work as a test of loyalty passed with flying colors and
leading to postwar voting rights.28 Histories of Chinese American inclusion
during the war often present similar narratives of patient model citizens.29
These war hero stories have universal appeal across party lines, ideology, and
ethnic groups, but they do not tell the full story.
An examination of Chinese Canadians’ political brokerage reveals a new
side of Second World War history, fraught with conflict but also empowered
by new social movements. Granted, the war brought unprecedented oppor-
tunities for Chinese Canadians to integrate. Scholars argue that mainstream
labor unions in war industries welcomed Chinese, overcoming the labor
movement’s historic antipathy to cheap Asian labor.30 However, the Chinese
press reported that the process of integration was neither smooth nor easy.
Chinese workers in British Columbia organized to fight for equal pay within
the labor union movement.31 Chinese Canadians also confronted the wartime
expansion of income taxes to low-wage workers, which affected policy debates
over defining taxpayer rights for immigrants beyond the settler-citizen
ideal.32 While some Chinese served in the military, others joined a national
anti-conscription movement of nonwhite Canadians. Scholarship on Canada’s
home front during the Second World War generally has been so fragmented
as to preclude definitive synthesis, and discussions of race are even more
incomplete.33 Much about immigrants’ views of the process of change remains

to be explored, as do their roles in making it happen. This chapter only
begins to fill these gaps, and it cannot make up for the limited historical
studies on China-Canada relations.34 Still, the Chinese Canadian case points
toward political reconfigurations which were especially relevant to the one-
fifth of Canadians who had transnational ties beyond the British Empire and
to the 2 percent of Canada’s residents who were nonwhite.35
Regulating Remittances: Nationalizing the Mechanism for

Immigrants’ Support of Relatives Outside of Canada
For nearly a century, Chinese Canadians treated their migration, their fam-
ilies, and their economic dealings as mostly private affairs. However, Canada’s
war policies extended China’s authority over Chinese Canadians. Together,
the two states seized control over Chinese Canadians’ private family remit-
tances to China. Many Chinese Canadians challenged the legitimacy of these
exactions and the trustworthiness of the collectors.
On 15 September 1939, Canada announced that all individual immigrant
remittances and donations sent abroad during the war would require permits
from the newly formed Foreign Exchange Control Board (FECB). Funds
would henceforth only be sent abroad through authorized agencies at rates
set by the government. The FECB would also regulate the maximum amount
of Canadian cash that individuals could remit to family members in particu-
lar countries, and it set the family remittance limit for China to a US$25
purchase of Chinese yuan per month. The FECB set the limit in U.S. dollars
because Canada required Chinese Canadians to send money through the Bank
of China in New York. Any greater amount required a petition for an exemp-
tion. Immigrant groups seeking to send collective donations also had to apply
for permission to send funds abroad, and every international business trans-
action required a permit.36 To protect the value of the Canadian dollar, the
FECB limited large purchases of foreign currencies.37 Canada’s population
had extensive foreign ties, especially to the United States, so the FECB had a
tremendous impact on domestic society.38 The act inserted government con-
trol and surveillance into every non-British foreign financial transaction. Fur-
ther, it authorized remittances only via Canadian chartered banks, displacing
immigrant firms that had handled remittances for most Asian, Southern
European, and Eastern European immigrants.39
The FECB constituted one of the earliest, most drastic interventions into
domestic wartime society. Canada’s federal cabinet used its emergency powers
under the War Measures Act to create the FECB only five days after declaring

war.40 Nevertheless, even within Canadian economic scholarship, it is obscure.
Generally, scholars have seen the FECB as the war propaganda described it: a
measure to stabilize Canada’s national finances.41 A social history analysis,
however, reveals a more sweeping personal and political impact. The FECB
had an immediate effect upon Chinese Canadian communities.42 It dealt a
severe blow to Chinese immigration firms (jinshanzhuang) whose business
capitalization depended heavily on selling remittance services.43 The Yip
family’s Wing Sang Company’s records show that the Yips conducted an
extensive remittance business.44 The loss of this business due to the FECB
harmed a company already weakened by the Great Depression and the Sino-
Japanese War’s interruption of Pacific trade. After the Second World War,
the Yips would never recover their former status. The FECB accelerated the
decline of merchant brokers based in the immigration business, creating a
power vacuum that rival brokers attempted to fill.
Further, the FECB outsourced the evaluation of Chinese Canadians’ peti-
tions for remittances to China’s Nationalist Party government.45 According
to the records of China’s consulate general in Ottawa, Chinese Canadians
inundated the consulate with FECB petitions. Many Chinese Canadians
believed that money could mean the difference between life and death for
their family members in China.46 One man asked to send money because his
family’s home had been destroyed. Another man asked to pay for his son’s law
school tuition. A third petitioned to send money to his elderly mother.47
Li Donghai, author of Jianada Huaqiao Shi and an early Victoria community
member, estimated that most Chinese remitted about a third of their income
to China.48 The war situation, however, made many Chinese anxious to remit
larger sums, especially because the Second World War created full employ-
ment after ten years of economic hardship.49 Applying for a one-time exemp-
tion to remit more than $25 to relatives in China required an explanatory
petition and documentation of past remittances.50 However, many Chinese
did not have documentation.51 By taking over the remittance functions, Chi-
na’s consulates exercised new political power over Chinese Canadians.
China’s consulates found that controlling remittances also helped to
extend their reach over assimilating Chinese Canadians. In March 1940, Van-
couver’s consulate announced that all Chinese had to register their name,
profession, and salary in order to be taxed by China.52 Thirty thousand Chi-
nese in British Columbia registered; many were illegal immigrants or Cana-
dian-born. Canada’s Census, taken one year later, in 1941, counted only
18,619 Chinese in British Columbia.53 China’s government also used the FECB
to quash rival brokers seeking to raise war relief funds for China independently
of Nationalist Party control.54 Besides the official resistance, Vancouver had

five other major Chinese groups that raised humanitarian funds to aid war
refugees in China.55 Across western Canada, Chinese relief aid groups not
controlled by China’s ruling Nationalist Party found that China’s consulate
frequently denied their FECB requests.56
Foon Sien Wong, an officer of Vancouver’s Chinese Benevolent Associa-
tion in charge of “foreign relations” with Anglos and a censor of the Chinese
press and mails for Canada’s war department, pleaded with Canada’s federal
government to adjust FECB policy.57 Letters smuggled out of Guangdong
reported that family members of Chinese Canadians needed at least several
thousand yuan per month to sustain life, far more than the FECB permitted.58
Da Han Gong Bao reported that a million persons in the Chinese Canadians’
principal region of origin, Siyi, were at risk for death from hunger.59 In 1943,
San Francisco Chinese Li Dao Wei received a letter that claimed that some
residents of Siyi’s Taishan County had turned to cannibalism. By 1944, a
New York Chinese got a letter stating that 600,000 Chinese had starved to
death in Siyi.60 In addition to Canada’s regulations, the Bank of China charged
commissions on remittances, and it set its U.S. dollar–to–Chinese yuan
exchange rates at one-fifth the going market rate.61 Further, the FECB’s
required channel for approved relief remittances, the Bank of China in New
York, appeared corrupt.62 Chinese Canadians increasingly suspected that
relief remittances never reached their intended recipients, but the FECB pol-
icy remained restrictive.63
Stymied, Wong began aligning with a new political force, the industrial
union movement, which had become a powerful representative for unskilled
workers in Canada’s political economy in the 1930s and 1940s.64 Unionized Chi-
nese workers would score the first Chinese collective victories in wartime strug-
gles for racial equality. They also directly challenged Chinatown’s traditional
brokers for the right to represent Chinese workers in the political and economic
realms. Through civil disobedience, Chinese intended to force their unions,
employers, and governments to curtail material forms of discrimination.
The Chinese Workers’ Movement: Taxpayers’ Rights,

Workers’ Rights, and Minority Rights in Canadian
Organized Labor
Brokers had always handled issues of material importance, but the war raised
the stakes because families in China needed more exactly at the moment
when families in Canada could provide less. This crisis provoked two mass

protests against Canada’s war policies and established community leaders.
Neither mass protest movement has been fully explored in the existing schol-
arship because they were reported at length only in the Chinese-language
press.65 Both protests helped to establish new forms of brokerage, leading to
power sharing and bringing Chinese Canadians more deeply into mainstream
Canadian political life.
The Chinese workers’ movement began on 7 July 1943, when over 5,000
Chinese Canadian war industry workers walked off the job, “desolating” local
shingle mills and disrupting shipyard production.66 Chinese had seen the
effectiveness of sudden, sharp job actions within British Columbia’s labor
movement, so they hoped to press their employers, their unions, and China’s
consulate to lobby on their behalf.67 The strikers demanded the right to
income tax deductions for their dependents in China.68 Since the spring of
1943, Canada’s tax office had treated many Chinese workers as though they
had no families.69 Given high wartime income taxes, the new policy made a
major difference in their paychecks. Before the change, a Chinese shipyard
worker had $2.35 withheld from his paycheck for taxes, but afterward $11
was withheld, leaving him “very little.”70 For Chinese who supported family
members in China, the loss of dependent deductions created a dire financial
crisis,71 and they turned to radical action to assert their rights as workers and
taxpayers.
Politically, difficult documentation problems lay at the heart of the dis-
pute. Da Han Gong Bao, Chinese consulate archives, and Canadian tax office
records outline the background of the crisis. Before the war, according to Da
Han Gong Bao, most Chinese earned wages too low to pay income taxes.72
Beginning in 1941, when rising wages first started to bring tens of thousands
of Chinese workers to the attention of the tax collectors, Chinese had sought
tax deductions for their dependents in China.73 It took until March 1942 for
Canada’s government to make Chinese workers’ dependents in China eligible
for deductions.74 At that time, the deductions relieved most Chinese from
income tax.75 However, in 1943, Canadian tax officials cracked down on per-
ceived fraud among foreign sojourners who claimed to support dependents
outside Canada.76 The tax office rejected most Chinese workers’ claims as
unverifiable. Their employers then withheld much higher taxes from their
paychecks. Canadian tax officials promised to refund any erroneous withhold-
ings after reviewing the documentation of each Chinese case. However, due
to illegal immigration and language difficulties, Chinese Canadians had
never been a well-documented people in the federal government’s records.77
Further, even Chinese who submitted acceptable documents could expect to
pay the much higher taxes for five or six months before their appeals were

processed.78 The low wages of Chinese Canadian workers made higher taxa-
tion a hardship. Roy Mah (Ma Guo Guan), a union organizer, recalled in 1943
that Chinese laborers earned less than half of white workers’ wages. For ex-
ample, Chinese lumber workers earned twenty-five to forty cents per hour,
while white workers earned seventy-five cents to a dollar per hour.79 Chinese
protested because they believed that many of Canada’s other sojourners (wai-
qiao), Europeans and East Indians, received deductions for dependents living
outside of Canada.80 After China’s diplomats failed to bring effective tax
equity, Chinese workers, the most “bitterly” affected taxpayers, sought the
help of the Canadian labor movement.81
The income tax issue arose in the midst of greater class conflicts over the
representation of Chinese workers to Anglo institutions. Though Foon Sien
Wong had never done manual labor, he reinvented himself as a champion of
the Chinese proletariat. His shift began as early as 1942, when he voiced
popular frustrations with the government-appointed rice agency. Many Chi-
nese Canadians could not afford to eat a Chinese diet because of the high
prices of imported American rice, soy sauce, bean curd, and salted fish.82
Before the war, rice cost $1.65 for a forty-four-pound sack, but by 1942, rice
cost between $7 and $9.83 In Xin Minguo Bao, Wong complained that Chi-
nese Canadian rice merchants holding the rice monopoly demanded excessive
tributes from “proletarians” like himself.84 His work as a legal broker also
changed. He chose to live in poverty, offering his legal skills without requir-
ing payment. His Anglo wife, Joan, worked in a munitions plant and pro-
vided the sole support for their family.85 Roy Mah felt “a little bit scared” of
the labor contractors who competed for the loyalty of Chinese workers.86
Established wealthy merchants and the traditional brokers had the most
access to larger political power. The organizers of industrial unions—and
their Chinese members—argued that conditions should change: the Allied
struggle for democracy should include more worker concerns.
Labor historians have focused on unions as workers’ voices in industry, but
workers also sought power as political brokers. The “full glass of beer” pro-
test of 1943 shows unions’ growing influence as representatives of workers
and consumers. Da Han Gong Bao reported that Vancouver workers com-
plained to their unions that bar owners often shortchanged customers’ glasses
of beer by filling large portions of their cups with empty suds. The city’s
labor unions then requested a meeting with the bar owners association. On
behalf of their members, the unions negotiated a guarantee that every worker
would receive the full glass of beer for which he or she paid.87 At the time,
most Canadians purchased beer by the glass, so keeping drinking affordable
protected a cherished form of social relaxation. Through experiences like the

“full glass of beer” protest, Chinese Canadians found unions to be effective
political brokers beyond the shop floor, and they pressed their locals to lobby
on the tax issue.
The war gave unprecedented numbers of Chinese Canadians the chance to
join industrial unions. As Anglo men departed for the front, Vancouver’s
booming war industries faced shortages of male workers. Lumber mills, ship-
yards, aircraft factories, munitions plants, and ports boomed. The British war
effort in Asia required supplies, and Vancouver became an industrial center
overnight.88 Chinese Canadians especially benefited because Canada’s federal
government barred Chinese from military service to prevent them from
demanding voting rights in British Columbia.89 For the first time since Can-
ada built the Canadian Pacific Railway, young, able-bodied Chinese men
held an advantageous position in British Columbia’s labor market. Herbert
Lim remembered that the war opened up shipyard work to Chinese. The
“men shortage” also allowed Chinese to jump from job to job, seeking the
best wages and work conditions.90 Bing Wong, a plate fitter, worked in Bur-
rard Shipyard alongside European women.91 Joe Sam recalled camaraderie in
Victoria shipyards. Things were “improving every day,” he recalled.92 No one
knew, however, if wartime changes would last. Full employment also added
to workers’ leverage just as Canada’s federal government assumed extraordi-
nary powers to manage the wartime economy.93
Controversies over Chinese workers’ taxation were closely linked to gen-
eral resentment against perceived inequalities in income tax policies. Cana-
da’s need to finance the war disproportionately affected low-wage workers.
Public opinion polls found that over 40 percent of working-class Canadians
opposed higher income taxes.94 By 1942, Canada’s war department mounted
national propaganda campaigns to quell dissent over rising taxes. Jeffrey
Keshen, the author of a study of Canada’s home front, noted that a typical ad
linked civilian “gripes” about taxes with a list of Canada’s dead soldiers at
Dieppe. The ads, like kindred campaigns denouncing strikes as “selfish,”
portrayed dissent against Canada’s war policies as unpatriotic.95
British Columbia’s labor movement found the Chinese income tax ques-
tion “vexatious,” and for several months, unions debated the issue.96 Da Han
Gong Bao reported that many Canadians questioned the merits of the Chinese
workers’ case. Jealousy, along with the long-standing taints of illegal immi-
gration and sojourning, made granting tax deductions to Chinese controver-
sial. The deduction question also sparked mainstream debate about what
level of taxation an alien people deserved.97 Anglos often resented that Chi-
nese workers appeared to “unfairly” profit from Anglo men’s military service.
War worker Herb Lim recalled “a lot of resentment” against Chinese. Lim

enrolled in the Canadian Officers’ Training Corps but could not serve due to
his race. Many Anglos refused to believe the racial bar existed. “How come
you were not in the army?” they asked him constantly.98 Further, Da Han
Gong Bao noted that many Canadians did not sympathize with Chinese
workers because they believed that their families in China did not really
exist. They accused Chinese of evading income taxes. Da Han Gong Bao grant-
ed that a few fraudulent cases had happened, but Vancouver Chinese knew that
nearly all family support claims were legitimate.99 Because of popular resent-
ment, Chinese workers judged that reversing the tax policy would require
more potent brokers than Chinatown’s merchant elite or China’s consul.
The income tax question created a political dilemma for Chinese workers
and their Canadian unions. In their wartime rhetoric, British Columbia’s
industrial unions proclaimed the racial solidarity of workers. They welcomed
Asians as union members under the rubric of “equal pay for equal work.”100
However, the weakness of the unions in this era before the existence of strong
collective bargaining laws meant that racial equality was not always a prior-
ity. The Chinese workers’ protest compelled unions to act because of its tim-
ing in the midst of union drives for recognition. In June 1943, Nigel Morgan,
head of the International Woodworkers of America (IWA) in British Colum-
bia, testified to the National War Labor Board that his union had 9,000–
10,000 members. Over one-tenth of IWA members were Chinese, numbering
more than 1,500 workers. The IWA was negotiating at “29 different opera-
tions” in British Columbia. However, the union won only one contract due
to “employers’ refusal to sign.”101 The limited power of the unions made it
difficult for them to risk their own political capital for an unpopular matter.
Wartime opinion polls reported that most Canadians believed that strikes
during the war were “unpatriotic” and “selfish.”102 Finally, the Chinese forced
the issue by announcing their intention to hold an illegal strike. They would
embarrass the unions, their employers, and the Canadian government unless
their demands were met. They wanted tax deductions for their dependent
family members because every other ethnic group received them. The threat
to disrupt war production resulted in a conflict that appeared to be resolved
in a single day.103
The Chinese Canadian workers’ strike pressed their employers and their
unions to advocate on their behalf, but at some political cost. Shingle mill
owners quickly arranged to settle the matter. They brought together Vancou-
ver’s tax office, Vancouver mayor Jack Cornett, the Chinese consul, and Van-
couver Centre MP Ian McKenzie. Within one day, the Vancouver tax office
quickly agreed to rescind the restriction on Chinese deductions, but the Chi-
nese workers’ illegal strike incurred much criticism.104 The IWA and the

Dock and Shipyard Workers’ Union (DSWU) decried the racial strike as
harmful both to the war effort and the unions’ cause. Unions, they claimed,
had no division by race or religion. Strikes also hurt Allied troops. For the
sake of collective bargaining, the IWA asked Chinese workers not to under-
cut their union. “Every worker should return to his or her workplace,” stated
the unions. “We pledge our support for Chinese workers.”105 Meanwhile,
Vancouver’s Chinese consul scolded workers that the illegal strike had hurt
China-Canada relations. They should return to work, follow orders, and unite
for Allied victory. China’s diplomats would take care of “miscellaneous” over-
seas Chinese rights.106
Da Han Gong Bao called the strike a victory for all sojourners in Canada,
but a defeat for Chinese because Ottawa’s tax office disallowed the Vancouver
settlement. Chinese could deduct dependents in China, but the tax office
wanted proof of their existence. The tax office required that all Chinese appli-
cations for dependent deductions include their immigration entry paper
numbers and documentation of remittances. These regulations posed
dilemmas for the great many Chinese who were illegal immigrants. Since
Canada did not allow their families to come, many Chinese had not declared
their real families to Canadian immigration.107 Jin She, a Chinese striker,
defended the illegal protest on the front page of Da Han Gong Bao. Canada’s
entry restrictions “force immigrants to become makers of change.” The strike
won government recognition of Chinese families in tax policy, perhaps a
precedent for future changes in immigration law, but the “peril to overseas
Chinese” continued.108
Jin wrote that Ottawa’s response created a dilemma because Canada’s
authorities did not appear to know about the extent of Chinese illegal immigra-
tion. If Chinese declared their true dependents, would they be charged as
criminals, or would they be seen as obstructing the war effort? A good number
of Chinese had used “paper names” to enter Canada by reusing others’ papers or
through other fraudulent means. Many Chinese had entered Canada secretly, so
they did not have any immigration entry papers. These illegal immigrants
wanted to save their families in China, so many prepared to rush to Canadian
authorities and confess their real identities. Further, regardless of their immi-
gration status, many Chinese had no remittance documentation that Canada’s
government would accept. One-third of Chinese were illiterate so they had sent
money to family members through Chinese remittance shops, relatives, and
friends. As a result, Chinese claims for deductions often seemed so contradictory
that Canadian tax officials believed most of them to be fraudulent.109
The strike’s efficacy made organized labor appear like a broker that could
deliver. One week after the strike, on 18 July, over 2,000 Chinese met in

Chinatown to create a new regional workers’ organization that would coordi-
nate their negotiating position. Chinese workers filled the Columbia Street
Theatre to the rafters. Outside, Chinese workers crowded the sidewalks on
both sides of the street, eagerly waiting for news.110 Da Han Gong Bao report-
ed that Canada’s tax office had informed employers to calculate Chinese
employees’ income tax withholding to give lower than ordinary dependent
deductions for workers’ wives and children in China. This new order appeared
to erase the strikers’ past progress.111 The Chinese workers at the meeting
resolved to meet with every employer to discuss tax and wage issues.112 The
workers contributed $48.61 in donations, a paltry sum compared with past
Chinese Canadian antidiscrimination campaigns, which had been backed by
wealthy merchants.113
The Chinese workers’ organization meeting, which the English press
described only as a “protest,” raised the specter of a racial split in the labor
movement. A reporter from the Vancouver News Herald asked C. T. Lee, a
worker spokesman, if Chinese workers intended to “menace” trade union
unity by forming a separate union. Lee said that Chinese believed that “exist-
ing unions are powerful enough and conscious enough of the situation to get
justice for their Chinese members.”114 Canadian unions moved quickly to
mend the rift. Charles Saunders, chair of the Dock and Shipyard Workers
Union, commented, “If an Axis agent were working to invite disaffection, he
could not do it more effectively than the department of finance managed by
such ineptitude as this.”115 After the Chinese mass meeting, the DSWU orga-
nized a meeting of its shop stewards to discuss the tax issue. The Interna-
tional Woodworkers of America attempted to quiet Chinese unrest by sending
a brief to Ottawa regarding the tax matter.116 However, the unions’ help did
not persuade Canada’s tax office to relax its requirements for proof of depen-
dents’ existence.
At the time, workers were largely excluded from political leadership both
in Chinatown and in Canada’s labor union movement.117 Roy Mah, a restau-
rant cook, university student, and IWA organizer, recalled that, during the
war, young Chinese men from wealthier families looked down on him as a
“working stiff” despite the fact that Mah’s bilingual skills were superior to
theirs.118 War industries relegated most Chinese to unskilled labor, regardless
of their past experience.119 Chinese workers’ ranks included a fair number of
educated, bilingual persons like Mah, who served as shop stewards, foremen,
union organizers, and ad hoc interpreters.120 In Vancouver’s shipyards, edu-
cated, bilingual Chinese often served as foremen for Chinese crews.121 Chi-
nese workers recognized their own lack of prestige. When they first organized
their strike, Vancouver’s Chinese consul spoke for them.122 Workers also used

other intermediaries for communications during the first three weeks of their
protest. Da Han Gong Bao did not name these “intermediaries,” perhaps
because the Chinese workers’ strike was illegal, but they probably came from
Vancouver’s pool of educated, middle-class brokers friendly to labor causes,
such as Foon Sien Wong and Tom Moore Whaun.123
After three weeks, Chinese workers created a more democratic and inclu-
sive political institution: an ethnic labor union within the larger Canadian
labor movement. On 1 August 1943, Chinese workers in the greater Vancou-
ver region organized a new central coordinating body, the Overseas Chinese
Workers’ Friendship Union (OCWFU).124 The union allowed every Chinese
to vote and run for office.125 Now, worker-brokers had their own organiza-
tion, ideology, and channels into Canada’s political economy. Chinese workers
in the OCWFU dealt directly with employers, unions, and the government.
Chinese Canadian shipyard, lumber, laundry, restaurant, and farm workers
joined to support the common cause of defending workers’ interests, saving
China, and raising Chinese workers’ status. Members came from both
mainstream and ethnic Chinese workplaces and included men and women,
immigrants and the Canadian-born.
Chinese workers alone did not have the cash resources for a strike fund,
so they invited allies from the wider Chinese community, including some
“capitalists,” to their founding meeting.126 Tom Moore Whaun, a long-time
supporter of the Left, a legal interpreter, and an advertising manager for Xin
Minguo Bao, appears to have attended.127 Union members resolved to plan
more illegal strikes and job actions, to inform the Chinese consul of their
position, and to conduct direct negotiations with Vancouver’s federal tax
office.128 The Chinese workers’ union brought greater democracy and inclu-
sion both to the larger labor movement and to Chinese Canadian community
leadership.
For seven months, Chinese workers in British Columbia protested against
the income tax regulations, joining the wider patterns of labor militancy
during the war.129 Chinese wildcat strikes were one of many abrupt job
actions that jolted Canada’s war effort during 1943.130 Chinese shingle mill
workers across British Columbia protested against the income tax policies
with illegal strikes, shutting down two mills and “drastically reducing effi-
ciency” throughout the industry. They also demanded equal pay to that of
white workers.131 Further, Chinese workers forced greater Vancouver’s ship-
yards into a tax strike. The shipyards defied Ottawa, refusing to enforce the
new deduction regulations. The shipyards insisted that Chinese Canadian
families in China be officially recognized, so they stopped complying with
the tax office’s orders and returned to withholding income taxes from Chinese

Canadian paychecks at the lower rates that applied to workers who supported
dependents living in Canada.132 Besides employers, the woodworkers and the
shipyard unions also lobbied on behalf of Chinese Canadians.133 Throughout
the dispute, Chinese workers negotiated with the unions, the employers, the
tax office, and China’s consulate.134 The Chinese strikers, wrote Jin She,
experimented with a new strategy for achieving fairness for all of North
America.135 The efforts of Chinese workers to steer the rising power of their
industrial unions resulted in their tax protest being supported by the protests
of increasingly potent allies.
By showing their mettle as workers, Chinese immigrants demonstrated
their commitment to organized labor principles. They helped to turn labor
groups, which had historically opposed Asian immigration, into allies.136
Canadian public attitudes toward unions also shifted from a grudging toler-
ation to a widespread belief that unions should be major players in public
policy.137 By the end of February 1944, after Canada passed comprehensive
collective bargaining regulations, the Chinese workers celebrated progress on
the income tax deduction issue.138 Through their protest, Chinese sojourners
had joined Canada’s union movement to achieve that most desired goal of
labor, a family wage. After this victory, the union movement embraced the
Chinese protest organization as a formal part of the labor community.139 The
IWA also hired its first paid Chinese organizer, Roy Mah of Vancouver.140 The
Chinese workers’ tax protest garnered support from East Indian workers, who
also saw the principle of deductions for family members as a priority.141 Many
East Indian workers also sojourned in Canada, remitting funds to their fam-
ilies in the Punjab; but their smaller numbers gave them less leverage for
race-based protest on the job.142 On May Day, Chinese workers proudly
marched with European and East Indian trade unionists in the city’s labor
parade.143 In April 1945, F. S. Wong helped to lead a Chinese and East Indi-
an Canadian delegation that appealed to British Columbia’s parliament for
voting rights. “Every union,” reported the Xin Minguo Bao, “supported the
cause.”144 Although the provincial parliament deferred Chinese Canadians’
request for voting rights until the postwar era, it granted a small but impor-
tant concession: it enfranchised Second World War military veterans of
Chinese, East Indian, and First Nations descent.145
It is possible to draw a direct line between the involvement of Chinese
Canadian workers in these early coalitions and the labor movement’s postwar
campaigns for human rights in British Columbia.146 Indeed, the rising politi-
cal power of unions during 1943–1944 has often been seen as a defining
moment in Canadian labor history.147 To date, though, labor studies of condi-
tions during the Second World War have not delved deeply into race relations.

Further research into diverse workers’ interactions may reveal a more nu-
anced tale of the rights revolution’s origins.148
Chinese Canadian Mass Resistance to Military Service

Every Canadian textbook discusses the military “conscription crisis” as a sig-
nature conflict of the Second World War, as French-British differences over
conscription provoked a political crisis that threatened to sunder Canada.149
However, the majority of Asians and First Nations people also refused mili-
tary service in protest against racial inequities. The Chinese Canadian case
shows that the conscription crisis involved race as centrally as it did French-
English divides.150 The almost total disenfranchisement of Asian and First
Nations people gave them no recourse at the polls comparable to Quebec’s
French Canadian population. Nevertheless, their protests presented a com-
pelling challenge: reconciling a war for democracy abroad with racial injus-
tice at home.
The race question had special salience for British Columbia because one-
twelfth of the population was either Asian or First Nations.151 Chinese Cana-
dian histories have generally remembered the conscription question as specific
to their group alone. Some retrospective interviews with surviving Chinese
Canadian veterans also stressed those who chose to serve, while leaving the
number who refused ambiguous.152 Chinese newspapers from the time break
this silence. Combined with information from military archives, they con-
firm that the majority of eligible Chinese Canadian men refused to serve.
They also reveal connections among Chinese Canadian, First Nations, and
East Indian Canadian protests. Thus, Chinese Canadians’ resistance to mili-
tary service confronted their fellow Canadians with broader questions of racial
justice.
In 1944, the Canadian military reversed its policy of barring all Chinese
Canadians from enlisting in the military.153 The military ordered young Chi-
nese Canadian men to enlist. It also allowed Chinese immigrants and Chinese
Canadian women to volunteer. The tardy call-up created an immediate polit-
ical crisis, because many Chinese Canadians who had wanted to volunteer had
previously been turned away by recruiters.154 The secret policy of denying
Chinese the right to serve in the military had been designed to preclude
future requests for voting rights.155 To Chinese Canadians, conscription
required very different handling than past problems. It was a public demand
that required a clear reply. It could not be finessed in backrooms or negoti-
ated away. Suddenly, young people faced decisions that might determine the

community’s future. Most Chinese men of military age refused to enlist. Da
Han Gong Bao reported that British Columbia had between 3,500 and 4,000
Chinese men who were eligible to serve, but only about 400 enlisted.156 The
unilateral action set a collision course between the new Chinese Canadian
politics of protest and more conciliatory traditional brokerage.
Many Chinese questioned Canada’s and Britain’s motives.157 The swift
imposition of the military draft followed two months of harsh, prejudiced,
ill-informed criticism of Chinese on the Vancouver Sun’s letters page. Much of
the backlash was related to Chinese workers’ gains. Anglo critics decried
Chinese war workers’ pursuit of higher wages while Canadians died in battle.
Letter writers accused Chinese workers of profiteering, not paying income
taxes, and evading military service, and they had little sympathy with Chi-
nese who insisted that they would not enlist unless British Columbia gave
them voting rights. They accused Chinese of no longer keeping in their place,
suggesting that their “newly independent attitude” made them “cheeky”
toward Anglos.158 Many Chinese Canadian letters rebutted accusations of
their disloyalty and selfishness. Foon Sien Wong’s letter pointed out that
Chinese had registered for the draft despite their unequal treatment, but
Canada had not wanted them as soldiers.159 The Sun’s editorial board also
denounced prejudice against Chinese Canadians as ill informed.160
Many Chinese Canadians also suspected that Britain, not Canada, had
instigated the change in conscription policy. In the spring of 1944, British
brigadier F. W. Kendall visited Vancouver to recruit civilian Chinese Canadi-
ans for secret British special operations executive (SOE) missions behind
enemy lines in Southeast Asia. The secrecy denied Chinese Canadians who
served public recognition of their service. Without recognition, their com-
munity would not benefit. Not surprisingly, Kendall failed to recruit suffi-
cient Chinese for his purposes. Shortly afterward, Canada decided to conscript
Chinese. Military archives show that Britain pushed for the change.161 As
Chinese began to receive draft notices, Kendall returned to Chinatown to
persuade them to enlist. He promised that Chinese Canadians would receive
voting rights if they served in the military and volunteered to fight overseas,
even though Britain had no constitutional power to fulfill the SOE officer’s
promise.162 Canada’s voting rights were a purely domestic affair.
Conscription most affected young Chinese Canadian men, but it created a
political crisis for the entire community. To many Chinese, the request
appeared to arise more from expediency than principle. Outrage followed,
and the Chinese Canadian population split on the issue.163 Da Han Gong Bao
refused to endorse military conscription, while the Xin Minguo Bao printed
the traditional brokers’ position: to keep good relations with Canada’s

government and to get the franchise, Chinese men should serve.164 Young
Chinese draftees in Vancouver quickly organized a protest rally in Chinatown
on 23 August to declare their “noncooperation.”165 Canadian-born Chinese
Bevan Jangze described his feelings, “I didn’t have any rights, so why should
I fight for a country that I didn’t have any rights in. . . . We all decided we
weren’t going to join.”166 After the meeting, Vancouver’s Chinese Youth
Association (CYA, Huaqiao Qingnian Hui) published a call for Chinese to
boycott military service until their demands for equal treatment were met. In
Da Han Gong Bao, Chinese Canadian young men stated that “we will not
cooperate with this public injustice.”167 Ann Lee recalled that most Chinese
Canadians supported the resisters.168 Though both men and women could
volunteer, less than 2 percent of the 30,000 Chinese in British Columbia
served in the Canadian military.169
Collectively, Chinese, East Indian, and First Nations protests against mil-
itary service formed a noncooperation movement that highlighted the injus-
tice of racism across every region of Canada.170 Chinese in British Columbia
shared economic niches with First Nations and East Indian peoples, so they
knew about these groups’ parallel protests. The CYA manifesto framed the
conflict as part of Canada’s national conscription crisis. It called on all Chi-
nese to boycott military service until Chinese received “Canadian rights.”
Across Canada, Chinese declared to military officials that they would not
serve.171 Some, like T. S. Wong of Toronto, had previously volunteered and
been rejected due to their race.172 In British Columbia, military figures show
that only 273 of 1,061 Chinese Canadian men who received orders to report
for military service complied. Authorities deemed 128 of these men physi-
cally fit for service, with 19 pending. Presumably, the rest of British Colum-
bia’s Chinese enlistees, roughly 130 men and women, volunteered.173
In Vancouver’s English newspapers, Chinese Canadian letters declared the
injustice of military service without equal rights.174 Fred Chun expressed a
typical opinion, “Once again, may I say, that if the Chinese hold franchise in
B.C. they will volunteer including myself.”175 Ann Lee recalled that most
Chinese felt that only “suckers” enlisted. They believed that Chinese would
be cannon fodder. Given the abuses that Chinese in Canada had suffered in
the past, how could the military and government be trusted to treat them
fairly?176 Even Chinese Canadian soldiers joked with each other about the
foolishness of volunteering to fight abroad.177
The Chinese Canadian debate over military service came to a head at a
public meeting sponsored jointly by the CYA and CBA on 27 August 1944
at the Chinese United Church, a Protestant church where many Vancouver
Chinese youths had attended English-language kindergarten.178 Since the

Canadian government effectively barred most Chinese immigrants’ access to
naturalization, almost all the conscripted men were Canadian-born or illegal
immigrants who had entered using “borrowed” Canadian birth certificates.
At the meeting, around 400 attendees protested against conscription, declar-
ing, “No vote, no fight!” They decided to obtain legal counsel and “forward
a vigorous protest to Ottawa.” Around 100 young men proudly stated that
they would enlist, so the boycotters had the clear majority.179
Historians have recounted this debate as between the “No vote, no fight!”
and the “Serve first, demand rights after!” factions, but this interpretation
minimizes the two sides’ goals. The CYA’s demands focused on attaining
both political and social equality for all Canadians whom Anglos treated like
“foreigners.” Besides the franchise, the CYA demanded five social rights. Its
young members wanted equal treatment under the law, which would reverse
anti-Chinese immigration, education, and business policies. They also
claimed equal rights as soldiers, learning from the experience of First Nations
people in military service.180 If Canada treated Chinese soldiers similarly to
First Nations soldiers, their sacrifices would have lesser value. When First
Nations soldiers were killed or disabled, Canada gave their families much less
assistance than the families of white soldiers received. They also received
lesser veterans’ benefits. The CYA thus demanded equal benefits and family
support payments comparable to other Canadian soldiers.181 The CYA also
wanted Canada to guarantee equal treatment of Chinese Canadians in post-
war social welfare, labor, and industrial relations policies, so that union mem-
bers could retain wartime gains.182 In contrast, the pro-conscription side led
by Roy Mah argued that the Chinese minority was too small to make demands.
Fighting in the war, he said, would give the most “solid credentials” in order
to “demand rights.” The debate lasted a number of hours, and neither side
could persuade the other to change its position.183
Given the Chinese community’s divisions, representatives chose to
acknowledge both sides. Foon Sien Wong participated in the debate, and
decades later, he still recalled the community’s “intense anger” at the call-
up.184 Local leaders from China’s Nationalist Party attended, as did China’s
consul, leaders of clan and district associations (the huiguan), the United Chi-
nese Workers’ Union (i.e., the renamed OCWFU), and a women’s group.
Yip Sang’s son Yip Quene also attended. The representatives chose to ask for
voting rights on the grounds that Chinese Canadians were serving. They also
decided to take advantage of the boycott to challenge in the courts the legal-
ity of conscripting Canadians who could not vote.185 No Chinese Canadian
court challenge to conscription had yet been mounted, though a First
Nations challenge had failed. Chinese Canadians’ protest created enough

sympathy that war officials did not force most boycotters to serve, evading a
costly legal test case.186 Further, Chinese Canadian soldiers received pay and
veterans’ benefits equal to those of Anglo Canadian soldiers.187
After the war, the presence of Chinese Canadian veterans became a stan-
dard feature of Chinese Canadians’ successful requests for federal, provincial,
and municipal voting rights.188 As a matter of war policy, the English press
portrayed Chinese Canadians as model, loyal, patriotic, un-protesting citi-
zens.189 However, the model minority rhetoric of Chinese Canadians lobby-
ing for voting rights coincided with mass protests for social justice.
Petitioning and protest thus reinforced each other.
Ultimately, Chinese-language sources suggest that much of Canada’s Sec-
ond World War history of race relations remains to be told. Collectively,
disenfranchised Chinese, First Nations, and East Indian peoples contributed
to a nationwide wartime protest movement for equal rights. Historically,
most Anglo Canadians had viewed Asian and First Nations people as “aliens,”
so they had paid very little attention to minorities’ concerns. Scholarship has
often duplicated this omission. Frank Wong recalled that, when he served in
the Canadian military, Anglo soldiers were surprised to hear that Chinese in
British Columbia could not vote.190 Change was neither automatic nor caused
solely by external forces. Chinese Canadians themselves provoked changes in
race relations.
Canada’s wartime turn toward human rights politics was especially impor-
tant to Chinese Canadians. In 1947, Chinese won the right to vote in British
Columbia. That year, Canada’s federal government also repealed the Chinese
Immigration Act, permitting Chinese Canadians to legally sponsor the entry
of foreign spouses and minor children. War heroes may have won the acco-
lades, but mass protests helped to decouple whiteness from the popular ideals
of Canadian citizenship.

Conclusion
T he political history of the Exclusion Era was far more integrated

than scholars presume. Chinese immigrant power brokers mitigated
even the most direct processes of exclusion. Interpreters collaborated with
ruling party machines to foil anti-Chinese laws. Chinese Canadians embraced
Canada’s legal system, seeing its rule of law as crucial to defending their
interests in both internal and external conflicts. Their informal advocates,
Chinese legal interpreters, gave the larger legal culture an unofficial, and
often recognized, multicultural dimension. In addition to the legal experts,
thousands of ordinary Chinese Canadians sought political power in Canada
through modern social movements. Their boycott of the public schools to
protest segregation built on Pacific world protests against the British Empire’s
colonialism, while also advancing an emergent Canadian–U.S. discourse of
cultural pluralism more accepting of non-Anglo immigrants. In these ways,
Chinese Canadians helped to create their own myths. The selective story that
brokers gave to the Survey of Race Relations in 1924 later became popular-
ized in U.S. and Canadian culture as the natural, inevitable trajectory of all
immigrant groups. Thus, Chinese brokers helped to shape the myth of Asians
as a model minority, a popular concept that continues to have great influence
in Canada and the United States today.
Canada’s official ideal of immigration—assimilation and settlement—
coexisted awkwardly with Chinese Canadians’ transnational way of life. Dur-
ing the Second World War, Canadian war policies forced Chinese workers,
whether legal or illegal, to confront the state’s unease with their transnational
existence. The successful public stand of the Chinese marked a new epoch in
their relations with their neighbors. By mobilizing as an ethnic bloc within
the labor and anti-conscription movements, Chinese workers strived to expand
Canadian rights politics. The ability of Chinese Canadians to garner support
suggested a growing sympathy for a redefined national identity that would
include all Canadian residents, even those with transnational ties. By the
mid-1940s, many British Columbians saw sojourners and illegal immigrants
as deserving members of the national polity. These findings underscore the
need to conceive a more integrated history of Canada, the United States, and
the Pacific world during the Exclusion Era.
A conception of politics which includes Chinese Canadians’ alternative
public sphere contributes to a more complete model of immigrants in polit-
ical history. Because a lack of voting rights limited Chinese Canadians’ for-
mal access to political power, brokers’ resistance to exclusion often took
indirect forms. A brokerage relations approach complements the existing lit-
erature’s stress on direct Chinese responses to Anglo discrimination in Eng-
lish-language contexts.1 While Chinese were less effective when directly
challenging mainstream power, they were influential when working through
under-the-radar brokerage. Historians’ emphasis on white practices of racial
exclusion has thus led to a problem: the belief that Chinese Canadian history
is so estranged from the rest of Canada that it is a separate, specialized topic
is a profound erasure.2 Brokers’ work reveals the human connections and
shared institutions that helped to cement Canada’s mosaic into a single whole.
When leaders’ brokerage is restored to history, Chinatowns will no longer be
seen as ethnic islands. Chinese Canadians were significant actors in their lo-
cality, in Canada, in China, and in the United States.
The lens of immigrant leaders’ brokerage relations holds great promise to
mend divides between domestic political history and its outlier, the transna-
tional turn which is transforming global migration and exclusion studies.3
One of this book’s most intriguing findings is that a transnational perspec-
tive of a global, mobile immigrant group rooted in the Pacific world further
integrates rather than fragments Canada’s national narrative. Even without
voting rights, Chinese Canadians in British Columbia became deeply involved
in Canada’s political and legal institutions. A focus on brokers’ dealings
points toward a more complete national narrative, one that more accurately
takes into account both immigrants’ assimilation and their continued ties
across borders. Many of Canada’s immigrants led transnational lives.4 During
the Exclusion Era, one-third of the total Canadian-born population moved to
the United States.5 Thus, a transnational life is typically Canadian, which
underlines the importance of brokers and brokerage as a model for connect-
ing together the many facets of Canada’s immigrant narrative.

Brokerage was inescapably a story of domestic Canadian politics, but it
also involved a series of founding bargains that did not neatly fit into any
nationally bounded history. Between the 1840s and the 1940s, over a half
million Chinese emigrated to settlement nations in the Americas and Aus-
tralasia.6 Anti-Chinese laws and migrants’ ability to evade and mitigate
discriminatory legal systems connect Canada’s history with those of other
settler nations.7 In the United States, Chinese-Anglo political factions also
collaborated to control Chinese immigration interpreter posts.8 Chinese
slipped into Cuba, Panama, Peru, and Australia despite anti-Chinese immi-
gration laws.9 Chinese in Mexico dealt with anti-Chinese policies, including
expulsion, but also made alliances with mainstream politicians. Chinese
Mexicans also often slipped over the U.S. border, at times with the complic-
ity of Mexican officials.10 These patterns suggest the need to further explore
the circulation of politics within the Pacific world. They also should prompt
a rethinking of the place of the disenfranchised in political history. As the
nations of the Americas and Australasia first globalized border controls, Chi-
nese migrants developed an equally globalized but also intrinsically local
political expertise. Political brokerage made the first global group of illegal
immigrants possible.
c onclusion | 133
notes
abbreviations
BCA British Columbia Archives and Records Service
CCRC Chinese Canadian Research Collection, University
of British Columbia Archives
CCVOHP Chinese Canadian Veterans Oral History Project,
Chinese Cultural Centre of Greater Vancouver
Chung Collection Wallace B. Chung and Madeline H. Chung Collec-
tion, University of British Columbia Library
DHGB Da Han Gong Bao (Chinese Times)
Jianada Huaqiao Shi References to this work are to Ma Sen’s 1973
translation unless otherwise noted.
LAC Library and Archives of Canada
Lew v. Lee David Lew v. Wing Lee. Supreme Court of Canada
Appeal, 1924.
MIRC “Minutes of Inquiries Regarding Chinese Merchants
Attempting to Enter Canada on the Empress of
China,” Chung Collection
RCCF Royal Commission to Investigate Alleged Chinese
Frauds and Opium Smuggling on the Pacific Coast
Fonds
SRR Survey of Race Relations Collection, Hoover Insti-
tution Archives, Stanford University
UBC University of British Columbia Library Rare Books
and Special Collections
VCA Vancouver City Archives
Wong Papers Foon Sien Wong Papers, UBC
introduction
1. Wolf, “Aspects of Group Relations in a Complex Society: Mexico,” 1065–
1078; Peck, Reinventing Free Labor; Breton, Governance of Ethnic Communities,
61–93; Zucchi, Italians in Toronto; Patrias, Patriots and Proletarians; Harney,
“Commerce of Migration”; Harney, “The Padrone and the Immigrant”;
Higham, “Introduction”; Greene, American Immigrant Leaders, 1–16.
2. Con et al., From China to Canada, 55.
3. Ibid., 42–147; Pfaelzer, Driven Out.
4. Following conventions in the field, the first date indicates the passage of the
legislation and the last date is the conclusion of its active enactment. The
Chinese head tax charged Chinese immigrant laborers an entry fee of $50,
which by 1904 had risen to $500. The Chinese Immigration Act of 1923
barred the entry of all Chinese starting in July 1924, which accounts for the
overlap in dates. Between 1924 and 1947 Erika Lee found that only 15
Chinese received exemptions from the 1923 law permitting them to enter
Canada: the Canadian-born, diplomats, merchants, and students. Lee,
“Enforcing the Borders,” 78.
5. Con et al., From China to Canada, 42–147. New York Times, 27 Nov. 1885.
6. Holder, “The Chinaman in American Politics.” New York Times, 9 Sept. 1900,
20 April 1902. Arthur Train, “Mock Hen and Mock Turtle,” Tutt and Mr Tutt,
43-88. Macdonald and O’Keefe, Canadian Holy War, 77-90. McIllwain, Orga-
nizing Crime in Chinatown, 127–185.
7. The United States made Asian immigrants ineligible for naturalization,
whereas in Canada judges used their discretion to keep Chinese immigrants’
naturalization rates low. The following Western states and provinces denied
persons of Chinese descent the right to vote for various periods of time even if
they were native-born or naturalized citizens: British Columbia, Saskatchewan,
California, Oregon, and Idaho. Chang, “Asian Americans and Politics,” 16–18;
Con et al., From China to Canada, 45–46, 145; Yee, “Chinese Business in Vancou-
ver,” 28; Ward, White Canada Forever, 41; Keyssar, The Right to Vote, 141; Chan,
Asian Americans, 47; Wai-Man, Portraits of a Challenge, 152.
8. See McKeown, Chinese Migrant Networks; Ho-Jung, Coolies and Cane; Kwong,
Chinatown; Yu, To Save China; Ling, Chinese St. Louis; Lai, Becoming Chinese
American; and Ngai, “History as Law and Life.”
9. This book makes extensive use of Chinese-language historical documents, sources
that scholars throughout North America have underutilized. It builds on Mad-
eline Hsu’s Dreaming of Gold, Dreaming of Home; and Yong Chen’s Chinese San
Francisco. The two primary sets of Chinese sources are the sole surviving Chinese
newspaper from British Columbia for the 1915–1945 period, Da Han Gong Bao
(Chinese Times), and brokers’ personal papers. A global Chinese emigrant fraternal
association, the Chinese Freemasons (Chee Kung Tong, Zhigongtang), published
Da Han Gong Bao. This group had no relation to the English Freemasons. In
136 | notes to pages 3–4

reading DHGB, I kept in mind that all Chinese Canadian newspapers were party
organs. However, the Freemasons’ large membership and independence from
China’s main political parties also made the DHGB a paper for middle-of-the-
road immigrants’ opinion. At least half of Chinese Canadians were Freemason
members (Con et al., From China to Canada, 111). The long period of time that
the Da Han Gong Bao was published (1907–1992) suggests that its news appealed
to many Chinese Canadians. Before late 1915, the paper was called Da Han Ri
Bao (Chinese Daily News). “Interview with Lum Hing, translator for the Chinese
Times,” 1924, box 24, file 24-6, SRR. In 1924, Da Han Gong Bao claimed a cir-
culation of 4,000. Huang, “Gender, Race, and Power,” 12–14. Two of British
Columbia’s other Chinese papers, Xin Minguo Bao and Jianada Chenbao, acted as
organs of the right and left wings, respectively, of China’s Nationalist Party, but
only a few issues and news clippings have survived. Chinese newspapers from
before 1914 seem to be lost. Lo and Lai, Chinese Newspapers Published in North
America, 112–113.
10. On alternative public spheres, see Hansen, “Foreword,” ix–xli.
11. Mar, “Beyond Being Others,” 13–34; Ward, White Canada Forever; Anderson,
Vancouver’s Chinatown; Patricia E. Roy’s trilogy, A White Man’s Province, The
Oriental Question, and The Triumph of Citizenship; Li, Jianada Huaqiao Shi; Con
et al., From China to Canada; Chan, Gold Mountain; Helly, Les Chinois à
Montréal; Yee, Saltwater City; Li, Chinese in Canada; Ng, Chinese in Vancouver;
Huang and Wu, Huaqiao, Huaren Shi.
12. Robert Harney, If One Were to Write a History: Selected Writings by Robert Harney,
ed. Pierre Anctil and Bruno Ramirez (Toronto: Multicultural History Society
of Ontario, 1991); Peck, Reinventing Free Labor; Zucchi, Italians in Toronto;
Patrias, Patriots and Proletarians; Bodnar, The Transplanted; Breton, Governance
of Ethnic Communities; Greene, American Immigrant Leaders; John Higham, ed.,
Ethnic Leadership in America (Baltimore, Md.: Johns Hopkins University Press,
1978); Cohen, Making a New Deal; McKeown, Chinese Migrant Networks;
Ho-Jung, Coolies and Cane; Kwong, Chinatown, New York; Yu, To Save China;
Ling, Chinese St. Louis; Lai, Becoming Chinese American.
13. This book’s conception of brokers and brokerage relations was inspired by
histories of modern China because few historians of Canada and the United
States have fully explored ethnic leadership as a mediating force. I take an
anthropological approach, which examines brokers and brokerage as part of an
evolving set of social structures. Given shifting historical contexts, brokers’
changing and multiple roles cannot be reduced to a single form of dominance
or a single theoretical approach. Therefore, I argue in favor of a more complex
conception of race relations politics, which focuses on the ongoing construc-
tion of immigrants’ relationships to both societies. This meeting of different
worlds involved social structures that arose from interacting forces: the bro-
kers themselves, ordinary Chinese, and their Canadian allies. I also explore
how the brokers’ representative power within race relations politics often
notes to pages 4–5 | 137

expressed controversial patterns of dominance rooted both in immigrant and
in wider Canadian society. Conceptually, histories of what scholars term
China’s local elites provide the closest parallels to Chinese Canadian
brokerage. The concept of elites in China’s local societies covers a wide range
of dominant mediating figures who aided ordinary people in their dealings
with the state. On “nonofficial” local elites as a central mediating force in
modern Chinese history, see Esherick and Rankin’s introduction to Chinese
Local Elites, 1–24; Macauley, Social Power and Legal Culture, 1–17; Goodman,
Native Place, City, and Nation. See also Wolf’s theoretical definition of political
“cultural brokers” as seeking simultaneous leadership in separate minority
and mainstream settings in “Aspects of Group Relations in a Complex Society:
Mexico.” Few Canadian studies have explored ethnic leadership’s mediating
power for nonvoting immigrants with a sophistication comparable to histor-
ical studies of China’s local elites’ relations with the state and the wider
society. See Peck, Reinventing Free Labor; Breton, Governance of Ethnic Commu-
nities, 61–93; Zucchi, Italians in Toronto; Patrias, Patriots and Proletarians;
Harney, “Commerce of Migration”; Harney, “The Padrone and the Immi-
grant”; Sangster, Dreaming of What Might Be. The U.S. history field’s coverage
of immigrant political brokerage shares the Canadian focus on the enfran-
chised. See Sterne, “Beyond the Boss.”
14. Eighth Census of Canada, 1941, 3:128–129.
15. Barman, West Beyond the West, 429. Con et al., From China to Canada, 301.
Anderson, Vancouver’s Chinatown, 1–106.
16. Rumbaut, “Assimilation and Its Discontents.”
17. See note 7. Also see Mar, “Beyond Being Others,” 13–34.
18. This conception of Chinese as part of a shared Pacific world history of Canada
and the United States complements more conventional accounts of the anti-
Asian Exclusion Era that see Chinese as separate from the larger society because
of mainstream discrimination and cultural differences. Takaki, Strangers from a
Different Shore; Chan, Gold Mountain.
19. Ma argues that Yip’s power came from the fraternal association that supported
his control over Chinese in British Columbia, the Chinese Freemasons. Its
leadership overlapped with Yip’s political party, the Baohuanghui (Chinese
Empire Reform Association). The Chinese Freemasons were involved in illegal
immigration on both sides of the U.S.–Canada border. Ma, Revolutionaries,
Monarchists, and Chinatowns, 76–77, 94, 122, 125, 135–136; Kim and Markov,
“The Chinese Exclusion Laws.”
20. Washington Post, 8 Jan. 1905.
21. Ma, Revolutionaries, Monarchists, and Chinatowns, 110–112, 118, 128–130; Li Li,
“A History of the Overseas Chinese in China by David Li,” translated by Ma Sen,
box 25, file 54, CCRC; Tsai, Hong Kong in Chinese History, 222; Larson, “New
Source Materials on Kang Youwei and the Baohuanghui,” 171, 178, 190.
22. Worden, “A Chinese Reformer in Exile,” 158–164.

23. MIRC, 2:716, 920–921, 929, 1294–1298, 3451 (1911); RCCF, RG 33-146,
vol. 1; “Chinese Merchants Attempting to Enter Canada,” LAC; Yee, “Chinese
Business in Vancouver,” 31–32, 40–44.
24. I take as a starting premise that ideas about “race” are what historians call
social constructions: an expression of a society’s social distribution of inequality
in a particular place and time.
25. RCCF, 6:2940, 2944–2947, 2951, 2955–2957, 2964, 2974; 7:3089–3096;
MIRC, 2:646–649, 676–677.
26. Report of Mr. Justice Murphy, 21–53; Vancouver World, 17–18 Jan. 1911; Vancouver
Daily Province, 19 Dec. 1910; Morton, In the Sea of Sterile Mountains, 220.
27. MIRC, 2:644–646, 656–661, 911–912; 3:1294–1300, 1653 (1911).
28. Vancouver Daily Province, 24 Jan. 1911.
29. Vancouver World, 16 Jan. 1911; MIRC, 2:924–926; RCCF, 6–21.
30. Ward, White Canada Forever; Anderson, Vancouver’s Chinatown; Roy, A White
Man’s Province; Roy, The Oriental Question; Roy, The Triumph of Citizenship; Li,
Jianada Huaqiao Shi; Con et al., From China to Canada; Chan, Gold Mountain;
Helly, Les Chinois à Montréal; Yee, Saltwater City; Li, Chinese in Canada; Ng,
Chinese in Vancouver; Huang and Wu, Huaqiao, Huaren Shi.
31. Lee, “Orientalisms in the Americas,” 235–256.
32. Con et. al, From China to Canada, 7; Chan, Asian Americans, 5–6.
33. Raushenbush, “The Great Wall of Chinatown,” Survey Graphic 56.3 (1 May
1926): 154–158, 221
34. “Office File Questionnaires Chinese—Pacific Coast (U.S.) + Canada,” Survey
Interview Questionnaires (ca. Jan. and Feb. 1924), box 17, file 17-2, SRR;
Winifred Raushenbush to Dr. Yick Pang Lew, 22 Feb. 1924, box 17, file 17-2,
SRR; Chuichi Ohashi of Japanese Consulate, San Francisco, to Merle Davis, 6
Feb. 1924, box 14, file 14-11, SRR; Winifred Raushenbush, “Interview, Her-
bert Wang,” 25 Mar. 1924, box 24, file 24-24, 6, SRR; DHGB, 14 Feb. 1924;
Mears, “The Survey of Race Relations”; Merle Davis to Premier of British
Columbia, Sir John Oliver, 3 Dec. 1923, box 13, file 13-1, SRR. On relations
between the survey and the Chicago School of Sociology, see Yu, Thinking Ori-
entals; and Okihiro, Teaching Asian American History, 39–40.
35. Park, “Human Migration and the Marginal Man”; Yu, Thinking Orientals,
96–102.
36. Canada: Ward, White Canada Forever; Roy, A White Man’s Province; Anderson,
Vancouver’s Chinatown. In Les Chinois à Montréal, Helly explores the dual French-
English contexts of relations in Montreal. United States: Lee, At America’s
Gates; Takaki, Strangers from a Different Shore.
37. To date, the majority of books from the China school about Chinese
Canadians are historical overviews. These include Li, Chinese in Canada;
Con et al., From China to Canada; Chan, Gold Mountain; Li, Jianada Huaqiao
Shi; and Huang and Wu, Huaqiao, Huaren Shi. Historians of the China
school have also focused on local Chinese communities, for example, Paul

Yee’s popular pictorial history, Saltwater City, and Wing Chung Ng’s Chinese
in Vancouver, which explores the diverse history of Chinese Canadian
identities. Ma’s Revolutionaries, Monarchists, and Chinatowns stands out as an
exception in the China school because of the breadth of its transnational
perspective. Examples of works about the United States include Ma, Revolu-
tionaries, Monarchists, and Chinatowns; Hsu, Dreaming of Gold, Dreaming of
Home; Chen, Chinese San Francisco; and McKeown, Chinese Migrant
Networks.
38. This study builds on Chinese American studies that have begun to explore
Chinese-language sources, especially Hsu’s Dreaming of Gold, Dreaming of Home;
and Chen’s Chinese San Francisco.
39. Kay J. Anderson, “Creating Outsiders, 1875–1903,” in The History of Immigra-
tion and Racism in Canada: Essential Readings, ed. Barrington Walker (Toronto:
Canadian Scholars Press, 2008), 90–104.
40. From a transpacific perspective, Chinese Canadian transnationalism appeared
similar to Chinese Americans; see Hsu, Dreaming of Gold, Dreaming of Home,
although Chinese Canadian transnationalism adds a U.S.–Canada dimension.
For a working definition of transnational migrant, see Schiller, “Transmigrants
and Nation-States.” The concept of a transnational life builds upon work pre-
sented in Smith, Mexican New York, 1–17.
41. Eighth Census of Canada, 1941, 3:164, 534; 4:176–177, 293, 422–423;
7:1018–1033.
42. DHGB, 1915–1945.
43. Chan, “‘Orientalism’ and Image Making,” 37–46.
44. Liang, Xin Dalu Youji, 233; RCCF, 1:6–7 (1910), RG 33-146, vols. 1–6, LAC;
Vancouver World, 16–17 Jan. 1911; Vancouver Daily Province, 19 Dec. 1910;
Wong, “The Chinese.”
46. Da Han Gong Bao regularly reported on news from Chinese American commu-
nities.
47. “Visit, the Lam family” March 1924, box 24, file 24-20, SRR and “Visit Miss
Hellaby, Anglican missionary,” 1924, box 24, file 24-21, SRR. On the SRR as
a Canadian source, see Mar, “From Diaspora to North American Civil Rights,”
102–120. See also Yu, Thinking Orientals.
48. DHGB, 10 July 1943; Hansen, Mingling of the Canadian and American Peoples,
1:263.
49. MIRC, 2:716, 920–921, 924–926, 929, 1294–1298, 3451; “Chinese Mer-
chants Attempting to Enter Canada,” 1:6–21, 65–66, 120–121, 452–453,
459, 489, LAC; Vancouver World, 16 Jan. 1911; Report of Mr. Justice Murphy,
3–4, 13, 21–46.
50. RCCF, 6:2964, LAC; MIRC, 2:798–800; Vancouver World, 17 Jan. 1911.
51. Carty and Ward, “The Making of a Canadian Political Citizenship,” 67; and
Smith, “National Political Parties.”

52. Backhouse, Colour-Coded, 3–17. See also Anderson, Vancouver’s Chinatown,
8–33, on policies that expressed Anglo cultural hegemony over Chinese.
53. On China’s legal history, see Macauley, Social Power and Legal Culture, 1–17,
100–145. On Chinese American legal activism, see McClain, In Search of Equality;
Fritz, “A Nineteenth Century ‘Habeas Corpus Mill,’” 55–80; Anderson, Vancouver’s
Chinatown, 136–137.
54. David Lew v. Wing Lee (Rong Li), Supreme Court of Canada Appeal, 1924, RG
125, vol. 508, file 4956, LAC.
55. DHGB, 25 Sept. 1924.
56. Ashworth, The Forces Which Shaped Them, 75–82; Lai, “The Issue of Discrimi-
nation in Education”; Yee, Saltwater City, 52–53; Stanley, “White Supremacy,
Chinese Schooling, and School Segregation”; Stanley, “Bringing Anti-Racism
into Historical Explanation.” Erez Manela describes the backdrop, a global
trend of anti-colonial nationalism, in The Wilsonian Moment.
57. Chuichi Ohashi of Japanese Consulate, San Francisco, Letter to Merle Davis,
SRR. Park stated this opinion in a Japanese-language newspaper. Many well-
educated Chinese could read Japanese, and news traveled quickly across the
West Coast’s tightly networked Chinese communities.
58. DHGB, 14 Feb.1924; Raushenbush, British Columbia Major Documents, box
24, files 24-1 through 24-35. SRR.
59. Subsequent Chinese interviews in Seattle and San Francisco revealed parallel
patterns of researcher management and selective information. Vancouver’s
Chinese newspapers circulated there. See C.H. Burnett, Seattle Chinese
interviews major documents, box 27, folders 24-:18, 27, 33–34, 36–50.
SRR; Raushenbush, “Their Place in the Sun”; Raushenbush, “The Great
Wall of Chinatown,” 154–158, 221; Gjerde, “New Growth on Old Vines.”
The impact of the Chicago School and the survey is especially marked in the
fields of Asian Canadian and Asian American studies; see its most conceptu-
ally influential historical text, Takaki, Strangers from a Different Shore. In
Thinking Orientals, Henry Yu documents that the Chicago School had a
long-term impact on geography, sociology, social psychology, history, and
Asian American studies, “where repudiation covers a long-standing appro-
priation,” 186–197. Canadian historians explored the influence of the
Chicago School on the development of immigration sociology starting at
McGill University in the 1930s, but the survey’s conceptual impact
suggests an earlier West Coast starting point. See Shore, Science of Social
Redemption; and Palantzas, “A Chicago Reprise in the Champagne Years of
Canadian Sociology.”
60. Roy, The Oriental Question, 67–77.
61. Canada’s 1921 Census found that 42 percent of Chinese in British Columbia over
age ten could only speak Chinese, with slower rates of linguistic assimilation
across the board for Asian compared with European immigrants. Sixth Census
of Canada, 1921, 2:546–547.

62. Anderson, Vancouver’s Chinatown, 124–125; Liang, Xin Dalu Youji, 230–231;
DHGB, 1915–1945 (news, advertisements, crime reports); Ito, Issei, 758;
CCVOHP, Jane Ng and Amos Lee, interview with Bing Wong, 14 Aug. 1996;
Lim, West Coast Chinese Boy, 6–8, 19, 37–41; Marquis, “Vancouver Vice,” 246–
254; Ray, I Have Lived Here, 292–312; Barman, The West beyond the West, 259;
Wong, Nations at War Scrapbook; DHGB, 1920s–1940s; Marlatt and Itter,
Opening Doors; Ann Lee, interview.
63. McInnes, Oriental Occupation of British Columbia, 37–38.
64. Yee, Saltwater City, 86–95; Huang with Jeffery, Chinese Canadians, 30–47,
70–79; CCVOHP, Roy Mah interview.
65. On the globalized anti-Chinese gatekeeping, see McKeown, Melancholy Order;
and Lee, “Hemispheric Orientalism.”
66. On the United States, see Lee, At America’s Gates, 1–18.
67. Gabaccia, “Is Everywhere Nowhere?”; Hansen, Mingling of the Canadian and
American Peoples, 263.
68. Gabaccia, “Is Everywhere Nowhere?”
69. See Anderson, Vancouver’s Chinatown, 8–33.
chapter one
1. For a discussion of the U.S. system’s difficulties in stopping Chinese illegal
immigration, see Lee, At America’s Gates, 189–220.
2. Adam McKeown, “Ritualization of Regulation,” argues that the similar U.S.
system was intended to systematically humiliate Chinese. See this chapter’s
conclusion for a discussion of the wider impact of the Chinese case.
3. On the U.S. sorting process, see Calavita, “Collisions at the Intersection of Gender,
Race, and Class”; and McKeown, “Ritualization of Regulation,” 377–403.
4. Lai, “A ‘Prison’ for Chinese Immigrants.”
5. Ito, Issei, 617, writes of Japanese immigrants as “deaf and dumb” in an English-
speaking country.
6. Gordon, “Patronage, Etiquette, and the Science of Connection,” 1–4.
7. Hodgetts et al., Biography of an Institution, 9.
8. Order in Council 2050, 14 Oct. 1910, vol. 1001, RG 2, LAC, microfilm reel
T-5013; Order in Council 794, 12 Apr. 1911, vols. 2–40, RG 2, LAC, micro-
film reel T-5014.
9. The evidence of how Chinese Canadians traded for influence is presented through-
out this chapter. Diane Newell found that British Columbia’s wealthiest Chinese
Canadian merchants (e.g., Chang Toy) often attempted to influence public policy
through white intermediaries. Newell, “Beyond Chinatown.”
10. RCCF, 7:3115 (1911).
11. Dawson, Civil Service of Canada, 1–92. As Alan Gordon argues, Canada’s polit-
ical historians have regarded patronage as central to the party system, though
few have probed the complex give and take of patronage as a system of multiple,

mutual, but often asymmetric relations. See “Patronage, Etiquette, and the Sci-
ence of Connection.” J. E. Hodgetts et al. note that political parties did not keep
written records of these local negotiations to prevent embarrassment at elec-
tions, so they have received much less study than the top-down dealings of
high-level party leaders. See Hodgetts et al., Biography of an Institution, 9.
12. Dawson, Civil Service of Canada, 1–89; Whitaker, The Government Party,
xx–xxii; Order in Council 2050, 14 Oct. 1910; Order in Council 794, 12 Apr.
1911.
13. Dawson, Civil Service of Canada, 1–89; Whitaker, The Government Party,
xx–xxii; Hodgetts et al., Biography of an Institution, 9.
14. MIRC, 6:2969, 7:3089–3101 (1911); Agreement, David Lew with Arthur
McEvoy, 2 Sept. 1908, BCA.
15. Morton, In the Sea of Sterile Mountains, 136.
16. MIRC, 6:2969 (1911).
17. This story comes from the 1901 habeas corpus case In re Fong Yuk. See Hunter and
Lampman, “In re Fong Yuk” British Columbia Law Reports 8(1902):118–121; J. Lee,
“Lee Mong Kow (1863–1924).” http://members.shaw.ca/leesassociationvictoria/
mongkow.htm. Accessed 26 October 2006. The description of indentured Chi-
nese prostitutes and servant girls as “female slavery” was generally acknowledged
among Chinese Canadians in Victoria because so many were abused. Gordon
(Won) Cumyow interview, in Marlatt and Itter, Opening Doors, 19.
18. Copy of Agreement, David Lew with Arthur McEvoy, 2 Sept. 1908.
19. MIRC, 7:3160–3161 (1911); Report of Mr. Justice Murphy; Morton, In the Sea of
Sterile Mountains, 219–222.
20. Liang, Xin Dalu Youji, 233; Lee, “Enforcing the Borders,” 54–86.
21. MIRC, 7:3166–3171 (1911).
22. Vancouver World, 7 Feb. 1911.
23. Ma, Revolutionaries, Monarchists, and Chinatowns, 49, 57–58, 62, 76, 79–80, 92,
128, 130, 133–136, 161; Li, Jianada Huaqiao Shi, 183–185; Larson, “Articu-
lating China’s First Mass Movement”; Larson, “New Source Materials on Kang
Youwei and the Baohuanghui,” 151–198.
24. This is evidenced by the decision to have a Royal Commission and by the lob-
bying efforts on both sides to manage the accusations and counter-accusations.
Report of Mr. Justice Murphy, 5–21.
25. Vancouver World, 20 Jan. 1911.
26. Roy, A White Man’s Province, 234–235; Morton, In the Sea of Sterile Mountains,
219–221.
27. Heroic stature: Lew met with Prime Minister Laurier in 1910 to discuss immi-
gration matters. In the 1950s, Foon Sien Wong’s pilgrimages to Ottawa to talk
directly with immigration officials won extensive press coverage and attention
because of their groundbreaking nature. MIRC, 2:823, 4:1754–1757 (1911);
Vancouver Daily Province, 24 Jan. 1911, 9; Ng, Chinese in Vancouver, 75–76. On
CERA, see Ma, Revolutionaries, Monarchists, and Chinatowns; on Yip and the

boycott, see Larson, “Articulating China’s First Mass Movement.” Compro-
mised positions: Da Han Gong Bao and other Chinese-language newspapers
often reported the compromised positions of interpreters who worked for the
state. They apparently printed public criticisms of Yip’s conduct. MIRC, 2:639
(1911). On idealism, see Larson, “Articulating China’s First Mass Movement,”
which argues that CERA hoped to transform China’s citizens into modern,
active nation makers prepared for democracy.
28. Yip had been the acting interpreter since 1902 but was formally appointed in
1904. RG 2, ser. 1, vol. 2-27, LAC, microfilm reel T-5001; Order in Council
1688, “Appointment of Yip On, Chinese Interpreter, Vancouver,” 19 Sept.
1904; RCCF, 1:452 (1911).
29. Larson, “Articulating China’s First Mass Movement.”
30. Ibid.; Wang, In Search of Justice, 134–159.
31. Wang, In Search of Justice, 138–139.
32. Ibid., 141–142.
33. Larson, “Articulating China’s First Mass Movement,” 20; Liang, “Ji Huagong
Jinyue,” 487.
34. DHGB, 16 June 1924.
35. Washington Post, 25 June 1905.
36. For discussions of the boycott’s influence in China, see Wang, In Search of Jus-
tice; Wong, China’s Anti-American Boycott Movement; and McKee, Chinese
Exclusion versus the Open Door Policy.
37. Worden, “A Chinese Reformer in Exile,” 158–164.
38. Ibid., 158–164; Washington Post, 26 June 1905; New York Times, 26 June 1905,
7; Lee, At America’s Gates, 84–85.
39. RCCF, 1:78–79, 122 (1910); Vancouver Daily Province, 22 Dec. 1910.
40. The ruling federal party’s local riding association usually voted on nominations
for civil service positions, so the appointment of Chinese interpreters who
eased illegal immigration at Canada’s two chief Pacific entry points should not
be seen as coincidental.
41. Yip was a central figure in CERA’s Commercial Corporation, a party invest-
ment fund that sold shares to Chinese throughout China, the Americas, and
Southeast Asia. Li, Jianada Huaqiao Shi, 184–185; Ma, Revolutionaries, Monar-
chists, and Chinatowns, 110.
42. Besides the 1905 U.S. boycott, Yip helped to lead a Chinese boycott of
Japan between 1908 and 1910. Yip’s connection to the Japanese boycott’s
organizer, the Canton Merchants Self-Government Society (SGA’s Yue-
shang Zizhi Hui), strongly suggests a tie to the SGA’s boycott of San Fran-
cisco in 1910. Boycotts of foreign goods were accompanied by exhortations
for Chinese to buy Chinese products. Tsai, Hong Kong in Chinese History,
214–215, 220–221; New York Times, 12 May 1910; Washington Post, 4 Aug.
1910.

44. Ma, Revolutionaries, Monarchists, and Chinatowns, 110–111, 116; Larson, “Artic-
ulating China’s First Mass Movement,” 14.
45. Report of Mr. Justice Murphy, 30–32.
46. Reports mention a single previous Chinese immigration interpreter at Vancou-
ver, Charlie Yip Yen (also known as Yip Yuen, or Yip Ren). RCCF, 1:65
(1910).
47. Ma describes this faction as a dominant group of businessmen affiliated with
the Chinese Freemasons, which allowed them to maintain control over Van-
couver’s and Victoria’s Chinese populations during the late nineteenth and
early twentieth centuries, until 1910–1911. Ma, Revolutionaries, Monarchists,
and Chinatowns, 82, 94, 135–136.
48. Ibid., 84–153; Con et al., From China to Canada, 101–117.
49. Vancouver World, 17, 25 Jan. 1911.
50. Brown and Cook, Canada, 1896–1921, 179–185; Morton, In the Sea of Sterile
Mountains, 221; Roy, A White Man’s Province, 202–207, 234–236.
51. Vancouver World, 7, 9, 11, 13 Jan. 1911; Vancouver Sun, 25 Sept. 1924; Vancouver
Daily Province, 25 Sept. 1924; DHGB, 25, 26, 27, 29, 30 Sept., 1 Oct. 1924;
Macdonald and O’Keefe, Canadian Holy War, 78–81, 103. Lew’s role as the
official Chinese interpreter for the Royal Commission that explored Chinese
losses in Vancouver’s anti-Asian riot underlined that the young, unofficial Chi-
nese lawyer was considered among the best legal interpreters of his generation.
Department of Labour, Report by W. L. Mackenzie King, 3.
52. On litigation masters, see Macauley, Social Power and Legal Culture.
53. Vancouver World, 7, 9, 11, 13 Jan. 1911.
54. Lew’s call built on the findings of a Royal Commission (1907–1908) that
reported excessive patronage, graft, and incompetence in civil service dealings
with immigrants. Dawson, Civil Service of Canada, 74–81.
55. MIRC, 2:643–646, 732, 745, 958; 6:2741–2746.
56. Vancouver World, 4, 5, 7, 9, 11, 13 Jan. 1911.
57. Yee, “Chinese Business in Vancouver,” 40–41; Yee, Saltwater City, 33.
58. MIRC, 2:926 (1911); Vancouver World, 17, 25 Jan. 1911; Vancouver Daily Prov-
ince, 16 Jan. 1911.
59. Lew had a formal association with Gordon Grant’s law practice, which was run
by T. R. E. McInnes’s brother W. W. B. McInnes, a former Liberal commis-
sioner of the Yukon, ex-Member of the Provincial Legislature and ex-MP, a
respected political figure, and a leader of Vancouver’s Asiatic Exclusion League.
Grant was the former secretary of the Asiatic Exclusion League and a former
member of Vancouver’s Liberal Party executive. J. W. de B. Farris routinely
handled Chinese labor contracts and related business, such as inquests, civil
lawsuits, and immigration cases, and was known as a prominent young Liberal.
Lew Fonds, Lew to Owyang King, 8 June 1909; Lew to J. W. de B. Farris, 2
Aug. 1909; Vancouver World, 25 Jan. 1911. T. R. E. McInnes was an attorney
for In re Chin Chee, a 1905 habeas corpus case involving Chin Chee, a ten-year

resident of Vancouver, who was denied entry to Canada on the grounds that he
had contracted trachoma during a visit to China. Victory in the case helped to
establish stronger reentry rights for “home-coming” residents of Canada. See
Lampman and Bass, British Columbia Law Reports, “In re Chin Chee.”
9(1905):400–401; Bass, “In re Lee Him” 15(1911):163–165, 390; Roy, A White
Man’s Province, 201.
60. MIRC, 3:1316 (1911).
61. Vancouver World, 20 Jan. 1911; Vancouver Daily Province, 16 Jan. 1911.
62. MIRC, 2:656–657, 811–812 (1911); In re Fong Yuk and the Chinese Immigration
Act, 118–121. On the United States, see McKeown, “Ritualization of Regula-
tion,” 390–391.
63. Bass, “In re Lee Him,” 163–165, 390.
64. Vancouver World, 13, 17, 31 Jan., 2 Feb. 1911; Lew Fonds, Lew to Lee Kee [Lee
Saifan], 27 June, 4 Aug. 1907; Yee, “Chinese Business in Vancouver,” 40–41;
RCCF, “Chinese Merchants Attempting to Enter Canada,” 146 (1910).
65. Roy, A White Man’s Province, 185–202.
66. Vancouver World, 11 Jan. 1911, 3; MIRC, 7:3467 (1911).
67. Vancouver World, 10, 23, 24 Jan. 1911; Ma, Revolutionaries, Monarchists, and
Chinatowns, 49, 57–58, 62, 76, 79–80, 82, 92, 110–111, 116, 128, 130, 135–
136, 161.
68. Josie Lee and Vivian Wong, interview. A search of the General Registers of
Chinese Immigration could not confirm the exact year, possibly because he
arrived under an alternate name. This account sets his arrival in the specific
context of 1910, the year recalled by his family. Accounts of F. S. Wong’s age
conflict, but he was born probably between 1899 and 1902. Wong, “The Life
and Times of Foon Sien.”
69. MIRC, 2:643–818, 953–957.
70. Lee and Wong, interview.
71. Vancouver World, 13 Jan. 1911. At the time, Yip On and Bowell were colluding
to extort money from arriving Chinese who sought head tax exemptions, such
as merchants and their sons. Yip delayed them until they paid his price, and
only after they had his “approval” did Bowell agree to process them. Dawson,
a historian of Canada’s civil service, noted that a Royal Commission in 1908
found that many civil servants considered petty graft or bribery to be a job
perquisite. Dawson, Civil Service of Canada, 74–81.
72. The procedure comes from LAC, RG 76 (Immigration Branch), vol. 590, file
827835, microfilm reel C-10661, Department of Trade and Commerce regarding
Chinese Immigration Act (and Transferring the Administration of the Act
from the Trade and Commerce Department to Interior on 2 October 1911);
Chinese Immigration Service, “Form for Chinese Parent’s Examination,”
1910–1911; Form C.I. 18, “Form for Chinese Claiming to Be Merchant Son’s
Examination,” 1910–1911; Vancouver World, 13 Jan. 1911; Lee and Wong,
interview.

73. DHGB, 25 Jan. 1923.
74. Department of Trade and Commerce regarding Chinese Immigration Act,
1885–1911. RG 76, vol. 590. LAC; Department of Trade and Commerce,
Chinese Immigration Act, 6; Department of Trade and Commerce, Form C.I. 17,
“Chinese Claiming Merchant Exemption Questionnaire.”
75. Con et al., From China to Canada, 157; Low, Memories of Cumberland Chinatown,
91–92.
77. Department of Trade and Commerce, Chinese Immigration Act, 1885–
1911, 12. Canada barred foreign contract workers with the Alien Labour
Act of 1897, an act that Parliament revised and strengthened in 1905.
Buchignani and Indra, “Vanishing Acts,” 420–421; Peck, Reinventing Free
Labor, 90.
78. Miki, Redress, 23.
80. RCCF, 6:2741–2747 (1911).
82. Ibid.
83. Chan, Gold Mountain, 187.
84. Roy, A White Man’s Province, 234.
85. The less stringent criteria for the reentry of Canadian residents were reinforced
by the In re Chin Chee habeas corpus case of 1905. British Columbia Law Reports
11 (1905): 400–401.
86. RCCF, “Chinese Merchants Attempting to Enter Canada,” 146 (1910); Liang,
Xin Dalu Youji, 232.
87. Liang, Xin Dalu Youji, 233.
88. Roy, A White Man’s Province, 61; Report of Mr. Justice Murphy, 29.
89. Yee, “Chinese Business in Vancouver,” 32, 42, 65–72.
90. Williams, “Hong Kong and the Pearl River Delta Qiaoxiang”; Lee, At America’s
Gates, 176; Yee, “Chinese Business in Vancouver,” 42; Waite, “Between Three
Oceans,” 334–335; Brown and Cook, Canada, 1896–1921, 200–201.
91. RCCF, 6:2726 (1911); Report of Mr. Justice Murphy, 51.
92. Department of Secretary of State, “In the County Court Judge’s Criminal
Court,” RG 6E, vol. 574, file 246-2, LAC; “Before His Honour Judge Lampman,
Victoria, British Columbia, Tuesday, January 30, 1917”; Rex v. Ho Hee et al.,
“Testimony of Lee Mong Kow, taken at above trial” (hereafter “Testimony of
Lee Mong Kow”), 1–30. Other steamship lines also used the Chinese agent
system. Yee, “Chinese Business in Vancouver,” 41; Stanley, “Defining the Chi-
nese Other,” 155–156. It is unclear whether Chinese paid higher ticket prices
than did Anglo Canadians.
93. Kwong and Miščević, Chinese America, 82–85.
94. Ma, Revolutionaries, Monarchists, and Chinatowns, 76–77; Ethnic Index (Ottawa:
LAC, 1986), 1:86–90, 104; Lee, “Enforcing the Borders.”

95. Peck, Reinventing Free Labor, 94–96; Lee, “Enforcing the Borders,” 54–86;
Williams, “Hong Kong and the Pearl River Delta Qiaoxiang,” 262–264;
MIRC, 2:920 (1910).
96. RCCF, 1:17, 131–132, 152 (1910).
97. Roy, A White Man’s Province, 235–236. Bennett McCardle dates the use of
pictures on new Chinese immigration entry documents from 1912. McCar-
dle, “The Records of Chinese Immigration at the National Archives of
Canada.”
98. RCCF, 1:6–7 (1910); Vancouver World, 16, 17 Jan. 1911; Vancouver Daily Prov-
ince, 19 Dec. 1910.
99. RCCF, 1:7–8 (1910).
100. Vancouver World, 17 Jan. 1911; Vancouver Daily Province, 17, 31 Jan. 1911.
101. Vancouver World, 20 Dec. 1910, 4 Jan. 1911.
102. Vancouver World, 23 Dec. 1910; Vancouver Daily Province, 23, 24 Dec. 1910.
103. Williams, “Hong Kong and the Pearl River Delta Qiaoxiang,” 261–263; Report
of the Royal Commission on Chinese and Japanese Immigration, 9; Con et al., From
China to Canada, 82–83.
104. Wong Que, file P-1402, and Yong Hor, file P-01413, Probate Files, 1893–
1941, BCA, microfilm reel B-2546.
105. RCCF, “Chinese Merchants Attempting to Enter Canada,” 114–142 (1910).
107. Philip Kuhn describes the similar U.S. system of paper sons in Chinese among
Others, 220–221.
108. For the procedures, see LAC, Department of Trade and Commerce, Chinese
Immigration Act, 1885–1911.
109. MIRC, 2:777–779, 933 (1911).
110. Ibid., 786–787; Williams, “Hong Kong and the Pearl River Delta Qiaoxiang,”
262–264.
111. RCCF, 1:31 (1910); “Chinese Merchants Attempting to Enter Canada,”
153–154, 169–180, 142–143, 52–65, 20–21.
112. RCCF, 1:122 (1910).
113. Ibid., 78–79; Vancouver Daily Province, 22 Dec. 1910; Roy, The Oriental
Question, 234.
114. “Form to Be Used when Examining a Person of Chinese Origin Who Claims
Exemption as a Merchant,” Department of Trade and Commerce, Chinese
Immigration Act, Form C.I. 27, 1910–1911, LAC.
116. RCCF, 1:24 (1910); “Form for Chinese Parent’s Examination,” Department of
Trade and Commerce, Chinese Immigration Act, 1885–1911; “Form for Chi-
nese Claiming to Be Merchant Son’s Examination,” 1910–1911.
117. Department of Trade and Commerce, Chinese Immigration Act, 1885–1911;
Chinese Immigration Service, Form C.I. 9 (1910).
118. McKeown, “Ritualization of Regulation,” 377–403.

119. Monthly Payrolls, 1910–1911, Department of Trade and Commerce, Chinese
Immigration Act, 1885–1911; Report of Mr. Justice Murphy, 44.
120. RCCF, 1:71 (1910), 2:725 (1911); Vancouver World, 10 Jan. 1911; Vancouver
Daily Province, 23 Dec. 1910; Mar, “Beyond Being Others,” 20. From at least
1890 to 1914–1915, Canada’s government processed arriving Chinese in an
immigration building at the foot of Burrard Street, near Pier A and Pier B.
This building was sometimes referred to as the “detention shed,” a term used
for earlier buildings that held Chinese arrivals in San Francisco (before Angel
Island opened in 1910) and in Seattle. Later, entering Chinese were held at an
immigration building on the waterfront at the foot of Thurlow Street that was
built in 1914–1915. Canada’s immigration department used this building
until 1975. Megan Schlase, Archivist, City of Vancouver Archives, email to
author, 15 January 2008.
121. The Chinese Empire Reform Association is the English name for a Chinese
political party that called itself first Baohuanghui (Protect the Emperor So-
ciety), which existed from 1899 to 1906, and then the Constitutionalist Asso-
ciation (Diguo Xianzheng Dang), which existed after 1906.
122. Ma, Revolutionaries, Monarchists, and Chinatowns, 49, 57–58, 62, 76, 79–80, 82,
92, 128, 130, 135–136; Yee, Saltwater City, 46.
123. Larson, “Articulating China’s First Mass Movement.”
124. Yee, Saltwater City, 46; Worden, “A Chinese Reformer in Exile,” 69; Ma, Rev-
olutionaries, Monarchists, and Chinatowns, 110–111, 130; Li, Jianada Huaqiao
Shi, 184–185.
126. Ma, Revolutionaries, Monarchists, and Chinatowns, 135–136, 169.
127. Vancouver Daily Province, 17 Jan. 1911; Ma, Revolutionaries, Monarchists, and
Chinatowns, 125–130; Li, Jianada Huaqiao Shi, 183–185; Con et al., From
China to Canada, 76.
128. Ma, Revolutionaries, Monarchists, and Chinatowns, 110, 116; U.S. Department of
Commerce and Labor, Bureau of Manufactures, Monthly Consular and Trade
Reports (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, Oct. 1908), 337:50;
Tsai, Hong Kong in Chinese History, 209.
129. Worden, “A Chinese Reformer in Exile,” 217–225; Ma, Revolutionaries, Monar-
chists, and Chinatowns, 128–129.
130. Li, Jianada Huaqiao Shi, 184–185.
131. Ma, Revolutionaries, Monarchists, and Chinatowns, 111.
132. Ibid., 130–131, 135–136.
133. Ibid., 126–127; Tsai, Hong Kong in Chinese History, 216–220.
134. New York Times, 30, 31 May, 5 June 1910; Washington Post, 30 May, 4 Aug., 2
Oct. 1910.
135. Ma, Revolutionaries, Monarchists, and Chinatowns, 111, 135–136.
136. Ibid., 138–139; Tsai, Hong Kong in Chinese History, 220–223.

138. Vancouver World, 13, 17, 31 Jan., 2 Feb. 1911; Lew Fonds, Lew to Lee Kee [Lee
Saifan], 27 June, 4 Aug. 1907; Yee, “Chinese Business in Vancouver,” 40–41;
RCCF, “Chinese Merchants Attempting to Enter Canada,” 146 (1910).
139. Roy, A White Man’s Province, 188–189.
141. Roy, A White Man’s Province, 190; Joan M. Jensen, Passage from India: Asian
Indian Immigrants in North America (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press,
1988), 66; Lew Fonds, D. Lew to Lee Kee, 4 Aug. 1907.
142. Roy, A White Man’s Province, 185–226; Jensen, Passage from India, 57–82
143. RCCF, “Chinese Merchants Attempting to Enter Canada,” 146 (1910).
146. Ibid.
147. Ibid., 17 Jan. 1911.
148. Kornel Chang, “Enforcing Transnational White Solidarity: Asian Migration
and the Formation of the U.S.–Canadian Boundary,” American Quarterly 60.3
(2008): 671–696.
149. Washington Post, 19 Sept. 1909, and its reiteration, 4 Mar. 1910. The press
coverage claimed a total closing of the border, but passage from Vancouver was
still open to Chinese merchants with appropriate certificates.
150. Washington Post, 19 Sept. 1909, 4 Mar. 1910.
151. Bass, “In re Lee Him,” 163–165, 390.
152. Following changing U.S. practice, immigration officials usually isolated Chi-
nese detainees while questioning them. They also barred family members and
third-party mediators from speaking with the detainees. MIRC, 2:656–657,
811–812 (1911); In re Fong Yuk and the Chinese Immigration Act, 118–121. On
the United States, see McKeown, “Ritualization of Regulation,” 390–391.
153. Lew probably served as the Chinese legal advisor for these cases, though the
case reports only mention the white lawyers of record, who were Lew’s friends
Tom McInnes and J. W. de B. Farris. Bass, “In re Lee Him,” 163–165, 390. For
In re Chin Chee, see Bass, British Columbia Law Reports, 11(1905):400–401.
155. Ng, Chinese in Vancouver, 75–77.
156. Roy, A White Man’s Province, 199.
157. Worden, “A Chinese Reformer in Exile,” 69.
159. Ibid.; Worden, “A Chinese Reformer in Exile,” 158. The argument about trade
is inferred from the context of the 1910 Chinese boycott of San Francisco,
along with CERA’s frequent reference to this argument.
161. The dominion Secret Service, also known as the dominion police, handled
domestic spying and security matters. In 1920, it merged into the Royal Cana-
dian Mounted Police. Mount, Canada’s Enemies, 12.

162. MIRC, 2:644–647, 742 (1911).
163. Ibid., 824.
164. Ibid., 818.
165. Ibid., 647, 818.
166. Ibid., 647; Lew Fonds, Lew to P. L. Prentis, 26 May 1909.
167. Li, Jianada Huaqiao Shi, 181; Ma, Revolutionaries, Monarchists, and China-
towns, 91.
168. MIRC, 2:676–677 (1911).
169. Ibid., 649–651, 847.
170. RCCF, 15:45 (1910).
172. Ibid., 34–39.
173. Ibid.; RCCF, 1:117 (1910); Vancouver Daily Province, 21 Dec. 1910.
174. Report of Mr. Justice Murphy, 31, 40–41, 117.
175. MIRC, 2:716 (1911); Vancouver World, 10 Jan. 1911; Vancouver Daily Province,
10 Jan. 1911.
176. Vancouver World, 4 Jan. 1911; Vancouver Daily Province, 4 Feb. 1911.
177. MIRC, 2:750 (1911).
178. Vancouver Daily Province, 31 Dec. 1910.
179. RCCF, 6:2940–2947, 2964 (1911).
180. The demand is inferred from the contexts of the CERA/SGA-influenced U.S.
1905 boycott and the related boycott of 1910.
181. The U.S. interest can be inferred from the coverage in the New York Times and
Washington Post, which would have reached Canada as part of syndicated U.S.
news that English Canadian papers regularly reprinted. An online search of the
Toronto Star of 1905 for “China” and “boycott” resulted in sixty-four hits,
http://www.pagesofthepast.ca/Default.asp (accessed 23 Aug. 2008).
182. Tsai, Hong Kong in Chinese History, 220; New York Times, 12 May 1910.
183. Washington Post, 2 Oct. 1910.
184. The records of Lew’s investigation do not say whether it was the British consuls
in Hong Kong and Guangzhou who handled Canada’s foreign policy who
chose to interfere.
185. LAC, Department of Trade and Commerce regarding Chinese Immigration
Act (1910–1911), had very brief policy guidelines so local officials and party
leaders would have been expected to improvise the rest.
186. Vancouver World, 29 Dec. 1910.
188. Chen, Being Chinese, Becoming Chinese American, 27–30; Ma, Revolutionaries,
Monarchists, and Chinatowns, 30–31, 49.
189. Chinese Canadian Historical Society, Historic Study of the Society Buildings in
Chinatown (Vancouver, B.C.: Chinese Canadian Historical Society, 2005), 55.
191. Ma, Revolutionaries, Monarchists, and Chinatowns, 26, 91–92.

192. MIRC, 2:648 (1911): 648.
193. Ibid., 684–685.
194. Ibid., 858.
195. RCCF, “Chinese Merchants Attempting to Enter Canada,” 1:1–180 (1910).
196. Ibid., 136–143.
197. Ibid., 1–180.
198. Ibid., 452.
199. MIRC, 2:872 (1911); Vancouver World, 28, 29 Dec. 1910; Vancouver Daily Prov-
ince, 29 Dec. 1910.
200. Report of Mr. Justice Murphy, 42–46; MIRC, 2:928, 7:3111–3114, 3145, 3435
(1911); Vancouver World, 10–14 Jan. 1911.
202. Vancouver World, 23, 24 Jan. 1911; MIRC, 2:648–649 (1911); Vancouver World,
7 Jan. 1911.
203. MIRC, 2:920–923, 927–929, 7:3089–3101, 3443 (1911); Vancouver World, 11
Jan., 2 Feb. 1911.
204. MIRC, 2:920–921 (1911).
205. Ibid.
206. Ibid.
207. Ibid., 739, 1016–1017; Vancouver World, 14 Jan. 1911.
208. MIRC, 2:648–649, 844, 902 (1911). The response to Lew can be inferred
from the response to Tom Chue Thom’s letter of support for Lew, 7:3089–
3101 (1911); Vancouver World, 26 Jan. 1911; Vancouver Daily Province, 26
Jan. 1911.
209. MIRC, 3:1016–1017, 2:648–649, 844, 902 (1911).
210. MIRC, 2:648–649 (1911); Vancouver World, 7, 12 Jan. 1911.
211. MIRC, 2:924 (1911); Vancouver Daily Province, 12 Jan. 1911. Spelling and
grammar from Thom’s original letter.
212. MIRC, 2:925–926 (1911); Vancouver Daily Province, 12 Jan. 1911.
213. MIRC, 7:3089–3101 (1911).
214. Ibid., 3094.
215. Report of Mr. Justice Murphy, 19, shows conflict among the Liberal Party factions
regarding the appointment of lawyers to assist Lew’s initial investigation; log-
ically, parallel conflict would have occurred over the staffing of the Royal Com-
mission.
216. On Murphy and McCrossan as Liberals, see Parker, Who’s Who and Why, 945,
and Castell, Canadian Annual Review of Public Affairs, 579.
217. RCCF, 1:386 (1910).
218. Report of Mr. Justice Murphy, 5, 48–53.
219. Vancouver Daily Province, 16 Dec. 1910.
220. Vancouver World, 4–7 Jan. 1911.
221. Vancouver Daily Province, 22, 29 Dec. 1910; Report of Mr. Justice Murphy, 3–4,
12, 32–34.

222. Vancouver World, 4–6 Jan. 1911.
223. Ibid., 4–7 Jan. 1911.
224. Ibid., 7 Jan. 1911.
225. Ibid., 9 Jan. 1911. McCrossan is inferred to be the questioner from the context.
Ibid., 7 Jan. 1911.
226. Ibid., 12 Jan. 1911.
227. Ibid.
228. Ibid., 9 Jan. 1911.
229. MIRC, 2:796–800 (1911).
231. Ibid., 26 Jan. 1911.
232. MIRC, 7:3166–3174 (1911).
233. Ethnic Index, 1:86–90, 104; Lee, “Enforcing the Borders.”
234. MIRC, 2:839, 7:3467 (1911); Vancouver Daily Province, 11 Jan. 1911.
235. MIRC, 2:839, 7:3467 (1911); Vancouver Daily Province, 11 Jan. 1911.
236. Vancouver World, 17 Jan. 1911; Vancouver Daily Province, 19 Dec. 1910; Report of
Mr. Justice Murphy, 25–28.
237. Report of Mr. Justice Murphy, 42.
238. Vancouver World, 18 Jan. 1911; Morton, In the Sea of Sterile Mountains, 220;
Report of Mr. Justice Murphy, 23.
240. Dawson, Civil Service of Canada, 1–89; Hodgetts et al., Biography of an Institu-
tion, 9; Whitaker, The Government Party, xx–xxii.
242. Ibid., 1 Feb. 1911; Vancouver Daily Province, 2 Feb. 1911.
244. Davies, From Sourdough to Superstore, 20–21.
245. Vancouver World, 14, 25 Jan. 1911; Lew Fonds, Lew to Owyang King, 8
June 1909.
249. Ibid., 5–21.
250. Ibid., 51–52.
252. Department of Trade and Commerce regarding Chinese Immigration Act (and
Transferring the Administration of the Act from the Trade and Commerce
Department to Interior on 2 October 1911), RG 76, vol. 590, file 827835,
LAC, microfilm reel C-10661.
253. Jack Wai Yen Lee, “Lee Mong Kow (1863–1924)” http://members.shaw.ca/
leesassociationvictoria/mongkow.htm. Accessed 26 October 2006.; “Invoices
of Yip Kew Him, Canadian Pacific and Department of Immigration Inter-
preter, 1916–1941,” Chung Collection.

254. Department of Trade and Commerce regarding Chinese Immigration Act,
LAC.
255. Roy, A White Man’s Province, 235–236; McCardle, “The Records of Chinese
Immigration at the National Archives of Canada,” 163–171; Da Han Ri Bao,
26 Aug. 1914.
256. Cameron, “Canada’s Struggle with Illegal Entry.”
257. Barman, The West beyond the West, 268; Cameron, “Canada’s Struggle with Il-
legal Entry,” 51–60.
258. DHGB, 12 Apr. 1919.
259. Percy Reid, Chief Controller of Chinese Immigration, Vancouver, to Deputy
Minister, Dept. of Immigration and Colonization, Ottawa, Ont., 17 June
1924, Department of Immigration and Colonization-Registration under Sec.
18 Chinese Imm. Act of Chinese Born in Canada, RG 13-A-2, vol. 1958, files
1924–1204, LAC.
260. DHGB, 25 Sept. 1924; Vancouver Daily Province, 25 Sept. 1924.
261. Vancouver Daily Province, 25 Sept. 1924.
262. Foster, “Romance of the Lost.”
263. Vancouver Board of Trade, Media Release, 3 Mar. 2004, http://www.
boardoftrade.com/vbot_page.asp?pageid=1196 (accessed 25 Aug. 2008).
265. Davies, From Sourdough to Superstore, 72.
266. Trade reciprocity with the United States was the election’s deciding issue.
Morton, In the Sea of Sterile Mountains, 221–222; Roy, A White Man’s Province,
234–235.
267. Chung Collection, box 15, folder 7, “Documents and Ephemera Related to
Community and Social Activities of Yip Sang and His Family,” UBC.
268. Vancouver Board of Trade, Media Release, 3 Mar. 2004, http://www.boardof-
trade.com/vbot_page.asp?pageid=1196 (accessed 25 Aug. 2008).
269. Delgado, “At Exclusion’s Southern Gate,” 183–208.
270. On patronage generally, see Gordon, “Patronage, Etiquette, and the Science of
Connection.”
271. Lee, At America’s Gates, 177–178.
272. Hamilton, Sobering Dilemma; Morton, At Odds.
273. Yee, “Chinese Business in Vancouver,” 92–114.
274. New York Times, 17 Aug. 1904, 18 June 1913.
275. Holder, “The Chinaman in American Politics.”
276. Mary Roberts Coolidge, Chinese Immigration (New York: Holt, 1909), 315–
320, 331, 413, 417–419. The party system of government politicized many
levels of civil service during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, so
Chinese behaved like other aspirants to official favor and sought political spon-
sors to compete for influence in the immigration service. Wong, Sweet Cakes,
Long Journey, 190–198.
277. Lee, At America’s Gates, 68–69, 199–200.

278. Senate Commission on Industrial Relations, Final Report and Testimony, 6001–
6344.
279. Lee, At America’s Gates, 58–63; Senate Commission on Industrial Relations,
Final Report and Testimony, 6001–6344.
chapter two
1. DHGB, 26 Sept. 1924; Macdonald and O’Keefe, Canadian Holy War, 78–82,
89–90, 95, 102–104, 214.
2. Lew is the subject of two publications: a brief encyclopedia entry and a sensa-
tionalized popular account of a tong war based on English-language sources:
Timothy J. Stanley, “Lew, David Hung Chang,” in Dictionary of Canadian Biog-
raphy Online, vol. 15, ed. Ramsay Cook and Réal Bélanger (Toronto and Laval,
Canada: University of Toronto Press and University of Laval, 2005), http://
tinyurl.com/yftzqa4 (accessed 5 Feb. 2009); Macdonald and O’Keefe, Cana-
dian Holy War, 78–82, 89–90, 95, 102–104, 214. This discussion of legal in-
terpreters counters Canadian views of the Exclusion Era, which have conceived
of the law as a repressive force, but it also expands upon a wider Canadian and
U.S. literature that sees Chinese as legal agents. Li, Chinese in Canada, 31–43;
Backhouse, Colour-Coded, 132–172; Walker, Race, Rights and the Law, 51–121;
Mosher, Discrimination and Denial; Marquis, “Vancouver Vice”; McLaren, “Race
and the Criminal Justice System.” Other literature focuses on successful court
challenges to anti-Chinese laws in the United States: Salyer, Laws Harsh as
Tigers; McClain, In Search of Equality; Lee, At America’s Gates; Pfaelzer, Driven
Out, 291–334; Ngai, “History as Law and Life”; Todd M. Stevens, “Brokers
between Worlds: Chinese Merchants and Legal Culture in the Pacific North-
west, 1852–1925” (Ph.D. diss., Princeton University, 2003). Comparable
court challenges in Canada often failed. See Backhouse, Colour-Coded,
132–172; Donald W. Fetherston, “Contradictions of Immigration Law-
Making: Chinese Immigration to Canada and the Early Supreme Court of Brit-
ish Columbia” (Ph.D. diss., University of Hawaii, 1996), 68–141. Chinese
Canadian court challenges have been less studied, but it appears that the
principle of equal protection under the law was interpreted with more judicial
restraint. A smaller part of this literature has traced ethnic “firsts,” such as the
first Chinese in Canada to become lawyers in the 1940s and 1950s. See
Backhouse, “Gretta Wong Grant.”
3. Brockman, “Exclusionary Tactics.”
4. Canada’s provincial law societies excluded Chinese from the legal profession
on racial grounds, while most U.S. states barred all foreigners from prac-
ticing law. Since Chinese in the United States were by law prohibited from
naturalizing, only U.S.-born Chinese American citizens could practice law,
and very few did. A. M. Hendrickson, Rules for Admission to the Bar in the
Several States and Territories of the United States in Force January 1, 1922, 11th

ed. (St. Paul, Minn.: West, 1922), 3–221; Wong, Sweet Cakes, Long Journey,
192; Joseph Gaston, Portland, Oregon: Its History and Builders (Chicago: Clarke,
1911), 3:347.
5. Vancouver Sun, 24 Oct. 1924. The paper referred to Lew as “the young Chinese
lawyer.”
6. Police Court Notebook, box 2, 1906–1925, UBC; “Foon Sien Wong’s
Appointment as Provincial Court Interpreter,” news clipping in Nations at
War Scrapbook, box 1 (ca. 1920s), Wong Papers.
7. Gruen, Roman Politics and the Criminal Courts, 1.
8. Chinese Canadians’ use of legal brokers was similar to the system of informal
legal brokerage in China. See Macauley, Social Power and Legal Culture, 1–17,
100–194.
9. Ibid., 1–17.
10. McLaren, “Race and the Criminal Justice System”; Marquis, “Vancouver Vice,”
246–252; Mosher, Discrimination and Denial, 63–81, 138–174; Carstairs, Jailed
for Possession, 16–34.
11. DHGB, 30 Sept. 1924, 3.
12. Won Alexander Cumyow Fonds, box 2, Police Court Notebook, 1906–1925,
folder 1-7, UBC; Cumyow Fonds, box 1, journal transcription of English
material in letterbook, folder 1-4, UBC; Chung Collection, folders 35, 15, 17,
18, UBC; 1907 Chinese and English Letterbook of David Lew, record no. E/D/
L58, BCA; Gordon Won Cumyow interview, in Marlatt and Itter, Opening
Doors, 15–20; Wo Sang in Acct. with David C. Lew Re: Rex v. Yet Sun and Chin
Gim, 12 June (ca. 1907–1909), Lew Fonds, BCA; David Lew to J. A. Russell,
Esq., 12 June (undated, 1907 by sequence), BCA; Lew Fonds: David Lew to
Wong Lung, 18 June (1907 by sequence); David Lew to Yah Tin Luck, 12 June
1909; David Lew to J. W. de B. Farris, 2 Aug. 1909; David Lew to L. B. Campbell,
Chief of Provincial Police, 2 Aug. 1909; Yip Quene, “Jang Jack and G. Yom’s
Car Case to Mr. A. Henderson,” folder 0035-02, 1, 1933, Chung Collection;
Peddlers Association and Legal Cases, box FOLDR-0023, folders 0023-8 and
9, Chung Collection; DHGB, 26, 29 Sept. 1924, 15 Apr. 1925.
13. David Lew to Li Jia (ca. 1906–1909), Lew Fonds, BCA, translated by Begin
Zen.
14. DHGB, 7 Nov. 1923; A. L. Joliffe to Percy Reid, 12 Dec. 1923, RG 76, vol.
590, file 827835, microfilm reel C-10661, LAC.
15. A. L. Joliffe to Percy Reid, 12 Dec. 1923, LAC.
16. DHGB, 11 Apr. 1930.
17. Raushenbush, “Interview with J. A. Russel [sic], Barrister, Criminal Lawyer for
Chinese,” 2, draft version, SRR.
18. Ibid.; David Lew to J. A. Russell, Esq., 12 June (ca. 1907), Lew Fonds.
19. Vancouver Sun, 17 Aug. 1971. See also New York attorney Arthur Cheney
Train’s satire of Chinese legal interpreting, “Mock Hen and Mock Turtle,” in
his Tutt and Mr. Tutt, 43–88.

20. Wong, Sweet Cakes, Long Journey, 190–198.
21. “In the County Court Judge’s Criminal Court, before His Honour Judge
Lampman, Victoria, British Columbia, Tuesday, January 30, 1917,” RG 6, vol.
574, file 246-2, part 2, LAC; Rex v. Ho Hee et al., “Testimony of Lee Mong
Kow,” 1–30.
22. Hunter and Lampman, “In re Fong Yuk.” British Columbia Law Reports,
8(1902):118–121; Vancouver Sun, 14, 15 Apr. 1925. In the 1925 case Rex v.
Chong Sing, the Chinese Freemasons hired extra Chinese legal interpreters, who
probably helped Anglo defense attorney Frank Higgins catch court interpreter
Foon Sien Wong’s denial that an association of Chinese from Panyu existed.
23. Farkas, Bury My Bones in America, 79.
24. See Lew’s complaint that the usual policy was not followed for one case. Lew to
CERA President, and Lew Kwong, Secretary, and Special Committee, 27 June
(ca. 1906–1909), Lew Fonds, BCA.
25. David Lew to J. A. Russell, Esq., 12 June (ca. 1907); David Lew to Wong
Lung, 18 June (ca. 1907), Lew Fonds, BCA.
26. DHGB, 29 Sept., 1 Oct. 1924.
27. See Starkins on Foon Sien Wong’s ties in Who Killed Janet Smith? 56, 255.
C. H. Burnett’s interviews with Seattle Chinese in 1924 also linked Chinese
association graft to better U.S. legal treatment of their members. Major Docu-
ments 27-27, 27-42, 27-43, 27-44, 27-48, 27-49, SRR. Mary Coolidge found
anti-Chinese laws in San Francisco to be pretexts for official extortion between
1892 and 1906 (Chinese Immigration, 417–422). Ma found that the Chinese
Freemasons’ national “Translators’ Lodge” in 1903 came close to monopolizing
U.S. legal interpreting in San Francisco (Revolutionaries, Monarchists, and China-
towns, 91–92). For information on Chicago, see McKeown, Chinese Migrant
Networks, 210, 211, 217; for New York, McIllwain, Organizing Crime in China-
town, 71–79, 100–103, 106–126.
28. Stevens, “Brokers between Worlds,” 16–58; McFie, Vancouver Island and British
Columbia, 382–383.
29. Janet Mary Nicol, “Canadian First: The Life of Won Alexander Cumyow 1861
to 1955,” http://www.cchsbc.ca (accessed 13 June 2006).
30. Watts, History of the Legal Profession in British Columbia, 53–58.
31. A good number of Chinese Canadian legal interpreters had legal training as clerks
in law offices and/or university education: Foon Sien Wong (UBC, La Salle Uni-
versity Law School of Chicago), J. P. Sam (University of Toronto, Trinity College),
Inglis Hosang (UBC, University of California Law School, Inns of Court in
London, the Sorbonne; he also had been a barrister in London and Hong Kong),
Won Alexander Cumyow (clerking), Gordon Won Cumyow (unspecified legal
training, probably law school and clerking). Jing Feng Huang, “Dao Huang
Wenfu Zong Zhang Qiangu”,” box 26, file 13, CCRC; Vancouver Sun, 14 Apr.
1925; “Death Claims Chinese Lawyer,” Graduate Chronicle (1945): 14, UBC;
Nicol, “Canadian First,” 1; Brockman, “Exclusionary Tactics,” 519–522.

32. Macauley, Social Power and Legal Culture, 1–17.
33. Won Alexander Cumyow Fonds, Police Court Notebook, 1906–1925, UBC.
Ordinary Chinese workers’ earnings of about $30 per month have been extrap-
olated from wages reported by Liang Qichao, a visiting Chinese official from
Guangdong, in his memoir Xin Dalu Youji in Jindai Zhongguo Shiliao Congkan,
vols. 96–97, 228–229; Report of the Royal Commission on Chinese and Japanese
Immigration, 55, 135; Yee, “Chinese Business in Vancouver,” 105–106.
34. Gordon Won Cumyow interview, in Marlatt and Itter, Opening Doors, 15–20.
35. McLaren, “Race and the Criminal Justice System”; Mosher, Discrimination and
Denial, 63–81, 138–174; Carstairs, Jailed for Possession, 16–34; Cole and Chin,
“Emerging from the Margins of Historical Consciousness,” 327.
36. Coolidge, “Chinese Immigration,” 417-421. Holder, “The Chinaman in
American Politics,” 226–237; Marquis, “Vancouver Vice.”
37. Marquis, “Vancouver Vice.”
38. Quene Yip, “Jang Jack and G. Yom’s Car Case to Mr. A. Henderson,” 1933,
Chung Collection; Peddlers Association and Legal Cases, Chung Collection;
Lew to Mah Sam Yuen, Yah Tin Luck Chinese Theatre, 12 June 1909, Lew
Fonds; McLaren, “Race and the Criminal Justice System,” 404; Raushenbush,
“Interview with J. A. Russel[l],” 30 Apr. 1924, Box 24, File 24-27, SRR.
39. Gompers and Morrison, Some Reasons for Chinese Exclusion, 6.
40. The legislation passed in 1903 and was enacted in 1904. Revised Statutes of
Canada, 1741.
41. Ngai, “History as Law and Life”; Stevens, “Brokers between Worlds.”
42. Yee, “Chinese Business in Vancouver,” 92–114.
43. Cumyow Fonds, journal transcription of English material in letterbook, box 1,
folder 1-4.
44. Lew Fonds, BCA: David Lew to Yah Tin Luck, 12 June 1909; Lew to J. W. de
B. Farris, 2 Aug. 1909; Lew to L. B. Campbell, Chief of Provincial Police, 2
Aug. 1909; Lew to Charles B. Jones and G. T. Rant, 18 Aug. [1909].
45. Report of the Royal Commission on Chinese and Japanese Immigration, 135,
188–189. Lew Fonds: David Lew to Yah Tin Luck, 12 June 1909; Lew to J. W.
de B. Farris, 2 Aug. 1909; Lew to L. B. Campbell, 2 Aug. 1909.
46. Lew Fonds: Lew to Yah Tin Luck, 12 June 1909; Lew to J. W. de B. Farris, 2 Aug.
1909; Lew to L. B. Campbell, 2 Aug. 1909; Daily Province, 2 Aug. 1909. Lew’s
letters refer to an accident at a brick factory that killed two Chinese workers. The
letters show that he helped to lobby for an official inquest into the accident. He
arranged for a white lawyer to represent the Chinese contractor. Lew himself rep-
resented the dead Chinese workers’ families at the inquest and in probate. He also
helped both families to file civil lawsuits of $1,500 against the brick company.
Report of the Coroner’s Inquisition, B.C. Attorney General, Inquisitions, GR
1327, reel B2384, file 133-1909, BCA; Daily Province, 4 Aug. 1909; British
Columbia Supreme Court (Vancouver), Probate Files, 1893–1941, GR 1415, reel
B2546, file P01413 “Yong Hor” and file P1402 “Wong Kue” (1909).

47. On the United States, see Stevens, “Brokers between Worlds,” iii, 92–153.
48. Leier, Red Flags and Red Tape, 128–129.
49. Lew Fonds: Lew to J. W. de B. Farris, 2 Aug. 1909; Lew to L. B. Campbell, 2
Aug. 1909; Daily Province, 2 Aug. 1909.
50. Report of the Coroner’s Inquisition, BCA, 1–16; Daily Province, 4 Aug. 1909.
51. Lew Fonds: Lew to Macdonald, Killam, and Parris, Barristers, 30 Aug. 1909;
British Columbia Supreme Court (Vancouver), file P01413 and file P1402.
The results of the civil lawsuits are unknown.
52. M. M. Fernie and District Historical Society, “The Strikebreakers on Vancou-
ver Island: Chinese Strikebreakers,” King Coal: B. C.’s Coal Heritage, http://
collections.ic.gc.ca/kingcoal (accessed 16 Dec. 2005); Roy, The Oriental Ques-
tion, 254–255.
53. DHGB, 12 Apr. 1919.
54. Ibid., 1, 9 Apr., 14 June 1919; Creese, “Exclusion or Solidarity?” 320–321.
55. Ward, White Canada Forever, 41.
56. Report of the Royal Commission on Chinese and Japanese Immigration, 160–161,
235; Raushenbush, “Interview with J. A. Russel[l],” SRR; Liang, Xin Dalu
Youji, 233.
57. Yee, “Chinese Business in Vancouver,” 105.
58. Lew Fonds: Lew to Vancouver General Hospital Chairmen and Directors,
6 Oct., 12 Nov. 1908.
Chung Collection; Peddlers Association and Legal Cases, Chung Collection,
UBC; Lew Fonds: Lew to Mah Sam Yuen, Yah Tin Luck Chinese Theatre, 12
June 1909. John McLaren suggests that Chinese could expect fair treatment in
civil cases. McLaren, “Race and the Criminal Justice System,” 404.
60. Stevens as well as McClain and McClain note that scholars have regarded
the Chinese population in the United States as aloof from the popular legal
culture, with the exception of court challenges to racial discrimination and
Chinese businesses’ reliance on civil law. Stevens, “Brokers between
Worlds,” iii–iv; McClain and McClain, “The Chinese Contribution to the
Development of American Law,” 3-24; Con et al., From China to Canada,
31–32, 39.
62. Li, Jianada Huaqiao Shi, 123–128; Con et al., From China to Canada, 32, 39,
108–109, 165; Oropeza, “La Discriminación en México,” 47–56. As products
of transnational conflict, strife between the Chinese Nationalist Party and the
Chinese Freemasons also likely occurred elsewhere in the Americas, Austral-
asia, and England, where Chinese immigrants had established branches of both
organizations. DHGB, 20 Mar. 1924.
63. DHGB, 30 Sept. 1924.
64. Ibid.
65. Winifred Raushenbush, “Interview with Dr. Y. P. Lew,” 4 Feb. 1924, SRR.

66. DHGB, 17, 22 Apr. 1925; Con et al., From China to Canada, 108–109; Raush-
enbush, “Interview with Dr. Y. P. Lew,” 4 Feb. 1924, Box 24, File 24-5,
SRR.
Chung Collection; Peddlers Association and Legal Cases, Chung Collection.
68. Yip, “Jang Jack and G. Yom’s Car Case.” The name of the legal assistant is
listed phonetically as “Fushien” with a notation that it is not spelled correctly;
given the small number of legal assistants, this was probably Foon Sien
Wong.
69. Con et al., From China to Canada, 136; Peddlers Association and Legal Cases,
1933–1937, Chung Collection; Police Court Notebook, 1906–1925, Box/File
1-7, Cumyow Papers; Lew Fonds, David Lew to J. C. McRae, Police Chief
of Winnipeg, 8 Feb. 1909; Starkins, Who Killed Janet Smith? 58–59, 159,
254–255.
70. Lew Fonds, David Lew to J. C. McRae, 8 Feb. 1909.
71. Starkins, Who Killed Janet Smith? 1–2; Davies, From Sourdough to Superstore, 72;
S. Moreley Wickett, “City Government in Canada,” University of Toronto Studies
in History and Economics 2 (1907): 10–11.
72. For a more detailed account of Foon Sing Wong’s experience, see Starkins, Who
Killed Janet Smith?
73. Ibid.
74. Chung Collection, box 35, file 1, “Yungaohua Zhonghua Huiguan Wei Yingjiu
Huang Huan Sheng An Jin Zhi Zheng Xin Lu,” 16 May 1925, 1–23.
75. Vancouver Sun, 9 Sept. 1924.
76. The Nations at War Scrapbook, Wong Papers, Box 1., includes Chinese news
clippings of poetry and matchmaking advertisements and English poems
printed on cards with the University of British Columbia’s logo and Wong’s
address. Some of the Chinese poems and advertisements are under Wong’s pen
name of “Wen Hu,” an allusion to his English poetic moniker, “Tiger.”
77. McKeown, Chinese Migrant Networks, 178–223; McIllwain, Organizing Crime in
Chinatown, 183–187.
78. DHGB, 25, 27 Oct. 1924. Timothy J. Stanley, “Lew, David Hung Chang.”;
Macdonald and O’Keefe, Canadian Holy War, 78–82, 89–90, 95, 102–104,
214.
79. Li, Jianada Huaqiao Shi, 180.
80. DHGB, 30 Sept. 1924, 3.
81. Ibid., 7 Oct. 1924, 3; Li, Jianada Huaqiao Shi, 180, 91–93; Ito, Issei, 758, 843;
Vancouver Sun, 3 May 1924, 10; Marquis, “Vancouver Vice,” 251.
82. Vancouver Sun, 13, 15, 16, 20, 26, 28 Jan., 2 May 1924.
83. Kevin B. Walmsley, “State Formation and Institutionalized Racism: Gambling
Laws in Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Century Canada,” Sport History Review
29 (1998): 77–85.
84. Ibid.

85. DHGB, 30 Sept. 1924. On Freemason-Nationalist rivalries, see Con et al.,
From China to Canada, 165; Kim and Markov, “The Chinese Exclusion Laws”;
McIllwain, Organizing Crime in Chinatown, 75–76, 32, 33, 102, 136–137,
140–146, 172; Oropeza, “La Discriminación en México”; DHGB, 30 Sept.,
1 Oct. 1924.
87. DHGB, 29 Sept. 1924.
88. Walmsley, “State Formation,” 81–84; McLaren, “Race and the Criminal Jus-
tice System,” 405–418.
89. Li, Jianada Huaqiao Shi, 180, 91–92.
90. Vancouver Sun, 3 May 1924, 10, noted that arrested Chinese paid court fines of
$20–$30, plus the cost of an interpreter.
91. Yee, “Chinese Business in Vancouver,” 76–79; VCA, Add. MSS 1108, Yip
Family and Yip Sang Ltd. Fonds, box 612-F-7, files 4, 5, “[Account book of]
Yuan Li gambling house—parts 1 and 2,” 1924; box 612-G-1, files 2, 3, “[Ac-
count book of] An Li gambling house—parts 1 and 2,” 1925; box 612-G-1,
file 4, “[Account book of] Kwong Loy gambling den,” 1925.
92. Marquis, “Vancouver Vice,” 246–261.
93. DHGB, 29 Sept. 1924, 3.
94. “Liao Hongxiang Yu Hai Wu Zhi,” DHGB, 28 Nov. 1923; Li, Jianada Huaq-
iao Shi, 180, 91–92.
95. DHGB, 14 Oct. 1924, 3.
96. Ibid., 25 Sept. 1924.
97. Ibid., 29 Sept. 1924.
98. Ibid., 26, 29 Sept. 1924.
99. Ibid.
100. Lew v. Lee, Case on Appeal [factum], 1924, “Proceedings at Trial,” 7.
101. Yip Family and Yip Sang Ltd. Fonds., Add. MSS 1108, Business and Financial
Records, box 612-D-3, files 4, 5; box D-4, files 1, 5; box D-6, files 2, 4,
VCA.
102. Nanaimo Community Archives, Malaspina-University College, and Nanaimo
Community Heritage Commission. “Nanaimo Chinatowns [sic] Project:
Introduction.” http://chinatown.mala.bc.ca/introduction.asp (accessed 30
March 2010). Lew v. Lee, Case on Appeal [factum], 1924, “Proceedings at
Trial,” 7.
103. Lew v. Lee, Case on Appeal [factum], 1924, “Proceedings at Trial,” 2–3.
104. DHGB, 26 Sept., 17 Oct. 1924; David Lew v. Wing Lee, Supreme Court of
Canada Appeal, 1924, RG 125, vol. 508, file 4956, LAC; Case on Appeal [fac-
tum], F. S. Cunliffe (Thompson, Cote, Burgess and Thompson, Ottawa Agents)
and Arthur Leighton (Nellis, Thompson and Ellis, Ottawa Agents) in the
Supreme Court of Canada on Appeal from the Court of Appeal for British
Columbia, David Lew (Plaintiff/Appellant) and Wing Lee (Defendant/Respon-
dent), 27 May 1924 (Vancouver: Murray and Chapman, 1924), 1–126.

105. Vancouver Daily Province, 26 Sept. 1924. DHGB, 20, 26, 27 Sept. 1924. British
Columbia’s liquor regulations at this time subjected alcohol to government
taxes but did not prohibit it. Starkins, Who Killed Janet Smith? 139–140.
106. DHGB, 20, 27, 29 Sept. 1924; Vancouver Daily Province, 26 Sept. 1924.
107. Vancouver Sun, 19, 20 Sept. 1924.
108. DHGB, 20, 26 Sept. 1924. Vancouver Daily Province, 26 Sept. 1924.
109. DHGB, 26 Sept., 2 Oct. 1924.
110. C. H. Burnett, “Interview with Mr. Fred H. Lysons, Attorney,” 29 July, 5, 22 Aug.
1924, Box 27, File 27-192. SRR. The CPR’s records were not consulted because at
the time of this book’s research they were not deposited in an archive.
111. Vancouver Sun, 29 May 1924, 1.
112. DHGB, 29 Sept., 1 Oct. 1924; Vancouver Daily Province, 27 Sept. 1924.
113. DHGB, 29 Sept. 1924; Macdonald and O’Keefe, Canadian Holy War, 78–82;
Ann Lee, interview; journal transcription of Chinese material in letterbook,
folder 1-5, Cumyow Papers.
114. Most Chinese “slave girls” as they were called, were indentured immigrants,
bound to serve their employer for a period of years until their contracts expired.
A good number but not all of these women became involved in prostitution or
suffered abuse. See Lucie Cheng Hirata, “Free, Indentured, Enslaved: Chinese
Prostitutes in Nineteenth-Century America,” and Karen Van Dieren, “The
Response of the WMS.” Gordon Cumyow interview, in Marlatt and Itter,
Opening Doors, 15–20. In 1924, the British Columbia legislature passed a law
barring Chinese from employing white and First Nations females. The polit-
ical context of the Janet Smith Bill is discussed in Scott Kerwin, “The Janet
Smith Bill of 1924 and the Language of Race and Nation in British Colum-
bia,” BC Studies 121 (1999): 83–114.
115. DHGB, 29 Sept. 1924.
116. Gordon Cumyow interview, in Marlatt and Itter, Opening Doors, 15–20.
117. DHGB, 26 Sept., 2 Oct. 1924.
118. Ibid., 30 Sept., 2, 6 Oct. 1924; Roy, The Oriental Question, 48.
119. Lew v. Lee, Lord Buckmaster, Privy Council Appeal no. 20 of 1925: Wing Lee
Appellant v. David Lew, since deceased now represented by Yick Pang Lew, the
Administrator of his Estate: From the Supreme Court of Canada: Judgment of
the Lords of the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council, 11 May 1925 (Lon-
don: Harrison and Sons, 1925).
120. Nanaimo Community Archives et al, “Nanaimo Chinatowns [sic] Project:
Introduction.”; Lew v. Lee, Cunliffe and Leighton, Case on Appeal; “Plan—
Surveying Property Adjacent to Intersection of Pine and Hecate Streets,
Nanaimo,” 1924. LAC.
121. DHGB, 3 Sept., 4 Nov. 1924.
122. Vancouver Sun, 25 Apr. 1925.
123. DHGB, 30 Sept. 1924.

124. Ibid., 13, 14 Apr. 1925. Chong’s lawyers were Frank Higgins and A. M.
Harper. The eminent J. P. Sam was from Toronto, a graduate of Trinity Col-
lege, University of Toronto.
125. Vancouver Sun, 23 Apr. 1925.
126. Ibid., 15, 24 Apr. 1925; Vancouver Daily Province, 24 Apr. 1925; DHGB,
13–18, 20–24 Apr. 1925; Macdonald and O’Keefe, Canadian Holy War, 89–90,
102–104. It is possible that Lew’s death had nothing to do with politics,
because he was also having a very public affair with a married Chinese Cana-
dian woman, Nellie Ho (Lan Jiao Jie). DHGB, 26, 27, 29 Sept. 1924; Vancou-
ver Sun, 22 Apr. 1925; Vancouver Daily Province, 26 Sept. 1924.
127. Vancouver Star, 25 Feb. 1925, Box 2, File 2-1, “Correspondence Portfolio#2”,
Whaun Papers. The strategy to legalize Chinese gambling followed the
“Deady” cases in the United States; see Ralph James Mooney, “Matthew Deady
and Federal Judicial Response to Racism in the Early West,” in Charles
McClain, Ed. Chinese Immigrants and American Law (Garland Publishing: New
York & London, 1994). 1: 241–317.
128. Nine out of ten Chinese in Vancouver were male according to Canada’s Census
of in 1921. Con et al., From China to Canada, 306.
129. Van Dieren, “The Response of the WMS.”
chapter three
1. DHGB, 18 Oct., 6, 11, 21 Nov. 1922; 25 Jan. 1923.
2. Ibid., 6 Nov. 1922.
3. Ibid., 11 Oct. 1922.
4. These revolutions included anti-imperialist nationalism in China, Hong Kong, and
India, as well as the rise of organized labor. DHGB, 19, 27 Sept., 6, 2 Nov. 1922.
5. Ibid., 18 Oct., 22 Nov. 1922.
nation in Education”; Yee, Saltwater City, 52–53; Stanley, “White Supremacy,
Chinese Schooling, and School Segregation”; Stanley, “Bringing Anti-Racism
into Historical Explanation.”
7. DHGB, 18 Oct. 1922.
8. This conception expands on David Strand’s analysis of urban Chinese society
in the 1920s and Erez Manela’s discussion of the global movement for anti-
colonial nationalism after the First World War. Strand, “Mediation, Represen-
tation, and Repression: Local Elites in 1920s Beijing,” in Esherick and Rankin,
Chinese Local Elites, 216–238; Manela, The Wilsonian Moment, 3–17.
9. DHGB, 20 Oct. 1922.
10. Ibid., 12 Oct. 1922.
11. Ibid., 25 Oct. 1922.
12. Yee, Saltwater City, 52–53.

13. DHGB, 11 Oct. 1922.
14. Stanley, “White Supremacy, Chinese Schooling, and School Segregation,”
292–241; Stanley, “Bringing Anti-Racism into Historical Explanation,” 159–
161; Low, The Unimpressible Race, 113–123; Lai, “The Issue of Discrimination
in Education.”
15. There is controversy over the May Fourth movement’s parameters. Its main
events took place between 1917 and 1921, but preludes began as early as 1915
with reaction to Japan’s Twenty-One Demands, and its postlude is sometimes
dated to 1925’s May Thirtieth movement. Chow, The May Fourth Movement,
5–6.
16. Manela, The Wilsonian Moment, 3–17.
nation in Education”; Stanley, “White Supremacy, Chinese Schooling, and
School Segregation”; Stanley, “Bringing Anti-Racism into Historical Explana-
tion”; Low, The Unimpressible Race, 112–123.
18. These revolutions included, starting in 1916, a more inclusive and assertive
labor movement, which was to some degree inspired by global socialist move-
ments and events such as the Winnipeg general strike. Actions in Vancouver
in sympathy with the strike generated great excitement among Chinese.
DHGB, 16–21 June 1919. Da Han Gong Bao covered the strikes in Vancouver
and Winnipeg in great detail from June through July 1919, capturing the
revolutionary mood, even if it is unclear how many Chinese participated. Chi-
nese shingle mill workers had already unionized and held strikes to defend
their interests. Yee, Saltwater City, 68; Yee, Chinatown, 44; Creese, “Exclusion
or Solidarity?” 320–321. Another social movement was the global rise of
anti-imperialist nationalism in Asia at the end of the First World War, what
Erez Manela calls the “Wilsonian moment,” which strongly influenced the
politics of China’s Nationalist revolution in Canada; see also Con et al., From
China to Canada, 158–161.
19. The most detailed scholarship on the school strike views the strike’s politics in
the more conservative terms of Chinese merchant activism and the rise of a
second generation of locally born Chinese, echoing Chinese American histo-
rians’ belief that West Coast Chinese conservatism and merchant class domina-
tion precluded populist activism. See Stanley, “White Supremacy, Chinese
Schooling, and School Segregation”; Stanley, “Bringing Anti-Racism into His-
torical Explanation.” Chen, Being Chinese, Becoming Chinese American, 119–127,
133–145, sees the defense of Confucianism and of class hierarchies, along with
anti-leftist sentiments, as being keystones of Chinese American identity. How-
ever, her reading takes the claims of newspapers expressing these sentiments as
the dominant position, when it is also possible to interpret their aggressive
defense of traditional merchant-brokers’ elite authority as part of a dia-
logue. On the egalitarian moment and its “failures,” see Seager and Roth,
“British Columbia and the Mining West”; David Jay Bercuson, Confrontation

at Winnipeg: Labour, Industrial Relations, and the General Strike (Montreal:
McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1974), 187–195; Bryan Palmer, Working
Class Experience: Rethinking the History of Canadian Labour, 1800–1991 (Toronto:
McClelland and Stewart, 1992), 196–213.
20. Zhonghua Huiguan, which is the equivalent of the Chinese American Six
Companies in San Francisco.
21. Li, Jianada Huaqiao Shi, 214; Liu, “Yubu Huaqiao Sanshi Nian Fendou Shi
Ji,” 6.
22. Lai, “The Issue of Discrimination in Education.” Low, The Unimpressible Race,
113–123. Laura McKeen, Executive Secretary, San Francisco International
Institute of the YMCA Service Bureau for Foreign-Speaking People, Letter to
Eliot G. Mears, 29 May, 1927. Box 6, File 6-4, SRR.
23. Low, The Unimpressible Race, 113–123; Letter to Professor C. E. Rugh from
William Greenwell, principal, Lincoln School, Oakland,” 13 Nov. 1924,
SRR.
24. Lai, “The Issue of Discrimination in Education.”
25. Ann Lee, interview; “Statement by J. M. Campbell, Principal of one of the
schools in the city of Victoria, British Columbia, made in a letter to Professor
T. H. Boggs,” 28 May 1925, SRR.
26. Victoria Daily Times, 6 Sept. 1922.
27. Chow, The May Fourth Movement, 263. Lai, “The Issue of Discrimination, 57.
28. Victoria Daily Times, 9 Oct. 1922.
29. Daily Colonist, 8 Oct. 1922.
31. Daily Colonist, 12 Oct. 1922.
32. Charles Hirschman, “The Impact of Immigration: Looking Backwards to the
Future,” Border Battles: The U.S. Immigration Debates, Social Science Research
Council, 28 July 2006, http://borderbattles.ssrc.org/Hirschman/index2.html
(accessed 6 Feb. 2009). The fields of social science were also connected across
the U.S.–Canada border. In 1921, two of the founding thinkers of immigra-
tion studies, University of Chicago sociologists Robert Park and Ernest
Burgess, established the parameters of the second-generation problem as part
of their field-defining discussion of the problem of assimilation in their ground-
breaking Introduction to the Science of Sociology. See Rumbaut, “Assimilation and Its
Discontents,” 185–186, 193. On impact of U.S. culture in British Columbia,
see Barman, The West beyond the West, 259.
33. Nasaw, Schooled to Order, 87–89.
34. DHGB, 3 June 1923.
35. The exact connection between the Canadian and U.S. Tongyuanhui cannot be
determined from the Canadian evidence. However, the Chinese Canadian Club
was formed during a period of CACA expansion across the United States, and
observers referred to both the San Francisco and Victoria Tongyuanhui as
“native sons parlors.” Chung, “The Chinese American Citizens’ Alliance,” 35.

36. The CCC had lodges in Vancouver and Victoria since 1914. (Receipt for mem-
bership for the Chinese Canadian Club, Chung Collection; DHGB, 3 June
1923.) The CSA’s presence in Vancouver and Victoria dates to at least 1916.
(Guy Funn Chan to Thomas Moore Whaun, 5, 14 Oct. 1916, Whaun Papers.)
It is unclear whether these two groups had any connection to an earlier Chinese
Canadian group in British Columbia, the “Citizens Association,” which repre-
sented naturalized and Canadian-born Chinese. The “Citizens Association”
appeared influential in 1910, when prominent merchant Shen Man served as
its president. RCCF, 30 Sept. 1910, RG 33-146, vol. 2, box 2, LAC.
37. Raushenbush, “Interview with Harry Hastings regarding the school strike and
other matters,” 26, 30 May 1924, box 24, file 24-32, SRR.; Raushenbush,
“Interview with Joe Hope, president of the Chinese Canadian Club,” 26 May
1924, box 24, file 24-33; and Raushenbush, Interview with Cecil Lee, a native
son who is married to a Hakkla,” 26 May–1 June 1924, box 24, file 24-34.
SRR.
38. DHGB, 18 Oct. 1922.
39. Ibid., 27 Sept. 1922; Liu Guangzu, “Yubu Huaqiao Sanshi Nian Fendou Shi
Ji,” 6; Lai, “The Issue of Discrimination in Education.”
40. DHGB, 19 Sept. 1922.
41. Ibid., 22 Feb. 1923.
42. Ibid., 11 Nov. 1922.
43. Interview with Harry Hastings, SRR.
44. DHGB, 22 Nov. 1922.
45. “Political India a Huge Problem,” Victoria Daily Times, 28 Sept. 1922.
46. Victoria Daily Times, 6 Oct. 1922; DHGB, 19 Sept. 1922.
47. Jonathan D. Spence, The Search for Modern China (New York: Norton, 1990),
332–333; Carroll, Concise History of Hong Kong, 97; Tsang and Yui-Sang, Mod-
ern History of Hong Kong, 88.
48. Bumstead, “1919,” 3, 27–44; Kealey, “1919.”
49. DHGB, June–July 1919.
50. The involvement of nonwhite workers in the various strikes of 1919 has been
mentioned only briefly by historians: Creese, “Exclusion or Solidarity?” 320–
321; Seager and Roth, “British Columbia and the Mining West,” 252.
51. DHGB, 14 June 1919.
52. In China, the influence of Communist Party and Nationalist Party activism on
both class and anti-imperialist nationalist lines encouraged workers to use
their labor as a tool to strike against their worker-master relations to British
society in both Canada and China.
53. DHGB, 1, 9 Apr. 1919.
54. The description of Exclusion Era Chinese having a worker-master relation to
mainstream Canada comes from labor organizer Roy Mah (Ma Guo Guan). Roy
Mah, interview with Chris Lee and Douglas Quan, 1 Aug. 1996, CCVOHP.
55. DHGB, 20 Oct. 1922.

56. Ibid., 6, 20 Oct. 1922.
57. Victoria Daily Times, 9, 13, 23 Oct. 1922; DHGB, 21 Oct. 1922.
58. Liu, “Yubu Huaqiao Sanshi Nian Fendou Shi Ji,” 6.
60. DHGB, 18 Oct., 2 Nov. 1922.
61. Ibid., 2 Nov. 1922.
62. Ibid.
63. Ibid., 18 Oct. 1922.
64. Ibid., 2 Nov. 1922.
65. Ibid., 18 Oct. 1922.
66. Ibid.
67. Raushenbush, “Interview with Harry Hastings.”
68. DHGB, 18 Oct. 1922.
69. Ibid.
70. Ibid., 2 Nov. 1922.
71. DHGB, 2 Nov. 1922.
72. Dikotter, “Racial Discourse in China,” 12–33.
73. DHGB, 2 Nov. 1922.
74. Ibid., 21 Nov. 1922.
75. Ibid; 22 Nov. 1922.
76. Ibid.
77. Chow, The May Fourth Movement, 84–170, 260–261.
78. Raushenbush, “Interview with Gershon Lew, the Hottest Bolshevik in Van-
couver,” May 1924, box 24, file 24-29, SRR; Chinese Times (Da Han Gong Bao)
Chronological Research Index, files 4-1 to 5-2, CCRC, boxes 4–5.
79. DHGB, 22 Feb. 1923.
80. Ibid., 31 Mar. 1923.
81. Ibid., 23 Nov. 1922.
82. Ibid., Jan. 1923.
83. Ibid., 23 Nov. 1922.
84. Ibid.
85. Ibid., 3 Nov. 1922.
86. Ibid., 6 Nov. 1922.
87. Ibid. The author simply listed as “Song” was probably Lambert Sung because
his activities later in 1924 suggest that he was a leader of stature so established
that he needed no introduction. Ibid., 14 Feb. 1924.
88. Ibid., 3 Nov. 1922.
89. Ibid., 6 Nov. 1922.
90. Ibid., 8 Nov. 1922.
91. Ibid., 8 Jan. 1923.
92. Guy Funn Chan to Thomas Moore Whaun, 5, 14 Oct. 1916, Whaun Papers. By
1924, the offshoot’s members were integrated back into the larger CSA. Chinese
Students Alliance Dinner Program, 24 Nov. 1924, Vivian Wong Papers.

93. DHGB, 11 Nov. 1922.
94. Ibid., 25 Jan. 1923.
95. Josie Lee and Vivian Wong, interview; Chinese Students Alliance Dinner Pro-
gram, 24 Nov. 1924; DHGB, 25 Jan. 1923.
96. DHGB, January 25, 1923, 2-3.
97. DHGB, 30 Jan. 1923.
98. Ibid., 30 Jan., 17 Feb. 1923.
99. Chinese Immigration, vol. 590, microfilm reel C-10661, file 827821, RG 76,
LAC.
100. Lee Bick interview, in Huang with Jeffery, Chinese Canadians, 24; An Autobio-
graphical Sketch Delivered by Tom Moore Whaun on Channel 10, 17 Nov.
1972, Whaun Papers, folder 2-2; New York Times, 22 Aug 1925; Con et al.,
From China to Canada, 158–161.
101. DHGB, 27 Apr. 1923.
102. Sarah Carter, Aboriginal People and Colonizers of Western Canada to 1900 (Toronto:
University of Toronto Press, 1999), 163–164.
103. DHGB, 27 Apr. 1923.
105. Ibid., 75.
106. Stanley, “Bringing Anti-Racism into Historical Explanation,” 163–164; Chi-
nese Immigration, microfilm reel C-10661, LAC.
107. DHGB, 4 Sept. 1923.
nation in Education,” 63; “Chinatown Is Shrinking,” Vancouver Sun, 15 Jan.
1959, Wong Papers, box 4, Brown Scrapbook, news clipping.
109. Seager and Roth, “British Columbia and the Mining West,” 231–267; Bercu-
son, Confrontation at Winnipeg, 187–195; Palmer, Working Class Experience,
196–213; Andrew Parnaby, Citizen Docker: Making a New Deal on the Vancouver
Waterfront, 1919–1939 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2008).
110. Roy, The Oriental Question, 55–89; DHGB, 23 Oct. 1924.
111. Daily Colonist, 14 Oct. 1922. The paper also printed numerous letters from
Chinese and English readers about the boycott between September 1922 and
April 1923.
112. Ibid., 6 Apr. 1923.
113. DHGB, 18 Oct. 1922; Li, Jianada Huaqiao Shi, 214.
114. DHGB, 27 Apr. 1923.
115. Ibid., 2 Nov. 1922.
116. Low, The Unimpressible Race, 115–123.
117. Chen, Being Chinese, Becoming Chinese American, 119–127, 134–145.
118. Creese, “Working Class Politics, Racism, and Sexism,” 90.
120. DHGB, 16 June 1924.
121. Chow, The May Fourth Movement, 171–196, 269–337.

chapter four
1. Winifred Raushenbush to Dr. Yick Pang Lew, 22 Feb. 1924; Chuichi Ohashi
to Merle Davis, 6 Feb. 1924, SRR; “Office File Questionnaires Chinese—
Pacific Coast (U.S.) + Canada” (ca. Jan. and Feb. 1924), SRR; Raushenbush,
“Interview with Herbert Wang,” 25 Mar. 1924, SRR; DHGB, 14 Feb. 1924.
2. Mears, “The Survey of Race Relations”; Merle Davis to Sir John Oliver, 3 Dec.
1923, box 13, “Correspondence British Columbia (Canada) file 13-1, SRR.
3. DHGB, 14 Feb. 1924.
4. On relations between the survey and the Chicago School of Sociology, see Yu,
Thinking Orientals; and Okihiro, Teaching Asian American History, 39–40.
5. Robert Park’s The Immigrant Press and Its Control depended on ethnic leaders for
information, a practice that continued in the Pacific Coast Survey of Race
Relations. Park, The Immigrant Press and Its Control, xxxiv, 150–166.
6. Based on Raushenbush’s position that “the sociologist is a scientist” who col-
lects life histories, which are “simply [an opportunity] for someone to write or
tell the story of their life,” she appears not to have realized the possibility that
her subjects would not be naï ve. Her earlier work with Park on The Immigrant
Press and Its Control depended on ethnic leaders for information about the non-
English press, allowing her Japanese informant Shiko Kusama of the Japanese
Association of California to steer the discussion of Japanese Americans away
from the transnational outlooks which historian Eiichiro Azuma found were
prevalent in Japanese American communities. Park, The Immigrant Press and Its
Control, xxxiv, 150–166; Azuma, Between Two Empires.
7. Yu, Thinking Orientals, 93–185.
8. Mar, “From Diaspora to North American Civil Rights,” 114–115; Raushen-
bush, “Dinner Mr. Louie Houie, President of the Merchants Association,” 2
Apr. 1924, box 24, file 24-26, SRR; Raushenbush, “Mr. Thomas Moore Whaun
Audience,” 7 May 1924, box 24, file 24-28, SRR; Raushenbush, “Interview
with Harry Hastings.”
9. See Ronald Takaki’s acclaimed Strangers from a Different Shore, which quoted
survey interviews extensively as the authentic voices of early Asian Americans;
See also Stanley, “By the Side of Other Canadians.”
10. Mar, “From Diaspora to North American Civil Rights,” 97–102; Yu, Thinking
Orientals, 93–148. Yu argues that the Chicago sociologists also enlisted Asian
American students as their in-house native informants and cultural brokers
starting in the 1930s, but his account is more concerned with individual Asian
Americans’ performance of roles according to white researchers’ expectations,
which gained them entry into academic careers, than with possible collective
Asian American community agendas.
11. This figure was compiled from major documents and a list of the lost minor
documents relating to the survey’s research in British Columbia. The Survey
did not always identify these subjects as “brokers.” Documented evidence of an

interviewee’s leadership in Anglo-Chinese brokerage relations served as this
book’s criteria for “broker” status. Raushenbush, British Columbia Major Doc-
uments, 30 Jan.–4 June 1924, box 24, files 24-1 through 24-35, SRR; The list
of Chinese Canadian interviewees in the British Columbia minor documents,
which appear lost, comes from Aparna Mukherjee, “A Register of the Survey of
Race Relations Records,” Hoover Institution Archives, Stanford University,
http://content.cdlib.org/view?docId=tf2q2n98s9&doc.view=entire_
text&brand=oac (accessed 18 Nov. 2008).
12. DHGB, 14 Feb. 1924.
13. Mar, “Beyond Being Others,” 17.
14. Quoted in Stanley, “Bringing Anti-Racism into Historical Explanation”; Stan-
ley, “White Supremacy, Chinese Schooling, and School Segregation.”
15. Yu, Thinking Orientals, 19–46; Raushenbush, Letter to Dr. Yick Pang Lew, 22
Feb. 1924.
16. DHGB, 14 Feb. 1924; Raushenbush, “Interview with Dr. Y. P. Lew,” 4 Feb.
1924, SRR; Con et al., From China to Canada, 165.
17. Sixth Census of Canada, 1921, 4:511; LAC, “Census Undercount,” Memorandum
to W. J. Egan, file 23635, RG 76, microfiche C-4785; Snyder, “Neighborhood
Gatekeepers.” The Census estimated that 42.04 percent of the 21,144 Chinese
that it counted in British Columbia could not speak English. However, the
immigration department discovered 31,116 Chinese in British Columbia in
1924, so the Census almost certainly undercounted non-English-speakers and
illegal immigrants. The most conservative estimate would presume that
all undercounted Chinese did not speak English. That would raise the non-
English-speaking percentage to 61.87 percent, indicating that over one-third
of the Chinese population could speak and understand English.
18. DHGB, 14 Feb. 1924.
19. Only one Chinese interview subject approached her independently. Raushen-
bush, interview with Cecil Lee, 26 May–1 June 1924, SRR.
20. DHGB, 14 Feb. 1924.
21. Shore, Science of Social Redemption, 24–37.
22. Mar, “From Diaspora to North American Civil Rights,” 112; Yu, Thinking
Orientals, vi–90. Yu discusses the survey in relation to ideas about the “Orien-
tal problem” and Orientalism in U.S. society.
23. DHGB, 14 Feb., 4 Mar. 1924.
24. The North American approach to immigration studies can be read as part of
the broader trend toward continental studies of Canada within interwar era
scholarship described by Berger, The Writing of Canadian History, 137–159;
Das, Hindustani Workers on the Pacific Coast; Yamato Ichihashi, Japanese in the
United States (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1932).
25. Mears, “The Survey of Race Relations.”
26. “A Brief History of the University of British Columbia,” University of British Columbia
Archives, http://www.library.ubc.ca/archives/hist_ubc.html (accessed 18 Nov. 2008).

27. DHGB, 4 Mar. 1924, 3.
28. Ibid.; “Office File Correspondence British Columbia (Canada),” 1924, Box 13,
File 13-2, SRR; John Nelson to Merle Davis, 1 Oct. 1924, box 11, File 11-5;
“Report of Donations,” Apr.–Nov. 1924, box 13, file 13-2, SRR; “Office File
Minutes of Meetings British Columbia (Canada),” box 16, file 16-3, SRR;
“Minutes of the B.C. Council re Oriental Survey, held at the Board of Trade
Council Chamber this evening at 8 o’clock,” 14 Sept. 1923, box 16, file 16-3,
SRR.
29. Woods, “John Nelson,” 1–14.
30. Ibid., 4–5; DHGB, Oct. 1924.
33. Toy, “Whose Frontier?” pars. 14–26; DHGB, 4 Mar. 1924; Gross, Richard
Rorty, 67–71.
34. Gross, Richard Rorty, 67–72; Thomas et al., Polish Peasant in Europe and Amer-
ica; Park, The Immigrant Press and Its Control, xxxiv. Raushenbush’s training at
Chicago consisted of apprenticeship rather than classes because women gener-
ally could not pursue academic careers. She also had staffed the Chicago Com-
mission on Race Relations, which in 1922 published the book The Negro in
Chicago. In 1923, she started work with Park on organizing the Survey of Race
Relations.
35. DHGB, 4 Mar. 1924.
36. Kivisto, “What Is the Canonical Theory of Assimilation?”; Persons, Ethnic
Studies at Chicago, 60–75; Toy, “Whose Frontier?” par. 44.
37. Roberts, “Shovelling Out the ‘Mutinous.’ ”
38. See chapter 3 about the CCC and CSA.
39. Ye, Seeking Modernity. The Vancouver readership of the journal Chinese Students’
Monthly reflects the linkage between Vancouver’s Chinese student group and
the American CSA. A memento in the Vivian Wong Papers, a Chinese Stu-
dents Alliance Dinner Program, 24 Nov. 1924, lists Vancouver’s Chinese Stu-
dents Alliance as part of the Chinese Students Alliance of Canada.
40. The two groups had the same Chinese name, Tongyuanhui, and they formed
around the same time, but their relationship is unclear.
41. Thomas Moore Whaun to Mrs. James Rorty (Winifred Raushenbush), 25 Mar.
1968, box 1,Whaun Papers, UBC. His response to this assumption is inferred
by Raushenbush’s discussion of the sociologist’s scientific objectivity in Raush-
enbush to Yick Pang Lew, 22 Feb. 1924.
42. Burnett, Seattle Chinese major documents.; “Interview with Esther Wong,
native-born Chinese, San Francisco, California,” 1 July 1924, box 28, file
28-239, SRR; Raushenbush, “Great Wall of Chinatown,” 154–158, 221.
43. DHGB, 14 Feb. 1924.
44. The survey’s “General Principles and Definitions” aimed to “help ‘Discover
America’ for Americans.”

45. “Chinese Questionnaire—Canada”; “Description of the Survey’s Advantages
for Chinese,” both in “Office File Questionnaires Chinese – Pacific Coast (U.S.) +
Canada,” box 17, file 17-2, SRR; Raushenbush to Yick Pang Lew, 22 Feb.
1924.
46. “Visit Miss Hellaby, Anglican missionary,” interview by Raushenbush, 10
Mar. 1924; “Dinner Mr. Louie Houie,” 1; Con et al., From China to Canada,
305.
47. Raushenbush gave Cecil Lee great credence because she believed that he had
approached her independently, but Lee was a CCC leader, and his testimony
appeared to be part of the community plan. Cecil Lee and Joe Hope, interviews
by Raushenbush, 26 May 1924, SRR.
48. Raushenbush: “Conversation with waiter,” 9 Feb. 1924, box 24, file 24-2,
SRR; “Visit, the old men’s home,” 1 Apr. 1924, box 24, file 24-25, SRR.
49. Raushenbush, “Conversation with waiter.”; Lo and Lai, Chinese Newspapers Pub-
lished in North America, x.
50. Raushenbush, “Interview with Joe Hope,” 3.
51. The notion of elites engaging in discursive performances of their status in
order to influence others to action comes from Woods, “Rethinking Elites.”
52. See, for example, Ward, The Writing on the Wall; and the Canadian film Secrets
of Chinatown, directed by Fred Newmeyer (Victoria, B.C.: Northern Produc-
tion, 1935).
53. Roy, A White Man’s Province, 64–81; Roy, The Oriental Question, 90–130.
54. DHGB, 14 Feb. 1924.
55. Ibid.
56. Ibid. Raushenbush, “Interview with Cecil Lee.” Ko, “Interview with Chris Lee
and Douglas Quan.”
57. DHGB, 14 Feb. 1924.
58. Ibid.
59. Ibid.
60. Yee, “Chinese Business in Vancouver,” 50.
61. Vancouver World, 11 Feb. 1911; Nanaimo Free Press, 4 Dec. 1922.
62. Roy, The Oriental Question, 60–61, 110–129.
63. Raushenbush, “Dinner Mr. Louie Houie.”
64. Dikotter, Discourse of Race.
65. Raushenbush, “Interview with Mr. [Tom] Moore Whaun Advertising Manager
of the Canada Morning News,” 13 Feb. 1924, box 24, file 24-7.
66. “An Autobiographical Sketch Delivered by Tom Moore Whaun on Channel
10, Nov. 17, 1972,” box 1, Whaun Papers; “Jiaxiang Tang Huan Yan Huang
Song Mao Xueshi,” unidentified Chinese news clipping (ca. 1921), box 2,
Whaun Papers, UBC.
67. Whaun was elected vice president of the British Columbia Chinese Students
Alliance in 1916. This was an organization for Chinese Canadian high school
and university students in Vancouver, which that year extended to Victoria.

Guy Funn Chan to Thomas Moore Whaun, 5, 14 Oct. 1916, box 1, Whaun
Papers.
68. Whaun, “An Autobiographical Sketch,” 1.
69. Raushenbush, “Visit: Home of Mr. [Ko] Wing Kan,” 20 Feb. 1924, box 24,
file 24-13, SRR.
70. Raushenbush, “Interview, Herbert Wang.”
71. Raushenbush, “Interview with Mr. [Tom] Moore Whaun.”
72. Huang, “Gender, Race, and Power,” 48–56.
73. Raushenbush, BC Major Documents. DHGB, 19, 27 Sept.; 2,3,4,6,11,21,22,23
November 1922; 3,8 25 Jan.; 22 Feb 1923; 14 Feb. 1924. “Jiangxia Tang
Huan Yan Huang Song Mao Xue Shi,” ca. 1921. Box 1, Whaun Papers.
74. Raushenbush, “Interview with Mr. Moore Whaun.”
75. Ibid.
76. Raushenbush, “Call, T. M. Whaun,” 5 Mar. 1924, box 24, file 24-17, SRR.
77. Raushenbush, “Interview Gershon Lew, the Hottest Bolshevik in Vancouver,”
May 1924; “Mr. Thomas Moore Whaun Audience,” 3.
78. Raushenbush, “Interview with Harry Hastings,” draft version, 5–6.
79. He was probably referring to Marcus Aurelius, not Antonius. The former was
a Stoic philosopher-emperor famous for his Meditations. The latter is better
known as Mark Antony, Caesar’s friend and a member of the second triumvi-
rate, who was no philosopher and left no writings.
80. Raushenbush, “Call T. M. Whaun,” 5.
81. Raushenbush, “Mr. Thomas Moore Whaun Audience,” 3.
83. Raushenbush, “Visit Home of Mr. Ko Wing Kan,” 1.
84. Raushenbush, interview with Cecil Lee, 4.
85. Raushenbush, “Visit the Lam family.”
86. Raushenbush, “Interview with Cecil Lee,” 4–5.
87. Raushenbush, “Luncheon, Miss Hosang.”
88. Raushenbush, “Interview: Herbert Wang,” 1–4.
89. Ibid.
90. Raushenbush, “Visit, the old men’s home,” 1–6.
91. Raushenbush, “Interview with Lew Shong Kow, ex-president of the Chinese
Empire Reform Association,” 30 Jan. 1924, 4. box 24, file 24-1, SRR.
92. Raushenbush, “Interview, Herbert Wang,” 22 Feb. 1924, 5.
93. Raushenbush, “Interview with Cecil Lee,” 3.
94. C. H. Burnett, box 27, folders 18, 27, 33–34, 36–50, SRR; “Interview with
Esther Wong,” 1 July 1924, SRR; Raushenbush, “Great Wall of Chinatown,”
154–158, 221.
95. C. H. Burnett, “Interview of Pany Lowe,” 5 July 1924, 4, box 28, file 28-242,
SRR.
96. Hansen, Mingling of the Canadian and American Peoples, 263. Park and his asso-
ciates concluded that Asians’ experience on the Pacific Coast could be described

as a variation of a generalized race relations cycle which presumed permanent
settlement to be normative. Persons, Ethnic Studies at Chicago, 60–76.
97. DHGB, 14 Feb. 1924.
98. At the time, naturalization as a British subject was a privilege, not a right, and
judges in British Columbia often considered Chinese undesirable for citizen-
ship. Macdonald and O’Keefe, Canadian Holy War, 90.
100. Government of Canada, “An Act Respecting Chinese Immigration,” (Ottawa:
Acland, 1925), Immigration Branch, LAC, microfilm, C-10661, 305.
101. Spence, The Search for Modern China, 334–342.
102. See Rowe, “ ‘The Mysterious Oriental Mind.’ ”
104. Daily Province, “Totem 1927 with clippings,” n.d. (ca. 23 June 1923); Vancouver
Sun, 23 June 1923, file 827821, LAC.
105. Wong Tung Mow (Thomas Moore Whaun) to Lord Byng, Governor General of
Canada, 23–29 June 1923, file 827821, LAC.
106. Raushenbush, “Interview with Mr. Moore Whaun,” 2.
109. Raushenbush, “Interview with Lew Shong Kow,” 4.
111. Raushenbush, “Mr. Thomas Moore Whaun Audience,” draft, 4.
112. Francis, National Dreams, 45.
113. Jianada Chen Bao, 5 Nov. 1927.
115. China’s Communist Party had an alliance with the Nationalists and had con-
siderable influence over the Nationalist Party’s left wing.
116. Da Han Gong Bao had regular crime reports and occasional pictorial content at
least since 1915, the earliest date of the issues that have been preserved. Jian-
ada Chenbao’s sole surviving issue left in Canada (5 Nov. 1927) did not have
more pictorial content or crime reports than other Chinese newspapers.
117. Raushenbush, “Visit Miss Hellaby,” 2.
118. Raushenbush, “Visit the Lam family,” 3. Mary Lam said that membership in
the students club was open to any graduate of a school beyond the primary
grades.
119. Ibid, 3.
120. Raushenbush, “Thomas Moore Whaun Audience,” 2.
121. Ibid., 3. United Church of Canada. Woman’s Missionary Society. They Came
Through: Stories of Chinese Canadians. (Toronto: Literature Dept. and Committee
on Missionary Education, United Church of Canada) circa 1940s.
122. Raushenbush, “Tea with Harry Hastings, the half-breed Chinese intellectual of
Victoria,” 26, 30 May 1924, box 24, file 24-31, SRR.
123. Raushenbush, interview with Joe Hope, 1.

124. DHGB, 3 June 1923.
125. Raushenbush, interview with Harry Hastings, 1.
127. DHGB, 19 Sept., 2 Nov. 1922. See Chow, May Fourth Movement, on on anti-
colonial nationalist protests in China.
128. Raushenbush, interview with Harry Hastings, 1–4.
129. DHGB, 18 Oct. 1922.
130. Raushenbush, interview with Cecil Lee, 3.
131. Raushenbush, interview with Harry Hastings, draft, 5–6.
132. Da Han Gong Bao ran a daily section called “News from Other Chinatowns”
that covered U.S. Chinese news; this was a common practice among Chinese
immigrant newspapers in Canada and the United States.
133. Chen, Chinese San Francisco, 208–214.
134. C. H. Burnett, box 27, folders 18, 27, 33–34, 36–50, SRR.
135. On Japanese American transnationalism, see Azuma, Between Two Empires; and
on the survey’s view of Japanese Americans, see Raushenbush, “Their Place in
the Sun,” 141–145, 203.
136. Raushenbush, “Dinner Mr. Louie Houie,” 6.
137. Ohashi to Davis, 6 Feb. 1924.; DHGB, 14 Feb. 1924.
138. Ohashi to Davis, 6 Feb. 1924.
139. Ibid.
140. Raushenbush, “Their Place in the Sun,” 141–145, 203.
141. Ibid.
142. Toy, “Whose Frontier?” pars. 34–50.
143. Boggs, “Oriental Penetration into B.C.”
144. Informal Reception Given by the Chinese Students Alliance of Canada, 24
Nov. 1924, Vivian Wong Papers.
146. Ibid., 12.
147. Ibid., 8–14.
148. Totem, 38.
149. Whaun Papers, box 1: Laura E. Jamieson to Whaun, 9 Mar. 1929. Whaun
Papers, box 2: “International Club Gives Reception for Noted Speaker [Ber-
trand Russell],” news clipping, 19 Oct. 1929; “Huang Song Mao Xueshi
Xuanchuan Zhi Rexin,” news clipping. Vivian Wong Papers: Chinese Stu-
dents Alliance Dinner Program, 24 Nov. 1924.
150. Whaun to Esther Raushenbush, 7 Feb. 1968; Winifred Rorty (née Raushen-
bush) to Whaun, 21, 25 Mar., 30 May, 16 Oct. 1968. Whaun Papers.
151. “Notes from an Address by Miss Raushenbush,” Conference File: Findings
Conference, 21–26 Mar. 1925, 13, SRR.
152. The survey concluded that native-born youth, i.e., second-generation Asian
immigrants, became completely Americanized in their consciousness, though
discrimination and lack of opportunity could encourage the retention of

otherwise fading Asian cultural ties. They found the brokers to be most fasci-
nating because of the stories of consciousness that they articulated. Mears, Ten-
tative Findings of the Survey of Race Relations, 21-26 March, 1925, box 4, file 4-7,
SRR; Park, “Human Migration and the Marginal Man.”
153. Minutes of the Closed Convention of the Survey of Race Relations, 23 Mar.
1925, box 4, file 4-10, SRR; Robert Park, “Address on Methods of Research”
(findings presented at Little Theatre, Stanford University, 25 Mar. 1925), 7,
box 4, file 4-11, SRR. Raushenbush triaged the data into major and minor
documents. The major documents were copied and preserved, and many of the
minor documents were eventually lost.
154. Toy, “Whose Frontier?” par. 7.
155. The major documents had notations that they were to be copied to multiple
survey team members, including Park, Emory Bogardus, Roderick McKenzie,
and others, depending on the content. For example, see Raushenbush, “Inter-
view with Mrs. Yip Quong,” 26, Feb. 1924, 1, box 24, file 24-11.
156. “ ‘East by West’: Our Windows on the Pacific,” Survey Graphic 56.3 (1 May
1926).
157. Yu, Thinking Orientals, 5–12, 186–204.
158. Raushenbush, “Great Wall of Chinatown,” 154–158, 221.
159. Ibid., 221.
160. Park, “Address on Methods of Research,” 1–12; “Minutes of the Closed Con-
vention of the Survey of Race Relations,” 45–62; Persons, Ethnic Studies at
Chicago, 45–97.
161. Ronald Takaki’s Strangers from a Different Shore is the most influential synthesis
of this Asian American history perspective; it quotes the Survey of Race Rela-
tions extensively. On the influence of the Chicago School’s view of Asians, see
Yu, Thinking Orientals, 186–200.
162. The Survey of Race Relations became a founding event in North American
immigration studies. The Chicago School also shaped Canada’s first domestic
sociological studies of immigrants in the 1930s and 1940s. See Yu, Thinking
Orientals, 186; Shore, Science of Social Redemption. The Chicago School’s concepts
also strongly influenced the first book-length sociological study of Japanese and
Chinese Canadians to be published by a Canadian academic press: Charles H.
Young et al., The Japanese Canadians (Toronto: University of Toronto Press for
Canadian National Committee for Mental Hygiene, Canadian Institute of In-
ternational Affairs, 1938). Starting in the 1950s, Canadian and U.S. immigra-
tion historians who desired to write history “from the bottom up” turned to the
Chicago School for guidance. Consequently, Chicago themes of assimilating
ethnic identities, race relations, and local social ecologies came to define much
of the domestic agenda of immigration studies within the new social history of
Canada and the United States. By the 1960s and 1970s, immigration historian
Jon Gjerde wrote in a 1999 literature review, one could speak of the Chicago
School as the most influential founding school of U.S. immigration history.

Canadian and American historical scholarship interacted constantly, so the Chi-
cago School concepts shaped the founding paradigms of Canadian immigration
history as well. In 2006, an electronic search of books scanned by the Google
Corporation turned up forty-two books in American history that cited the Sur-
vey of Race Relations; http://books.google.com (accessed 4 Dec. 2006).
163. For discussions of scientific racism, see popular Social Darwinist Lothrop Stod-
dard’s The Rising Tide of Color; and on eugenics in Canada, see McLaren, Our
Own Master Race. Within Vancouver’s Chinese-language press, constant exhor-
tations to “save China” and save the “Han race” reflected that a great many
Chinese immigrants shared Social Darwinist beliefs, though they did not men-
tion this to survey researchers. On Social Darwinism in China, see Dikotter,
Discourse of Race.
164. Raushenbush, “Great Wall of Chinatown,” 155.
165. Yu, Thinking Orientals, 111–123; Persons, Ethnic Studies at Chicago, 98–110.
166. Yu, Thinking Orientals, 188–189; William Petersen, “Success Story, Japanese
American Style,” New York Times Magazine (9 Jan. 1966): 20–21, 33, 36, 38,
40–41, 43.
167. Persons, Ethnic Studies at Chicago, 28–110, notes that Chicago sociologists
believed that the process of assimilation was “inevitable,” but they remained
politically “complacent” about when it would eventually overcome racial or
cultural barriers.
168. Park, “Human Migration and the Marginal Man.”
169. Higham, “Introduction,” 1; Breton, Governance of Ethnic Communities, 61–93.
170. Rumbaut, “Assimilation and Its Discontents.”
171. Peck, Reinventing Free Labor; Harney, “The Padrone and the Immigrant”;
Cohen, Making a New Deal; Sterne, “Beyond the Boss.”
172. Farquar and Hevia, “Culture and Postwar American Historiography of China.”
173. Okihiro, “Is Yellow Black or White?”
174. A WorldCat database search of books about the model minority concept found
1,041 entries; http://tinyurl.com/yfj5fqa (accessed 2 Feb. 2009). A search of
articles in the EbscoHost databases in relevant fields of the social sciences and
humanities found 763 articles about the model minority concept;http://
tinyurl.com/yf75oof (accessed 2 Feb. 2009).
chapter five
1. Roy, The Triumph of Citizenship, 148–185; Chan, Gold Mountain, 145–147; Li,
Chinese in Canada, 90–91; Yee, Saltwater City, 105; Keshen, Saints, Sinners, and
Soldiers, 3–4; Con et al., From China to Canada, 198–201; Wong, Americans
First; Mar, “From Diaspora to North American Civil Rights”; Maxwell, “A
Cause Worth Fighting For”; Lee, “The Road to Enfranchisement”; Mar,
“Beyond Being Others,” 15, 24–34. For a dissenting view, see Patrias, “Race,
Employment Discrimination, and State Complicity.”

2. On the postwar Canadian, global, and local human rights movements, see
Lambertson, Repression and Resistance, 3–6; Ignatieff, The Rights Revolution, 1–6;
Bangarth, “ ‘We Are Not Asking You to Open Wide the Gates for Chinese
Immigration.’ ”
3. DHGB, 15 Aug. 1944; Con et al., From China to Canada, 301; Eighth Census of
Canada, 1941, 4:534, 524, 164, 130; Lee Bick (Li Biru) interview, in Huang
with Jeffery, Chinese Canadians, 25.
4. Report of the Chinese Canadian Historical Society, Contractor to City of Van-
couver, Historic Study of the Society Buildings in Chinatown (July 2005): A70;
Barman, The West beyond the West, 268; DHGB, 11 Dec. 1930; CCRC, box 6,
Chinese Times—Subject Index, file 6-19, “Notes and Survey Prepared from
CT by Researcher Tim Brook” (n.d.).
5. Yee and Newell note that Chinese merchants depended on Chinese workers as
clients for much of their business. Yee, “Chinese Business in Vancouver”; New-
ell, “Beyond Chinatown”; Josephine Lee and Vivian Wong, interview.
6. Report of the Chinese Canadian Historical Society, Contractor to City of Van-
couver, A70; Barman, The West beyond the West, 265–275; DHGB, 11 Dec.
1930; CCRC, box 6, Chinese Times—Subject Index, file 6-19, “Notes and
Survey Prepared from CT by Researcher Tim Brook” (n.d.).
7. Con et al., From China to Canada, 181–183.
8. Gordon Won Cumyow interview, in Marlatt and Itter, Opening Doors, 15–20;
Con et al., From China to Canada, 165; DHGB, 25 July 1930.
9. Szonyi, “Mothers, Sons, and Lovers,” 50.
10. For the Japanese invasion of China, including Guangdong, and Chinese Cana-
dian news reports and responses, see Quan Liu, Guangdong Huaqiao Huaren Shi
(Guangzhou: Guangdong Remin Chubanshe, 2002), 246–250; Chen et al.,
Taishan Xianzhi, 12–13; DHGB, 19 Oct. 1937, 29 Aug., 8–10 Dec. 1942, 30
Jan. 1943, 22 May 1944.
11. DHGB, 10, 12, 13 July 1943, 24 Aug. 1944.
12. Other racial minority protests: Jagpal, Becoming Canadians, 126–127; Dhami,
Maluka, 329–333; Michael D. Stevenson, Canada’s Greatest Wartime Muddle
(Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2001), 37–50.
13. DHGB, 6, 15 July, 2, 5 Aug. 1943.
14. Ibid., 15 July, 5 Aug. 1943. Chinese coal miners at Union Bay went on strike
until the federal government, which controlled wages, agreed to pay them the
same wages as white workers received. “Coal Miners (Chinese)—Union Bay,
British Columbia,” RG 27, vol. 421, file 279, LAC.
15. DHGB, 15 Aug., 2 Sept. 1944; Xin Minguo Bao, 26 Aug. 1944. Da Han Gong
Bao counted 3,500 to 4,000 Chinese of military age in British Columbia. Mar-
jorie Wong’s The Dragon and the Maple Leaf found that, in September 1944,
Canada called up 1,061 Chinese Canadians in British Columbia, of whom 273
reported, about half of whom were fit to serve. Wong found that the total for
British Columbia Chinese enlistments, voluntary and conscripted combined,

was only about 400, 9. Roy, The Triumph of Citizenship, 154, lists the number
of active protesters against Chinese Canadian conscription in Vancouver as
400. Further, few Chinese immigrants volunteered.
16. Vancouver Daily Province, 30 Jan. 1945, VCA, news clipping file; “Young Chi-
nese Anxious to Fight—and Vote,” unidentified newspaper, 22 Aug. 1944;
Vancouver Daily Province, 22 Aug. 1944, 21 Dec. 1945; VCA, news clipping
file, “Units Served Far Apart, Came Home on the Same Train,” unidentified
newspaper, 21 Dec. 1945.
17. DHGB, 10, 12, 13 July 1943.
18. Ibid., 19 Oct. 1937, 29 Aug., 8–10 Dec. 1942, 30 Jan., 2, 29 June 1943.
19. Ibid., 10 July 1943.
20. Roy, The Triumph of Citizenship, 148–185; Chan, Gold Mountain, 145–147; Li,
Chinese in Canada, 90–91; Yee, Saltwater City, 105; Anderson, Vancouver’s Chi-
natown, 170–173. On the popular image of the Second World War as Canada’s
“good war,” see Keshen, Saints, Sinners, and Soldiers, 3–4.
21. Roy, The Triumph of Citizenship, 150–151, 156–158.
22. Keshen, Saints, Sinners, and Soldiers, 14–18; Roy, The Triumph of Citizenship;
news clipping, Foon Sien Wong, “Why ‘East Meets West,’” Vancouver Sun, 19
Oct. 1940, box 4, Foon Sien Wong Papers.
23. On anti-Communism and the wartime management of immigrants, see “Over-
seas Chinese—Activities, Organizations,” 1943–1948, RG 25, ser. G-2, vol.
3314, folder 9820-40, LAC; Kordan, “Ethnicity, the State, and War,” 1–12,
138–186. On the presumption of “foreignness”: Patrias, “Race, Employment
Discrimination, and State Complicity,” 9–42.
24. Chinese papers in Vancouver, San Francisco, and New York frequently reprinted
each others’ articles, including articles by Chinese Canadians. Nations at War
Scrapbook; news clippings, Foon Sien Wong, “Jinji jue jiao wu yi xuan zhan”
(three-part article), Xin Minguo Zhou Bao (New York), n.d. (ca. late 1930s);
Wong, “Xin Shidai” (four-part column), reprinted in an unidentified newspa-
per (probably Xin Minguo Bao of Victoria, Canada) from the U.S. publication
Meiguo Yazhou Zazhi; news clipping, Wong, “Xitele kuang yan xia zhi shijie
mian mian guan” (ca. Sept. 1939–May 1940), unidentified newspaper (prob-
ably Xin Minguo Bao); news clipping, Wong, “Jingji jue jiao wu yi xuan zhan”
(three-part article), Xin Minguo Zhou Bao (New York) (ca. late 1930s). Exam-
ples of Da Han Gong Bao reprinting content from Chinese newspapers in San
Francisco and New York: 29 June, 23 Mar. 1943, box 1, Wong Papers.
25. DHGB, 13 July 1943.
26. Wong, Americans First, 121–122, 173–175.
27. Nations at War Scrapbook; news clipping of Wong’s column in Xin Minguo
Bao, “Riqian Zhan Shi Guan Zhi” (ca. 1942), box 1, Wong Papers. On the
wartime censorship policy: Keshen, Saints, Sinners, and Soldiers, 14–18; Foon
Sien Wong, “The Chinese Canadians,” (unpublished manuscript, n.d., ca.
1960s), part “Way of Life,” 2, Wong Papers, box 4; Western Board of Directors

of the Canadian Council of Christians and Jews, Minutes of Meeting, 21 Feb.
1960, box 4, Wong Papers. Foon Sien Wong’s “Goal for 1959,” an unidentified
news clipping, shows that Canada censored Chinese Canadian media and com-
munications through established Chinese community leaders like Wong, who
censored for the national War Services Department between 1939 and 1945.
28. Osborne, Unwanted Soldiers; Chan, Gold Mountain, 144, 146; Con et al., From
China to Canada, 200. Yee and Roy briefly note the conflict over military ser-
vice. Chan also notes that 8,000 men were of eligible age, but only about 500
served (144). Some works, such as Unwanted Soldiers, have focused most on the
Chinese who chose to serve with no guarantees of equal rights. Yee, Roy, Max-
well, and Mar note the conflict, but a more complete story of Chinese Canadi-
ans’ resistance to military service remains to be written. Roy, The Triumph of
Citizenship, 154–155; Mar, “From Diaspora to North American Civil Rights,”
218–224; Maxwell, “A Cause Worth Fighting For,” 38–39; Veterans Affairs
Canada, “Heroes Remember: Chinese-Canadian Veterans,” http://www.vac-
acc.gc.ca/remembers/sub.cfm?source=collections/hr_cdnchinese (accessed 16
Feb. 2009); Osborne, Unwanted Soldiers.
29. This is the main argument in K. Scott Wong’s Americans First.
30. Anderson, Vancouver’s Chinatown, 172; Roy, The Triumph of Citizenship, 151–
152; Yung, Unbound Feet, 260–270; Wong, Americans First, 46–54.
31. DHGB, 15 July 1943.
32. Ibid., 10, 12, 13 July 1943.
33. Keshen, Saints, Sinners, and Soldiers, 3–11.
34. I have located only two monograph-length studies of China-Canada relations:
Ren, “Canadian Trade Commissioners in Shanghai”; Song and Dong, Zhongguo
yu Jianada: Zhong Jia Guanxi de Lishi Huigu.
35. These figures are derived from the following: a definition of a “Canadian” as
either a resident or a British subject born in Canada; 9 percent of Canadian
residents were born outside of the British Empire; and 9 percent of the global
Canadian-born population lived in the United States. Eighth Census of Canada,
1941, 3:258; Vedder and Gallaway, “Settlement Patterns of Canadian Immi-
grants,” 77.
36. DHGB, 24, 30 Nov. 1939.
37. Avison, American Dollars Are Hard to Get, 1–16; Powell, “A History of the
Canadian Dollar,” 53–55.
38. Hansen, Mingling of the Canadian and American Peoples, 1:263.
39. Whynot, “Old Stamping Grounds,” 4, 34; Azzi, Walter Gordon, 20; DHGB,
24, 30 Nov. 1939, 13 July 1943. Many Chinese immigrants had been
sending remittances through Chinese remittance shops, which were part of
the commerce of transnational migration. See Hsu, Dreaming of Gold,
Dreaming of Home, 34–40. This pattern had analogues in other immigrant
groups, such as the Italians. See Harney, “Commerce of Migration” and “The
Padrone and the Immigrant.”

40. Avison, American Dollars Are Hard to Get, 1; Powell, “A History of the Cana-
dian Dollar,” 53.
41. Gibbons, “Foreign Exchange Control in Canada.”
42. Gibbons writes that the FECB’s remittance policy authorized immigrants only
to send “moderate amounts” to dependents and relatives outside Canada:
“When larger amounts were applied for, evidence of need was required and, in
the early days, of past remittancees. While payments of this type were never
entirely stopped the policy was more restrictive in some periods than in others”
(“Foreign Exchange Control in Canada,” 42). Asian, Eastern European, South-
ern European, and British immigrants often remitted money to families abroad.
They used Canadian banks for domestic purposes, but Asians, Southern Euro-
peans, and Eastern Europeans often preferred to remit funds through ethnic
firms, which offered services in their own languages and which could deliver
money to their relatives more effectively than Canadian banks could.
43. Newell, “Beyond Chinatown,” 258.
44. The Vancouver City Archives holds remittance business records for the period
between 1923 and 1933 related to the Yip Family; http://tinyurl.com/ylp-
wptm (accessed 14 Feb. 2009).
45. DHGB, 12 Feb. 1940.
46. Ibid., 19 Oct. 1937, 23 July, 29 Aug. 1942.
47. China, Consulate, Canada, “Correspondence: Foreign Exchange Board,” MG
10, ser. C2, vol. 4, file 22, LAC.
49. DHGB, 20 Jan., 12 Feb. 1940.
50. Gibbons, “Foreign Exchange Control in Canada,” 42.
51. DHGB, 13 July 1943.
52. Ibid., 27 Mar. 1940.
53 .The 30,000 figure comes from a Consulate estimate reported in DHGB, 15
Aug., 1944, which would have been based on the Consulate’s 1940 registra-
tion and subsequent processing of FECB requests. Con et al., From China to
Canada, 302.
54. DHGB, 20 Jan. 1940.
56. DHGB, 20 Jan. 1940.
57. Western Board of Directors of the Canadian Council of Christians and Jews,
Minutes of Meeting, 21 Feb. 1960, box 4, Wong Papers; news clipping, Foon
Sien Wong’s “Goal for 1959,” unidentified newspaper, box 4, Wong Papers; F.
S. Wong, CBA Fundraising Appeal Letter, 30 Aug. 1938, Vivian Wong Papers;
DHGB, 12 Feb. 1940.
58. DHGB, 29 June 1943.
59. Ibid., 23 July, 8, 9 Dec. 1942.
60. Ibid., 8 Jan. 1944.
61. Kwong, Chinatown, New York, 133–134.

62. DHGB, 22 Feb. 1943.
63. Ibid., 12 Feb. 1940, 22 Feb. 1943.
64. Kealey, “The Canadian State’s Attempts,” 433–436.
65. Roy and Anderson briefly mention the threat of a Chinese strike on 7 July
1943 with regard to Vancouver’s war industries. They believe that this threat
was immediately successful, with the result that no strike or protest movement
occurred. They seem to misidentify pensions as one cause of this potential
strike. According to DHGB, the strike did happen, and because the Chinese
did not win, a longer-term protest movement developed. The errors came from
the faulty translation within one of Roy’s and Anderson’s sources, a partial
English index of DHGB, created in the 1970s to research From China to Can-
ada. Further, different sources had different viewpoints. The DHGB reported
that, in Vancouver’s English-language press, the Chinese consul denied that
any illegal “proposed strike” had happened, though in the Chinese-language
press, the consul and the Chinese community recognized that the strike had
indeed happened. See Roy, The Triumph of Citizenship, 152; Anderson, Vancou-
ver’s Chinatown, 172; DHGB, 6–8, 10, 12, 13, 15, 19 July, 2, 5 Aug. 1943;
Chinese Times—Index (1936–1958), CCRC, box 5, folders 5–8, 13–14; Roy,
The Triumph of Citizenship, 154–155; Mar, “From Diaspora to North American
Civil Rights,” 218–224; Maxwell, “A Cause Worth Fighting For.”
66. DHGB, 8 July, 30 Aug., 2 Sept. 1943.
67. Kealey and Cruikshank, “Strikes in Canada.”
68. DHGB, 6 July 1943.
69. Ibid.
70. Vancouver News Herald, 20 July 1943; news clipping, “Plan Parley on Tax
Claims,” 21 July 1943, VCA.
71. Granted, remittances had great difficulty reaching occupied China, but Da
Han Gong Bao’s daily advertisements for this service between 1943 and 1944
indicates a continuing demand. To Chinese Canadians, even the slightest hope
that they could save their loved ones made their attempts to send as much
money as possible an urgent concern.
72. DHGB, 13 July 1943.
73. Application of Income Tax Act to Persons of Chinese Race Resident in Canada,
1941–1942, MG 10-C2, LAC; Bing-Shuey Lee to Hong Lee, 29 July 1942,
and Li Chao to Gene Mah, 20 July 1942, MG 10-C2, vol. 3, file 11, LAC; news
clipping, “Grant Exemptions: Chinese Will Benefit under New Income Tax
Regulations,” Vancouver Daily Province, 19 Mar. 1942, box 1, Wong Papers.
1941–1942, LAC.
75. “Grant Exemptions: Chinese Will Benefit under New Income Tax Regula-
tions”; Vancouver Daily Province, 19 Mar. 1942.
76. DHGB, 10, 12, 13 July 1943; Vancouver News Herald, 20 July 1943.
77. DHGB, 13 July 1943.

78. Ibid.
79. Ibid., 15 July 1943; Anniversaries 2007, “Remembering Roy Mah,” 14 July
2007, reprinted from the Allied Worker (the IWA newsletter), Aug. 2003,
http://anniversaries07.ca/news/2007_07_01_archive.html (accessed 15 Feb.
2008).
80. DHGB, 10 July 1943.
1941–1942; DHGB, 10, 19 July 1943; Vancouver News Herald, 20 July 1943.
82. Yee, Saltwater City, 99.
83. Vancouver News Herald, 6 Aug. 1942; Wong, “Wu Zhi Bu De Ganxiang,” Xin
Minguo Bao, 14 Aug. 1942.
84. Wong, “Wu Zhi Bu De Ganxiang,” Xin Minguo Bao, 14 Aug. 1942. The Chi-
nese version omitted Wong’s most pointed criticisms of class exploitation
within the Chinese Canadian population. Con et al., From China to Canada,
199.
85. Josephine Lee and Vivian Wong, interview.
86. Jenny Lee, “Chinatown’s Quiet Revolutionary,” Vancouver Sun, 12 May 2007,
reposted on GungHaggisFatChoy, http://gunghaggisfatchoy.com/blog/archives
(accessed 4 July 2007).
87. DHGB, 8 July 1943.
88. Norbert McDonald, Distant Neighbors: A Comparative History of Seattle and Van-
couver (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1987), 141–143; Morley, Van-
couver, 190–192.
89. Roy, “The Soldiers Canada Didn’t Want.”
90. CCVOHP, Herbert Lim interview.
91. CCVOHP, Bing Wong interview.
92. Mar, “The Mar-Sue Family’s Quest,” 106.
93. Keshen, Saints, Sinners, and Soldiers, 41–120.
94. Ibid., 54.
95. Ibid., 55.
96. Vancouver News Herald, 20 July 1943.
97. DHGB, 10, 12, 13 July, 1943.
98. Patrias, “Race, Employment Discrimination, and State Complicity,” 11,
20–21, 41. CCVOHP, Herbert Lim interview.
99. DHGB, 13 July 1943.
100. Anderson, Vancouver’s Chinatown, 172.
101. Gray, “Woodworkers and Legitimacy,” 122. Gray cited National War Labor
Board Proceedings 11 (10–11 June 1943): 1012, 1007–1010; DHGB, 6 July
1943.
102. Keshen, Saints, Sinners, and Soldiers, 61.
103. DHGB, 6, 8 July 1943.
104. Ibid., 7, 8 July 1943.
105. Ibid.

106. Ibid., 8 July 1943.
107. Ibid., 13 July 1943.
108. Ibid.
109. Ibid.
111. DHGB, 19 July 1943.
112. Ibid.
113. Chung Collection, pamphlet regarding Chinese fundraising in 1925 for the
defense of Foon Sing Wong, box FOLDR-0035, file 1.
115. Ibid.
116. News clipping file, “Plan Parley on Chinese Tax Claims,” 21 July 1943, VCA.
117. Chinese Patriotic Leagues and Associations War Relief Files, Correspondence
by City (ca. 1939–early 1940s), MG 10, vol. 4, ser. C2, files 9–18, LAC.
118. CCVOHP, Mah interview; “Roy Mah,” in Huang and Jeffery, Chinese Canadi-
ans, 72–76.
119. CCVOHP, Bevan Jangze interview.
120. News clipping files, Ted Ward, “Special Wage Rate Cards Printed by Union
Here for Chinese Members Who Help Build BC Ships,” 25 Feb. 1943, VCA.
121. Ibid.
122. DHGB, 8 July 1943.
123. Ibid., 2 Aug. 1943. The intermediaries included “Huang Song,” a possible
reference to Whaun’s Chinese name, Huang Song Mao. News clippings, “Chi-
nese Workers Open Drive for Membership,” Vancouver Daily Province, 16 Feb.
1948; “Chinese Labor Group in Drive to Join TLC,” Vancouver News Herald, 16
Feb. 1948; “Chinese Here Start Union Movement,” Vancouver Sun, 16 Feb.
1948; and “CCL Opposes New Chinese Labor Union,” Vancouver Sun, 18 Feb.
1948, VCA. Con et al., From China to Canada, 199, dates a Chinese Trade
Workers’ Union to the Second World War, though their account shows a 1942
founding date, so it is possible that the group had some form of earlier organi-
zation that predated its 1943 protest. Li, Jianada Huaqiao Shi, 152, dates the
founding of the Chinese workers group (Zhonghua Zhigong Lianhehui) led by
Foon Sien Wong and Ma Shanyun to 1937 or 1938.
124. DHGB, 2 Aug. 1943.
125. Ibid.
126. Ibid., 1 Mar. 1944.
127. Ibid. The paper listed Huang Song as one of the participants, perhaps a refer-
ence to T. M.
128. Ibid.
129. Keshen, Saints, Sinners, and Soldiers, 61.
130. Kealey, “Strikes in Canada,” 376–378.
131. DHGB, 15 July, 5 Aug. 1943. The DHGB did not report the outcome of the
equal pay demand, so it probably did not succeed.

132. Ibid., 26 Oct. 1943.
133. Vancouver News Herald, 20 July 1943; news clipping, “Plan Parley on Tax
Claims,” 21 July 1943, VCA.
134. DHGB, 7, 8, 13, 15, 19, 20 July, 2 Aug., 30 Sept., 23, 26 Oct., 17 Dec. 1943,
28 Feb., 1 Mar. 1944.
135. Ibid., 13 July 1943.
136. Ibid., 12 Apr., 1, 2 May 1944; news clipping, “Chinese Named Union Orga-
nizer,” 14 Apr. 1944, VCA.
137. Barman, The West beyond the West, 322–323; McInnis, Harnessing Labor Confron-
tation, 1–17.
138. McInnis, Harnessing Labor Confrontation, 41–42; DHGB, 1 Mar. 1944.
139. DHGB, 13 Mar. 1944.
140. News clipping, “Chinese Named Union Organizer,” 14 Apr. 1944, VCA.
141. DHGB, 12 Apr. 1944.
142. Ibid., 10 July 1943. The Eighth Census of Canada, 1941, 3:164, counted East
Indians under the rubric of “Asians other than Chinese and Japanese,” a group
that contained only 1,757 persons in 1941.
143. DHGB, 12 Apr., 1–2 May 1944.
144. Nations at War Scrapbook; news clipping, “Shengfu tongguo yaoan: Zhun
yuan zheng huabing you xuanquan,” Xin Minguo Bao, 2 Apr. 1945, box 1,
Wong Papers.
145. “Shengfu tongguo yaoan: Zhun yuan zheng huabing you xuanquan,” Wong
Papers.
146. Lambertson, Repression and Resistance.
147. Kealey, “The Canadian State’s Attempts,” 434.
148. For a general argument about the rights revolution as a global and Canadian
event, see Ignatieff, The Rights Revolution.
149. For a conventional account of the conscription crisis as a French-English issue,
see Granatstein and Hitsman, Broken Promises.
150. Jagpal, Becoming Canadians, 126–127; Dhami, Maluka, 329–333; Stevenson,
Canada’s Greatest Wartime Muddle, 37–50; Stevenson, “Mobilisation of Native
Canadians”; Wong, The Dragon and the Maple Leaf, 9, 218, 232–246; DHGB,
15 Aug. 1944.
151. Barman, The West beyond the West, 429; DHGB, 15 Aug. 1944. Canada’s Census
of 1941 found that one in twelve British Columbia residents was either Asian
or First Nations, though by 1944 the number of Chinese counted by China’s
consulate in British Columbia, 30,000, was far greater than the Census count.
Because the consulate vetted remittance requests, its figure was probably more
accurate.
152. Mar, “From Diaspora to North American Civil Rights,” 218–224; Maxwell,
“A Cause Worth Fighting For,” 24–41.
153. DHGB, 24 Sept. 1940; Mar, “From Diaspora to North American Civil Rights,”
213–214; Memorandum, “Orientals—National War Services,” RG 27, vol.

1489, file 2-184, LAC; Secret no. 1, Dept. of National War Services, 20 Nov.
1941, RG 27, file 2-184, vol. 1489, LAC; National Selective Service—
Aliens—Chinese, RG 27, files 2-114–115, vol. 998, LAC; Maj. Gen. H. J.
Riley to A. MacNamara (ca. 1943); E. G. Bjarnason to Wright, 12 July 1944;
Charles Henry to Arthur MacNamara, Deputy Minister of Labour, 29 July
1943, all in LAC; CCVOHP, Daniel Lee interview; Roy, “The Soldiers Canada
Didn’t Want”; Wong, The Dragon and the Maple Leaf, 78–81. A small number
of Chinese Canadians did enlist before the ban was lifted. Some were volun-
teers. Others were conscripted outside British Columbia in provinces where
the ban on Chinese enlistment was not always consistently enforced. Roy, The
Triumph of Citizenship, 152–155.
154. DHGB, 24 Aug. 1944.
155. Roy, “The Soldiers Canada Didn’t Want.”
156. Estimates of the Chinese Canadian military-age population varied consider-
ably, but Da Han Gong Bao is probably a reliable source. DHGB, 15 Aug.
1944; Wong, The Dragon and the Maple Leaf, 8–9.
157. Ann Lee interview; DHGB, 24 Aug. 1944.
158. News clippings on conscription issue, income tax, and Chinese Canadian war
effort, Summer 1944, box 1, Wong Papers; Mamie Moloney, “In One Ear,”
Vancouver Sun, 15 Aug. 1944; Roy Mah, “Chinese in Canada,” Letter to Editor,
Vancouver Sun, 15 Aug. 1944; Letter to Editor in response to “Soldiers’ Mother,”
unidentified English newspaper, 22 July 1944; Charles Evans, “Chinese in
City,” Letter to Editor, Vancouver Sun, 4 Aug. 1944; Two Loggers, “Chinese in
Canada,” Letter to Editor, Vancouver Sun, n.d. (July or Aug. 1944); Mrs. H. Joe,
“Racial Prejudice,” Vancouver Sun, 3 Aug. 1944; Richard H. Chow, “Chinese-
Canadians,” Vancouver Sun, 4 Aug. 1944; Editorial, “Take It Easy,” Vancouver
Sun, 8 Aug. 1944; Fred Chun, “Chinese in Canada,” Vancouver Sun, 4 Aug.
1944; “Human Being” and “Chinese Canadians,” Vancouver Sun, n.d. (July or
Aug 1944); Foon Sien Wong, “Chinese Cooperation,” Letter to Editor, Vancou-
ver Sun, 29 July 1944; Jimmy Yuen, “Chinese in Canada,” Vancouver Sun (ca.
July–Aug. 1944); Harry H. Leong, “Race Discrimination,” Vancouver Sun (ca.
July–Aug. 1944); Patrias, “Race, Employment Discrimination, and State
Complicity,” 11, 20–21, 41.
159. Foon Sien Wong, “Chinese Cooperation,” Letter to Editor, Vancouver Sun, 29
July 1944.
160. Mamie Moloney, “In One Ear,” Vancouver Sun, 15 Aug. 1944, 6.
161. Wong, The Dragon and the Maple Leaf, 78–79, 112–121.
162. CCVOHP, Roy Mah interview, Bevan Jangze interview.
163. CCVOHP, Roy Mah interview; Ann Lee interview; DHGB, 15 Aug., 2 Sept.
1944.
164. Ann Lee interview; Nations at War Scrapbook; news clipping, editorial on
conscription, Xin Minguo Bao (ca. Aug. 1944), box 1, Wong Papers.
165. CCVOHP, Roy Mah interview, Bevan Jangze interview; DHGB, 24 Aug. 1944.

166. CCVOHP, Bevan Jangze interview.
167. DHGB, 24 Aug. 1944.
168. CCVOHP, Ann Lee interview.
169. DHGB, 15 Aug. 1944.
170. Granatstein and Hitsman, Broken Promises, 1, 164–172; Stevenson, “Mobilisa-
tion of Native Canadians”; Jagpal, Becoming Canadians, 126–127.
171. H. Keenleyside, for the USEA to Maj. Gen. L.R. LaFleche, Deputy Minister of
National War Services, 9 Oct. 1941, “Orientals—National War Services,” RG
27, vol. 1489, file 2-184, LAC; Justice Gillanders, Chairman of the Board
(Draft/Mobilization), Toronto, to Maj. Gen. L. R. LaFleche, Assoc. Deputy
Minister, Dept. of National War Services, 2 Oct. 1941, “Orientals—National
War Services,” RG 27, vol. 1489, file 2-184, LAC; “Conscription of Hong
Wing Shu and Other Chinese Canadian citizens – Particular case,” 4 Aug.
1942 to 23 Feb. 1948. RG 25, series G-2, vol 3037, file 4164-40, LAC;
“Charlie” Woo Fay to Mobilization Board of Kingston, 13 Jan. 1945 and 4
Feb. 1945, “National Selective Service. Aliens – Chinese,” RG 25, ser. G-2,
vol. 3037, File 2-114-5, LAC.
172. H. Keenleyside, for the USEA to Maj. Gen. L.R. LaFleche, Deputy Minister of
National War Services, 9 Oct. 1941; Justice Gillanders, Chairman of the Board
(Draft/Mobilization), Toronto, to Maj. Gen. L. R. LaFleche, Assoc. Deputy
Minister, Dept. of National War Services, 2 Oct. 1941.
173. M. Wong, The Dragon and the Maple Leaf, 9.
174. Nations at War Scrapbook box 1, Wong Papers; News clippings collection,
box 1, Wong Papers.
175. News clipping, Fred Chun, “Chinese in Canada,” Vancouver Sun, 4 Aug. 1944,
box 1, Wong Papers.
176. Ann Lee interview.
177. CCVOHP, Bing Wong interview.
178. Wang, “His Dominion and the Yellow Peril,” 77–82.
179. News clipping, “’No Vote, No Fight’: City Chinese Oppose Call Up,” uniden-
tified newspaper, 23 Aug. 1944, box 1, Wong Papers; Roy, The Triumph of
Citizenship, 154; Mike Howell, “Double Duty,” Vancouver Courier, www.van-
couvercourier.com/issues03/11203/news/112103nn1.html (accessed 4 July
2007).
180. DHGB, 24 Aug. 1944.
181. “Reaching Out to First Nations Veterans,” Salute! (Ottawa: Veterans Affairs
Canada), Fall 2002, http://www.vac-acc.gc.ca/clients/sub.cfm?source=salute/
fall2002/firstnation (accessed 16 Mar. 2009).
182. DHGB, 24 Aug. 1944.
183. CCVOHP, Roy Mah interview.
184. Foon Sien Wong, “The Chinese Canadians,” unpublished manuscript, part 11,
10. ca. 1960s-1971, Josephine Lee Papers.
185. DHGB, 29 Aug. 1944.

186. Stevenson, Canada’s Greatest Wartime Muddle, 43. Apparently, no legal action
was taken against Chinese Canadians who did not comply with conscription
until the case of Jimmy Che in 1945. DHGB, 9 Apr. 1945, Chinese Times—
Index, box 5, folder 10, CCRC.
187. Wong, The Dragon and the Maple Leaf, 218.
188. Xin Minguo Bao, 3 Sept. 1948.
189. Keshen explains war policy in Saints, Sinners, and Soldiers, 14–18. On specific
portrayals of Chinese Canadians, see note 16.
190. CCVOHP, Frank Wong interview.
conclusion
1. Roy, A White Man’s Province; Roy, The Oriental Question; Roy, The Triumph of
Citizenship; Backhouse, Colour-Coded; Stanley, “Bringing Anti-Racism into
Historical Explanation”; Stanley, “White Supremacy, Chinese Schooling, and
School Segregation.”
2. The literature’s focus on majority policies toward Asian minorities and the lat-
ter’s reaction arose only partly from the linguistic challenges of dealing with
Asian-language evidence. Language barriers alone cannot explain why Chinese
Canadians were not conceptually integrated into Canadian history. In 1982,
Con et al.’s From China to Canada was the first national history of Chinese
Canadians that used extensive research into Chinese-language sources. From a
research standpoint, it is arguably one of the finest, most groundbreaking
research projects on the topic. Almost thirty years later, few scholars have built
on its insights.
3. Gabaccia, “Is Everywhere Nowhere?”; Gutiérrez and Hondagneu-Sotelo, “Intro-
duction: Nation and Migration”; Hsu, “Transnationalism and Asian American
Studies”; McKeown, Melancholy Order; Kuhn, Chinese among Others, 197–238.
4. See Patrias, Patriots and Proletarians; Avery, Dangerous Foreigners; Peck, Reinvent-
ing Free Labour; Harney, “The Commerce of Migration.”
5. Hansen, Mingling of the Canadian and American Peoples, 263.
6. At least 120,000 emigrated to Canada, calculated as follows: 98,361 Chinese
registered as entrants (1885–1949) in addition to 17,000 railway and gold
rush era migrants plus several thousand illegal immigrants. The latter two
groups are conservative estimates because no official count is available. The
numbers in the other countries are as follows: United States, 150,000–200,000
(Census, 1870–1930); Australia, 100,000; New Zealand, 5,000; Cuba,
200,000; Mexico, 37,000; and Peru, 60,000 (Census, 1876–1940). “Introduc-
tion,” from Immigrants from China, 23 June 2008, LAC, http://www.collec-
tionscanada.gc.ca/databases/chinese-immigrants/index-e.html (accessed 2 July
2008); Con et al., From China to Canada, 296; Daniels, Coming to America, 240;
Jupp, The Australian People, 197; Ng, “Chinese in New Zealand”; Ding, Ances-
tors in the Americas; McKeown, Chinese Migrant Networks, 48.

7. Erika Lee, “The ‘Yellow Peril’ and Asian Exclusion in the Americas,” Pacific
Historical Review 76.4 (2007): 537–562; Kuhn, Chinese among Others, 197–238;
Lee, “Orientalisms in the Americas,” 235–256.
8. Wong, Sweet Cakes, Long Journey, 180–197; Ma, Revolutionaries, Monarchists, and
Chinatowns, 91.
9. Yun, The Coolie Speaks, 216–217; Siu, Memories of a Future Home, 39–40;
McKeown, Chinese Migrant Networks, 25; Fitzgerald, Big White Lie.
10. Lee, “Enforcing the Borders”; Delgado, “At Exclusion’s Southern Gate”;
Morales, “Differencias Politicas.”
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index
Alternative public sphere, 4, 67–68, Anti-Segregation Movement, 11,

89, 105, 132 69–87, 103–104
American Federation of Labor (AFL), 55 Anti-Segregation Support Association
Americanization. See Assimilation (Vancouver), 81–83
Americas, 12, 18, 28, 65, 133. See also Asia, 5, 7, 9, 18, 26, 75, 85, 104, 106,
Transnationalism; Hemispheric 120, 127. See also China; Japan;
History India; Southeast Asia
Angel Island Immigration Station, 31 Asian Americans, 5–8, 11, 72, 89–91,
Anti-Asian movements, 5, 7, 18, 22, 94, 99–100, 107–110, 131, 133,
23, 31–32, 70–71, 80–82, 85. 169nn.6, 9, 10. See also Chinese
See also anti-Chinese movements; Americans; Japanese Americans;
Asiatic Exclusion League Model Minority
Anti-Chinese movements, 6, 31–32, Asian Canadians, 5–8, 11, 49–50, 70,
55, 65, 70–71, 90. See also anti- 89–110, 114–115, 125–126, 130.
Asian movements See also Chinese Canadians; East
Anti-Chinese laws, 3, 6, 8, 9, 15, 19, Indian Canadians; Japanese
30, 48, 50, 66, 104, 131, 133 Canadians; Model Minority
Anti-Chinese movement, 55, 90 Asiatic Exclusion League, 22, 31–32,
Anti-Colonial nationalism, 11, 69–72, 92, 145
74–87, 96, 104, 131 Assimilation, 8, 9, 11, 12, 71, 73–74,
Anti-Communism, 77–79, 102, 113 84, 89–110, 131–132
Anti-Conscription Movements, 12, Australasia, 12, 133
111, 114, 126–132 Australia, 106, 133
Anti-Imperialism. See anti-colonial
nationalism. Bank of China (New York), 115, 117
Anti-Segregation Association (Victoria), Beer. See Full Glass of Beer Protest
69, 76, 78, 79, 80 Beijing, 74, 83, 100. See also China
Belgians, 30 Business, 5–9, 11, 17, 20, 22, 26–30,
Blacks (African Americans and African 33, 37–38, 40, 44–47, 50–55,
Canadians), 11, 62, 83, 89, 105–106 58–61, 63–66, 74, 77, 79, 83–84,
Blue Funnel Line, 25, 26, 39 86, 91, 93, 96, 100, 104, 112,
Boggs, Theodore, 105, 106 115–116, 129
Bootlegging, 47, 63, 64, 66 Businesspeople, Chinese Canadian
Borden, Robert, 47 (Chinese Merchants), 3–7, 9–10,
Border controls, 10–13, 15–48, 64–66, 16, 19, 21–27, 29–38, 40, 42,
131, 133 44–47, 50–53, 55–57, 59, 61–66,
Bowell, J. M., 24, 28–29, 39 72, 76–79, 82–83, 86, 91, 95, 98,
Boycotts, 6, 12, 18–19, 30, 31, 34, 36, 100, 103–104, 112, 116, 121,
37, 39–40, 69–88, 101, 103–104, 123–124
106, 128, 129, 130, 131, Businesspeople, Chinese American
144n.42, 151n.181 (Chinese Merchants), 30, 65
Bribery and graft, 6, 17, 18, 21, 22, Business associations, 36–38, 46, 59,
24–26, 30–32, 39, 44, 48, 54, 60, 73–75, 104. See also Chinese
62, 65–66, 92 Board of Trade; Chinese Chamber
Britain, 44, 83, 127. See also British of Commerce; Chinese Empire
Empire Reform Association; Chinese
Britishness, 101 Freemasons; Chinese Peddler’s
British Asia. See British Empire Association; Chong Hoo Tong;
British Empire, 7, 9, 10–12, 28, Sei Yap Board of Labor and Trades;
36–37, 45, 66, 72–76, 83, 85, See Yip Benevolent Society;
95, 97, 100–104, 106, 115, 131, Vancouver Board of Trade;
133 Yue Shan Society
British imperial identity, 112 Byng, Lord, 101
British Columbia Liquor Control
Board, 64 Cabinet of Canada, 17, 18, 29, 39, 44,
Brokers and Brokerage 115
Interpersonal dynamics, 7–8, California, 18, 72, 89, 103, 105. See
89–110, 131 also San Francisco; Oakland; West
Party Politics, 15–48, 60–67, Coast
115–117 Canadian-born, 9, 13, 24, 58, 74,
Second generation, 73–74, 93–94, 83, 97, 100, 116, 124, 128,
107–108, 126–130 129, 132. See also Second
Theoretical conception, 3–14, Generation
131–133, 137n.13 Canadianization. See Assimilation
See also Immigration Interpreters; Canadian Oriental Wine and Liquor
Knowledge-Brokers; Legal Company, 64
Interpreters; Social Movement Canadian Pacific Railway (CPR), 9,
Brokers; Traditional Brokers; 25–29, 35–39, 46–47, 64–65, 74,
Worker-Brokers 120
Bumstead, J. M., 75 Cantonese dialects, 37
218 | index
Canton Merchants’ Self-Governing Chinese American Citizens’ Alliance
Association (SGA, Yueshang Zizhi (CACA, Tongyuanhui, Native
Hui), 31, 36, 47 Sons of the Golden State), 74, 93,
Canton-to-Hankow Railway, 30 104, 165n.35
Catholic Church, 92 Chinese Benevolent Association
Chang, Toy (Sam Kee, Chen Daozhi), (Zhonghua Huiguan, Vancouver,
22, 30, 37, 40, 62, 130 CBA), 57–58, 73, 77, 81, 91,
Chicago (city), 34 93–95, 104, 117, 128
Chicago School (Chicago School of Chinese Board of Trade, 37–38
Sociology), 7–8, 11, 89–110, 131, Chinese Canadian Club (CCC, also
141n.59, 165n.32, 169nn.4–6, known as Tongyuanhui, Chinese
9–10, 176nn.161–162 Canadian Citizens’ Alliance), 73,
[Im Re] Chin Chee, 33 74, 93, 103–104
China, 4–12, 15, 17–37, 40, 42, Chinese Chamber of Commerce, 37–38,
44–46, 49, 50, 53, 58–59, 62–64, 73, 104
68, 70–77, 79, 80–84, 86–87, Chinese Consolidated Benevolent
90–91, 95–129, 132 Association (Zhonghua Huiguan,
Extraterritorial rule, 113 Victoria, CCBA), 57–58, 73,
Gentry as emigration agents, 77
38 Chinese Empire Reform Association
Local elite-society relations, 137n.13 (CERA, Baohuanghui), 6, 20,
Modernizing, 18–20, 30, 74, 95, 29–31, 33, 34, 47, 53, 99,
99–104 138n.19, 144n.41
Taxing emigrants, 116 Chinese Freemasons (Chee Kung Tong,
Registering emigrants, 116 Zhigongtang, CF), 30–31,
Relations with Canada, 6–7, 9–11, 34, 37, 39, 47, 50, 57, 58,
12, 18, 19–20, 26, 28, 30, 34, 62, 63–67, 136n.9, 138n.19
36–37, 73–76, 83, 100–104, 110, Chinese Immigration Act of 1923
113, 115–117, 119, 121–122, (Canada, also known as the
125, 129 Forty-Three Harsh Regulations,
Trade with Canada, 34, 36, 47, 53, and as the Exclusion Act), 11–12,
55, 66, 75, 83, 106, 116, 123, 83–84, 86, 87, 100–101, 112,
125 130, 136
Chinatowns, 4, 9, 11, 12, 40, 42, 49, Chinese-language historical documents,
64, 70, 75, 76, 82, 91, 96, 98, 4, 136n.9. See also Newspapers
104, 107–109, 112, 117, 121, Chinese lawyers. See Legal Interpreters
123, 127, 128, 132 Chinese Peddlers’ Association (Caiye
Chinese Americans, 3–4, 6–13, 16, Gonghui), 59
18–19, 28, 30–31, 36–37, 43, Chinese Students Alliance (CSA), 74,
47–49, 52, 54–55, 63–65, 72, 82, 93, 102, 103
74, 75, 86, 89–92, 94, 99, 100, Chinese United Church, 128
104, 107–110, 111, 114, 131, Chinese Workers’ Party (Zhonghua
133 Gongdang), 83
index | 219
Chinese Youth Association (CYA, Conscription, 12, 111, 114, 126–130,
Huaqiao Qingnian Hui), 128, 132
129–130 Conservative Party of Canada, 20, 29,
Chong, Sing (Zheng Sheng), 58, 66–67 46–47
Chong Hoo Tong (Chang Hou Tang), Cornett, Jack, 121
37 Coolidge, Mary, 47
Christians, 67, 91–92, 94, 99, 102, Coolies (also known as “yellow
103, 108 slavery”), 4, 19, 57, 95
Chung, Kwong, 38 Corporations, Canadian, 16, 17, 18, 26,
Chung Hing, Company, 38 33, 36, 47, 92, 121, 124, 125
Citizens’ Association (of Chinese Court challenges to anti-Chinese laws,
Canadians), 166 23, 73, 76, 155n.2
Citizenship rights. See Rights politics Cuba, 133
Civil disobedience, 69, 71, 74–75, Culture and immigration studies, 108–
78–81, 83–86, 117. See also 110. See also Assimilation; Second
Boycotts; Non-cooperation Generation; Transnationalism
Movement; India Cultural pluralism, 11, 71, 73, 74, 78,
Civil law, 54–55 82, 85 113, 131–132
Civil rights. See Rights Politics Cumberland (British Columbia), 24
Civil Service, 6, 15–18, 44–48, 60–61. Cumyow, Gordon Won, 54, 157n.31
See also Patronage Cumyow, Won Alexander (Wen
Clan and district associations (huiguan). Jinyou), 17, 38, 51, 54–55, 82,
See Chong Hoo Tong; See Yip 157n.31
Benevolent Association; Wong
Kung Har Tong; Yue Shan Society Da Han Gong Bao, 102, 137n.9
Clark, Colonel, 34 Da Han Ri Bao, 137n.9
Class relations, 3–5, 9–12, 26–28, 37, Daily Colonist (Victoria), 85
50–51, 53, 55–57, 64–67, 69–72, Deductions. See Income Tax.
75–80, 93, 95, 99–100, 102, 104, Department of Trade (Canada), 28
107, 109, 112–114, 117–126 Dependents. See Families of Chinese
Columbia Clay Company, 55, 56 Canadians
Columbia University, 75 Deportation, 24, 51, 83, 84, 93, 100
Communist Party (of China), 12, 71, Despotism, 4, 55, 57, 95, 110
72, 75, 76, 100, 101–102 Detention building for immigrants,
Hong Kong Seamen’s Strike, 75 149
Jianada Chen Bao, 102, 137 Diaspora, Chinese, 3–14, 18–22, 29–31,
Confucianism, 108, 164n.19 36–38, 43, 47–48, 50, 54–68,
Consciousness, Ethnic. See Identity 69–87, 100, 112–126, 131–133
Studies. Discrimination against Chinese
Conscription, 12, 126–130 Canadians
Consul, British, 36, 38 Gambling arrests, 62–63
Consuls and Consulates, Chinese, 38, Immigration policy, 4, 15–18,
116, 121, 123–125, 129 23–29, 31, 33–34, 44–48
220 | index
Labor Unions, 22, 84 Enfranchisement, 104–105, 125–130
Legal System, 10–11, 49–55, 60–61, England, 10, 99, 107. See also Britain;
66 British Empire; London
Naturalization, 6, 136n.7 Estates of Chinese immigrants, 56
Public Schools, 11, 70–71, 72–73, Ethnic leadership. See Brokers and
76, 84–86 Brokerage
Second World War policies, 111–131 Ethnic studies scholars. See Chicago
As Transnational Migrants, 9, 13, School.
90, 96–97, 100, 107–110, 113, Eugenics, 108
115–126 Exclusion Act, Chinese (Canada). See
Voting Rights, 4, 6, 125, 136n.7 Chinese Immigration Act of 1923
Wages, 119 Exclusion Act, Chinese (United States),
See also Head Tax 3, 8–9, 12–14, 16, 18–19, 25, 32,
Disenfranchisement, 6, 9, 10, 12–14, 34–35, 46–48, 114
16, 46, 73, 90, 100, 109, Exclusion Era
125–130, 132, 136n.7 the Americas, 133
Draft, Military, 38, 61, 126–130 Australasia, 133
Drugs. See Opium Canada, 3, 8–9, 12–14, 131–133
Dock and Shipyard Workers’ Union Cuba, 133
(DSWU), 122–125 Mexico, 46, 133
Dominion Secret Service, 34–35, 38–40 Pacific World, 12–14, 132–133
Panama, 133
East Indian Canadians, 32, 50, 54, 119, Peru, 133
125, 126, 128, 130 United States, 3, 8–9, 12–14,
East Side of Vancouver, 11 132–133
Ecological theories of migration and
race relations, 108–110 Families of Chinese Canadians, 6, 8–9,
Economy of migration, 26–31, 64–65. 12, 20, 24, 25, 28, 34–35, 44, 46,
See also Brokers and Brokerage; 59, 67, 71, 73–74, 79, 80, 82, 96,
Businesspeople; Conservative Party 98, 107–110, 112–113, 115–117,
of Canada; Immigration 125
officials; Interpreters; Liberal Party Farris, John Wallace de Beque Farris
of Canada; Political Machines; (J. W. de B. Farris), 22, 44, 46,
Social Movements; Steamship 62, 145n.59
companies; Railway companies; Female Slavery. See “Slave Girl” Traffic
Ticket Agents First Nations people, 5, 9, 13, 49–50,
Education, 53, 74, 69–87, 95, 99–100, 50, 54, 68, 83, 125–130
104, 106–110, 122 First World War, 5, 11, 17, 70–72, 85
Education associations, 74 Fong, Kin Show, 38
Employers, 55, 76, 79, 117, 118, 121, Food, 62, 119
123–125 Foreign Exchange Control Board of
Empress Steamship Line (of the Canadian Canada (FECB), 115, 116, 117,
Pacific Railway), 26, 35–37 181
index | 221
Foshan, 113 Hong Kong Seamen’s Strike, 75, 78,
Foster, Edward, 35, 36, 38, 40 102, 104
Four Counties. See Siyi Hope, Joseph (Liu Guangzu), 69, 73,
Franchise, 9, 10, 12–13, 16, 46, 73, 74, 77–82, 84
92, 100, 109, 125–126, 128–130, Hosang, Inglis, 157n.31
136n.7. See also Enfranchisement; House of Commons of Canada, 84
Disenfranchisement. Huang, Xia Sheng, 77
French Canadians, 5, 12, 84, 104, 126 Huang, Zhuo Tang, 77
Frontiers, 9, 91 Hudson’s Bay Company, 92
Full glass of beer protest, 119, 120 Human rights. See Rights Politics
Gambling, 11, 47, 50, 56, 61–64, Ideas about race and immigration,
66–67, 94, 95, 96, 108, 112 12–14, 89–110, 131–133
Gandhi, Mohandas, 75 Identity Studies, 109
Gardiner, John Vrooman, 17 Illegal immigration
Gender ratio of Chinese Canadian Chinese, 4–7, 10, 13, 15–48, 51,
population, 67 63–66, 83, 96, 118, 120, 122,
Gentry. See China, gentry 131–133
Gompers, Samuel, 55 Italian, 26
Grant, Gordon, 22, 44, 55, 145 Japanese, 26, 45
Great Britain, 44 Immigrant incorporation, 5–7, 11–14,
Great Depression, 12, 45, 112, 116 50, 71, 84, 107–110, 114, 131–133
Guangdong, 7, 18, 27, 28, 30, 37, 38, Legal system, 10, 49–68, 131
40, 43, 50, 63, 75, 100, 112, 113, Military service, 12, 128–130,
117. See also Guangzhou; Foshan; 131–132
Pearl River Delta; Sanyi; Siyi; Party machines, 6, 9–10, 15–48,
Taicheng; Taishan; Xinhui 60–64, 131–133
Guangzhi School, 83 Organized labor, 12, 75–76, 117–
Guangzhou, 28, 30–31, 37, 46, 56, 74, 126, 131–132
83, 84, 113 As research subjects, 7–8, 11,
89–110, 131
Habeas corpus cases, 33 Social life, 11–12, 53, 94–100
Hastings, Harry, 52, 78, 103–104 Social movements, 11, 69–87,
Head Tax, Chinese (Canada), 3, 9, 10, 117–126, 131, 132
15–48, 136n.4 See also Assimilation; Cultural Plural-
Hellaby, Hilda, 102 ism; Political integration; Second
Hemispheric history, 12–14, 65, 91, Generation; Transnationalism
131–133 Immigrant nation-building, 13, 11,
Hip Sing Tong (Xie Bang Tang), 63 71, 73–74, 78, 82, 85, 113,
Hong Kong, 6, 18, 20, 24, 27, 28, 30, 131–132
31, 35–36, 38, 41, 42, 44, 65, Immigrant youth. See Second
74–75, 78, 102, 104 Generation
222 | index
Immigration, 3–13, 131–133 Interpreters, 6–7, 10, 15–68, 96, 112,
Business, 6, 20, 38, 55–57, 115–116 119, 131, 157n.31
Global controls, 12–14, 131–133 Interwar Era, 65
Ideas, 7–8, 11, 89–110, 131–133
Illegal immigration, 12–48, 63–66, Jang, Jack, 58, 59
112, 118, 122, 131–133 Jangze, Bevan, 128
Law, 3–4, 15–18, 23–25, 28–29, Japan, 6, 11, 26, 31–32, 34, 36, 45,
32–33, 49–68, 83–84, 100, 118, 50, 62, 68, 70, 73, 76, 90, 94, 97,
122, 130 99, 105–106, 107, 108, 112–114,
Myths, 8, 11, 107–110, 131 116
See also Head Tax; Immigration Japanese, Americans, 90, 94, 105,
Policy 107–108, 169n.6
Immigration Interpreters Japanese, Canadians, 11, 26, 31,
Canada, 6–7, 10, 15–48, 65, 131 32, 36, 45, 50, 62, 68, 70,
United States, 47–48, 52 73, 76, 90, 97–98, 105,
Immigration Officials 107–108
Canada, 6–7, 10, 15–48, 65, 131 Jews, 11
United States, 33–35, 47–48 Jianada Chen Bao (Canada Morning Post),
Immigration Policy 102
Canada, 3, 9–12, 15–48, 64–66, Jin, She, 122
83–84, 86, 87, 100–101, 130, Jinshanzhuang, 116
100–101, 112, 118–121, Judicial Committee of the Privy
130–133, 136 Council (British Empire, London,
United States, 3, 8–9, 12–14, 16, England, JCPC), 66
18–19, 25, 32, 34–35, 46–48,
114 Kang, Youwei, 34
Immigration Studies, 7–8, 10, 12–14, Kendall, F. W., 127
89–110, 131–133 Kelly, Robert, 22, 31–32, 34, 38–39,
Income tax, 114, 118, 119, 120–125, 40, 44, 46
127, 118–125 Kerr, David C., 65
India, 11, 32, 50, 54, 75, 119, 125, Keshen, Jeffrey, 120
126, 128, 130 King, William L. Mackenzie King,
Institute of Pacific Relations (IPR), 106 46
Institute of Social and Religious Knowledge-Brokers, 7–8, 11, 89–110,
Research, 92, 105 131
Integration. See Immigrant Incorporation Ko, Wing Kan, 96, 98
Intellectuals, 10, 11, 70, 77, 86, 87, Ku Klux Klan, 85, 92
95, 89–110 Kwong and Company, 55–56
Intellectual History, 7–8, 87–110, 131 Kwong Lee Tai Company, 51
Intermarriage, 94
International Woodworkers of America Labor contractors, 5, 55–57, 56, 63–64,
(IWA), 121–123, 125 75–76, 119
index | 223
Labor unions, 11, 12, 18, 22, 43–44, Informal, 55, 57–59, 67–68
56, 67, 75–76, 85–86, 93, 114, United States, 47–50, 55, 155nn.2, 4
117–126, 129, 131–132. See also Lew, David (Liao Hongxiang), 7, 10,
Dock and Shipyard Workers’ 15–46, 49–51, 53, 55–57, 58,
Union; International Wood- 60–67, 145, 155n.2
workers of America; Overseas Lew, Shong Kow, 99
Chinese Workers’ Friendship Lew, Yick Pang (Liao Ye Pang), 58, 66,
Union; United Chinese Workers’ 82, 91, 94
Union; Vancouver Trades and Lew vs. Lee (1923–1925), 10, 63–64,
Labor Council 66
Language barriers, 118, 188n.2 Li, Dao Wei, 117
Laurier, Wilfrid, 7, 18, 22, 33, 34, 39, Li, Donghai (David T. H. Lee), 116
40, 47, 104 Li, Yun He, 80
Law. See Chinese Immigration Act; Liang, Qichao, 61, 62
Court Challenges; Exclusion Act Liangguang, Viceroy (China), 28, 36
(United States); Foreign Exchange Liberal Party of British Columbia, 60,
Control Board; Head Tax; Immigra- 62, 64
tion Policy; Interpreters; Lawyers; Liberal Party of Canada, 6, 7, 10, 17,
Legal System; School Segregation 18, 20–22, 26, 29, 30, 31–34,
Lawyers, 10, 22, 33, 38, 40, 40–46, 36–47
50–55, 58–60, 62, 65, 67, 81 Lim, Bang (Lin Bang), 17
Chinese American, 52 Lim, Herbert, 120
Chinese Canadian, 155n.2 Lin, Bao Heng, 82–83
Exclusion of Chinese from legal Litigation masters, China (songshi,
profession, 49–50, 155n.4 zhuangshi) 22, 53
Leadership. See Brokers and Brokerage Local elite-society relations. See China,
Lee, Cecil, 74, 98–99, 104 local elite-society relations
Lee, C. T., 123 London (England), 10, 66, 74. See also
Lee, Ghia, 51 British Empire
Lee, Mongkow, 17, 37, 42, 52, 62, 65 Loo, Gee Wing, 22, 30
Lee, Saifan (Lee Kee, Lee Shiqi), 22, 30, Louie, H. Y. (Hok Yat), 59
37, 43, 62 Lowe, Pany, 100
(Im Re) Lee Him, 33 Lum, Ching Ling, 24–25
Leftists, 11, 69–72, 75–76, 93, Lun Yick Company (Lianyi Gongsi), 63,
102–104, 117–126 64, 66
Legal interpreters (Chinese lawyers)
Canada, 10, 21–22, 33, 38, 49–68, Ma, Yu Ru, 81
96, 112, 119, 131, 157n.31 Macau, 37
United States, 49, 52–55, 60, 157 Macpherson, Robert, 31
Legal system Mah, Roy (Ma Guo Guan), 119, 123,
Canada, 8–10, 23–25, 28–29, 33, 125, 129, 130
41–45, 49–68, 76, 114–126, Mak, Wai, 27, 28
131–132, 155nn.2, 4 Manson, Alexander, 60
224 | index
Marginal Men (i.e., Marginal Man Nationalist Revolution (China), 62–63,
theory), 8, 109 71, 83, 86, 97, 100–103
Martin, Joseph, 44 National War Labor Board of Canada,
Mass Protests, 6, 18–19 112, 69–87, 121
117–130 Nativism, 71, 72, 85
May Fourth Movement, 71, 86–87 Naturalization, 6, 24–25, 83, 100, 104,
Mayors of Vancouver, 66, 83, 121 129, 136n.7
McCrossan, George, 40–43 Negro problem, 93, 106
McGill University, 75 Nelson, John, 92, 106
McInnes, Thomas, 22, 31, 33–34, 46, Newspapers, 4, 18, 39, 114, 136–137,
145n.59 104. See also Da Han Gong Bao; Da
McKenzie, Ian, 121 Han Ri Bao; Daily Colonist; Xin
McRae, J. C., 60 Minguo Bao; Jianada Chen Bao;
Merchants. See Businesspeople Vancouver Sun
Mexico, 6, 30, 46, 63, 91, 133 New York City, 18, 30, 43, 47, 63, 92,
Middlemen. See Brokers and Brokerage 115, 117
Military service, 12, 112, 114, 120–121, New York State, 32
126–130, 185n.153 Ng, Yik, 28
Minimum Wage Law (British Columbia), Nippon Yusen Kaisha (NYK)
86 Steamship Line, 26, 36
Minneapolis-St. Paul, 43 Non-cooperation movements, 75,
Missionaries. See Christians 78–79, 128
Model Minority concept, 8, 11, 104, North America, 4–7, 13–14, 18, 30, 37,
109–111, 130–131 40, 63, 102, 107–109, 114, 125
Mon Keang School (Wenjiang Xuexiao), U.S.-Canada, 4–7, 13–14, 18, 30,
102 37, 40, 63, 102, 107–108, 109,
Montreal, 33–34 114, 125
Morgan, Nigel, 121 Canada, U.S. and Mexico, 4–7,
Morrison, Frank, 55 13–14, 18, 30, 37, 40, 63
Mosaic, Canadian, 132 North Vancouver, 70
Multiculturalism, 13, 15, 59, 67–68,
71, 73–74, 105–110, 113, Oakland, 72
131–133 O’Hara, Francis C. T. 28–29, 34
Murphy, Denis, 40, 41 Ohashi, Chuichi, 105
On Leong Tong (An Liang Tang), 63
Nanaimo, 10, 17, 37, 40, 41, 45, 63, Opium, 40, 56, 61, 62, 95–96, 108
64, 66 Ordinary Chinese, 4, 6, 55, 61, 70, 75,
Nationalism, Chinese, 6, 18–20, 77, 86, 91, 95, 99–100, 104, 131
29–31, 62–63, 69–87, 96, Oregon, 52
100–104, 106–108 Orientalism, 90
Nationalist Party of China, 58, 62–63, Oriental problem, 91–94, 89–110, 106
71–72, 75, 78–83, 86, 96, Ottawa, 15, 28, 33–36, 42, 43, 45–46,
100–104, 113, 115–117, 129 84, 116, 122–124, 129
index | 225
Out migration, 108 Prentiss, P. L., 34
Overseas Chinese Workers’ Friendship Prostitution, 50, 56, 63, 65, 95–96
Union (OCWFU), 122–126, Provincial Party (of British Columbia),
129 92
Punjab (India), 125. See also East Indian
Pacific World, 4–9, 11–16, 25–27, 30, Canadians
36–37, 46–49, 63, 65–66, 68–76,
81, 83–87, 91–93, 96, 106, 113, Quebec, 126
131–133
Panama, 133 Race relations, transnational, in Canada,
Panyu, 37, 43, 50, 62, 66 3–14, 131–133
Paralegals. See Legal Interpreters Civil rights and human rights move-
Park, Robert, 11, 89, 91–95, 99, 105, ments, 69–87, 114–115, 117–133
107, 109, 169nn.4–6 Law, 49–68
Parliament of Canada, 11, 15, 17, 44, Politics, 15–48
55, 81, 83–84, 86, 100 Public discourse, 89–110
Party Machines. See Political Machines War time, 114–115, 117–133
Patronage, 6, 9–10, 15–48, 60–65 Race relations cycle, 108–110
Pearl River Delta of Guangdong, 28, Railway companies, 9, 25–29, 32,
37. See also Sanyi; Siyi; Taishan; 35–39, 46–47, 64–65, 74, 120
Xinhui Raushenbush, Winifred, 78, 92–95,
Peru, 133 97–99, 101–108, 169n.6,
Philadelphia, 28 171n.34
Plant metaphors in migration theory, Registration of Chinese Canadians
108–110 By China (1940), 116
Pluralistic approaches to immigrant Under Chinese Immigration Act
incorporation. See Cultural Plural- (1924), 83
ism; Second Generation Relief aid groups, Sino-Japanese war, 117
Police, 34–35, 38–40, 44, 48–51, Relief remittances. See Remittances
53–64, 66–67, 76, 83, 96, 102 Religious beliefs of Chinese Canadians,
Political Economy. See Economy of 94, 96
Migration Remittances, 9, 12, 115–118, 122–
Political Incorporation (Political 123, 181
Integration), 5, 13, 15–48, 60–68, Researchers, 7, 8, 11, 89–110
71, 73–76, 82, 85–86, 109 Rightist politics, 56, 69–72, 76,
Political Machines 78–79, 86, 100–101, 104, 119
Canada, 5–6, 10, 12, 15–48, 60–64, Rights politics (Civil Rights and Hu-
92, 117–126, 131–133 man Rights), 10, 23, 33, 69–88,
United States, 47–48 90, 104–105, 109, 111–114, 117,
Poon, Shang Lung, 39–40 118, 120, 122, 125–130, 132
Popular democracy. See Social Riot, anti-Asian (Vancouver, 1907), 23,
Movements 32, 81
Portland, 52 River Han, 80
226 | index
Robinson, Oscar, 61 Second Generation Immigrants, 9, 71,
Robinson-Mansfield Detective Agency, 73–74, 86, 98, 104, 107–108,
60–61 155
Roosevelt, Theodore, 19, 34 Second World War, 5, 12, 111–130
Royal Commission on Chinese immi- Conscription and Military Service,
gration frauds (1910–1911), 15, 126–130
18, 36, 39, 40–47 Foreign Exchange Control Board
Russell, Joseph Ambrose, 51, 52, 53 and Immigrant Remittances,
Russia, 106 115–117
Income Tax Protests, 117–126
Sam, Joe, 120 Industries, 114–125
Sam, J. P., 67, 157n.31 Labor Unions, 117–126
Sam Kee Company, 57 See also Sino-Japanese War
San Francisco, 11, 31, 36, 47, 54, 72, See Yip Benevolent Association (Siyi
74, 86, 91, 99, 100, 104, 107, Huiguan), 37
108, 117 (Pro) Segregation Movement, 70–73
Sanyi (Sam Yap, the Three Counties, Sei Yap Board of Labor and Trades
Guangdong, China), 37, 40, 43, (SBLT, Hong Kong), 36
63–65 Seid, Gain Back, Jr., 52
Saunders, Charles, 123 Senate of Canada, 84
School boards Sending money to relatives. See
North Vancouver, 70, 82 remittances.
Vancouver, 70 Senkler, Harry, 41, 44
Victoria, 72–73, 75–76, 78, 81–85 Settlement nations, 12–14, 19, 46, 65,
School boycotts 132–133
China, 73 Seto, Ying Shek (Seto More, Situ Mao),
See also Anti-Segregation Movement 80, 82, 84, 91, 94
Schools Sex-trafficking. See “Slave Girl” Traffic
British Columbia, 11, 69, 70, 72–76, Shanghai, 6, 74, 83–84
81, 82, 84–85, 89, 103, 106–109, Shen, Man, 22, 166
131 Sherwood, Percy, 34, 39
California, 72–73, 86 Shingle Mills, 76, 118–125
Chinese community, 76–77, 83, Shipyards, 118–125
102 Sino-Japanese War, 112–113, 115–
Teachers, 74–77 117
Principals, 70, 73, 83 Siyi (Sei Yap, the Four Counties), 37,
School strikes. See Anti-Segregation 38, 40, 43, 63–65, 117
Movement Siyi Board of Trade (British Columbia),
School Segregation 37
Canada, 11, 69–86 “Slave Girl” Traffic, 65–66, 162n.114
U.S., 71–72, 86 Slavery, African, 83
Science. See Social Science Smith, Janet case, 60, 61
Seattle, 11, 34, 91, 99–100, 104 Social Darwinism, 108
index | 227
Social Movements, 6, 18–19, 11–12, Canada (see Head Tax and Income Tax)
69–87, 51, 111, 114, 131, China, 116
117–130, 131. See also Anti- Tax Office, 118, 121–122, 124–125
Conscription Movements; Taxpayers’ Rights Movement, 12, 111,
Anti-Segregation Movement; 114, 117–126
Labor Unions; Taxpayer Rights Taylor, S. S., 38, 42
Movement Templeman, William, 17–18, 39
Social Movement Brokers, 10–11, Theories of immigration, 108–110
70–87, 111–112, 114, 117–132 Thom, Tom Chue, 40
Social Science, 7, 11, 74, 89–100, Thomas, William I., 92
89–110, 169nn.4–6, 10, Three Counties. See Sanyi
176nn.161–162 Ticket Agents, 26, 32, 64–65
Socialism, 71–72, 75–76, 78, 102 Tongs, 30, 37, 61–67, 94–95, 100,
Sociologists, 7, 11, 89–110 108
Sojourners, 9, 79, 95, 99, 118–120, Toronto, 40, 67, 128
122, 125, 132 Torreon (Mexico), 6, 30
Soldiers’ rights. See Anti-Conscription Toy, Eckard, 107
Movements Traditional Brokers, 5–12, 15–48, 53,
Southeast Asia, 18, 26, 127 55–57, 61–67, 70, 72, 75–79,
Special Operations Executive (SOE, 82, 86–87, 91, 93, 95, 111–112,
Great Britain), 127 115–117, 121, 123–124,
Steamship Companies, 9, 25–28, 32, 127–128
38, 65. See also Blue Funnel Line; Transcontinental Railway (Canada), 9
Empress Line of the Canadian Transnational Life. See Transnationalism
Pacific Railroad; Nippon Yusen Transnationalism, 5–6, 8–14, 15–49,
Kaisha Line; Weir Line; CPR, 52–53, 55–57, 60–61, 63–66,
Weir, Blue Funnel and NYK lines 69–87, 89–110, 112–113,
Steveston (British Columbia), 53 115–118, 121–122, 131–133
Strikes, 31, 56, 71, 73, 75–76, 78, 79, Transpacific Ties. See Transnationalism
80, 83, 102, 104, 118, 120–125
Student groups, 73–75, 81–84, 93, Unions. See Labor Unions
102–104 Unionist Government (Canada), 46
Sun, Yat-Sen Dr. (Sun Zhongshan), 31, United Chinese Workers’ Union (Over-
46, 100, 101, 108 seas Chinese Workers’ Friendship
Sung, Lambert (Song Langbi), 82, 91, Union), 129
94 United States, 3–15, 18–19, 23–26,
Survey of Race Relations, 7–8, 11, 78, 29–32, 34–37, 43, 46–49, 50,
89–110, 131, 176nn.161–162 52–55, 57, 60–61, 63–65, 68,
71–75, 77, 86, 89–94, 99–100,
Taicheng, 113 103–111, 114–115, 117, 131–
Taishan, 27–28, 38, 117 133, 136
Tammany Hall (New York), 47 University of British Columbia, 67,
Taxes 91–92, 97, 98, 105, 106
228 | index
University of Chicago, 11, 75, 89. See Wing Sang Company (Yong Sheng
also Chicago School Gongsi), 46, 58, 116
Winnipeg, 60, 75
Vancouver (Canada), 6–12, 15–46, Winnipeg General Strike (1919), 75
49–67, 69–70, 72, 74–75, 77, Withholding. See Income Tax
79–85, 87, 89–106, 111–112, Women, Chinese Canadian, 4, 61,
113–130 64–67, 70, 74, 80, 90, 93, 98,
Vancouver Board of Trade, 46 124, 128, 129
Vancouver General Hospital, 57 Wong, Bing, 120
Vancouver Island, 56, 63. See also Wong, Frank, 130
Cumberland; Nanaimo; Victoria Wong, Lung, 38, 53
Vancouver Sun, 61, 92 Wong, Foon Sien (Huang Wenfu), 23,
Vancouver Trades and Labour Council 24, 51, 59, 60–61, 79, 82–83,
(VTLC), 22, 43–44 117, 119, 124–125, 127, 129,
Vegetable-peddling truck dispute, 157n.31
58–59 Wong, Foon Sing (Huang Huan Sheng),
Vermont, 32 60–61
Veterans, Chinese Canadian, 114, 130 Wong, Ming Choo, 61
Veterans’ benefits, 129–130 Wong, T. S., 128
Victoria (Canada), 11, 17, 25, 35, 41– Wong Kung Har Tong (Huang Jiangxia
42, 45–46, 52, 57, 62–63, 65–66, Tang), 102
70–85, 91, 98–99, 103–104, 116 Woodworkers. See Shingle Mills; Inter-
Voting rights. See Enfranchisement; national Woodworkers of America
Disenfranchisement Worker-Brokers, 10, 12, 69–72, 75–76,
117–126, 129
Wang, Herbert, 98, 99 Workers, 3–5, 9–12, 18–19, 25–28,
Washington, Booker T., 93 35, 37, 43–45, 55–57, 62, 67,
War. See First World War; Second 70–71, 75–81, 83–84, 86, 93,
World War 95–96, 99, 102, 104, 107,
War industries, 114–125 111–114, 117–126, 129
Warlords, China, 83 Workers’ Movement. See Labor Unions
War Measures Act, 115 Workers’ Rights, 75–76, 111, 117–126
Washington state, 35, 93. See also Working-Class. See Class Relations;
Seattle Workers
Weir (Steamship) Line, 26
West Coast (Canada and U.S.), 4, 7, 8, Xian Xiang Theatrical Society, 83
30, 31, 47, 71–72, 86, 89, 90–91, Xin Minguo Bao, 137n.9
94, 96, 104–105, 107–110 Xinhui, 38
Whaun, Thomas Moore (Huang Song
Mao), 67, 96–97, 98, 101–103, Yellow Slavery, 4, 57, 95
106, 124 Yin, Lung Tong, 38
Wickberg, Edgar, 25 Yip, Kew Him (Yip Kew Ghim, Ye Qiu
Wing, Lee (Rong Li), 64, 66 Jin), 46
index | 229
Yip, Kew Mow (Ye Qiu Mao), Yip Family (Ye Family), 6–7, 10, 15–
46, 95 47, 62–65, 85, 95–96, 116, 129
Yip, On (Ye En, Ye Huibo, Yip Wai Yom, G., 58, 59
Pak, Yip Ting Sam), 6, 7, 10, Yong, Jung Sum, 44
15–47, 85, 144nn.28, 41, 42 Yu, Henry, 90
Yip, Quene (Yip Kew Quene), 58–59, Yue Shan Society (Yushan Zongxinju),
129 62–65, 67
Yip, Sang, 26, 35, 46, 95–96, 129
Yip, Sue Poy, 35 Zhongshan, 59
Yip, Yen (Charlie Yip Yen, Yip Yuen), Zhou, Chi Zhu, 19, 87
as immigration interpreter, 26, Zhou, Qi Lian, 83
35, 42 Zhu, Bo Ran, 83–84
230 | index

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Oxford New York

Copyright © 2010 by Oxford University Press, Inc.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

D oing research and writing a book is a labor of love, and I was

Note on Translations and Terms xv

T his book renders chinese names according to their English spell-

M iddlemen are never heroes. Every immigrant community has

O ne of the most curious aspects of anti-Chinese policies was

The Titans: Competing for Vancouver’s

figure 1.2. David Lew.

The Stakes: Chinese Head Tax Enforcement,

Many Chinese were semiliterate in English, had never standardized

Controlling and Exploiting Chinese Migration

Gatekeepers Who Left the Door Ajar

Opportunity for Challenge: Contests over

Competing Chinese-Anglo Alliances and the Quest for

Power Brokerage from the Top Down: Prime Ministerial

Battle of the Transnational Networks and Their Local

[T]he old interpreter with dozen of Chinese merchants use financial

Political Accountability and Political Cover:

W. A. Kent, aged 48, given to drink and unreliable.

The Inquiry’s Impact

I n 1924, david lew’s chief profession as a legal broker made his

A Community Made by Laws: The Daily

Legal Brokerage, Labor Contracting, and Class Relations

Canadian Courts, Community Dispute Resolution,

The Politics of Policing Chinese Gambling

F or one year, from september 1922 to September 1923, at least

Contexts of Anti-Segregation Protest: Canada, the

Setbacks and Leadership Splits: Brokerage

If this policy is implemented, our people will have no room to move

Hope urged Chinese to conquer fear by standing up for themselves. If Chi-

The Anti-Segregation Movement Spreads to Vancouver:

I n 1924, robert park, a sociologist from the University of Chicago,

Surveying the “Oriental Problem”

figure 4.1. Thomas

Performing Political Power

100 | b rokering b elonging

If we cannot stop your discriminative and anti-racial laws against us

I never belonged to any Chinese organizations until recently. But when

f ixing k nowledge | 101

102 | b rokering b elonging

Across the ocean 3,000,000 Chinese students, intellectual pure souls,

f ixing k nowledge | 103

104 | b rokering b elonging

f ixing k nowledge | 105

106 | b rokering b elonging

f ixing k nowledge | 107

108 | b rokering b elonging

f ixing k nowledge | 109

110 | b rokering b elonging

112 | b rokering b elonging

t ransforming d emocracy | 113

114 | b rokering b elonging

Regulating Remittances: Nationalizing the Mechanism for

t ransforming d emocracy | 115

116 | b rokering b elonging