Approaches to the Study of the Chinese in British Columbia

Abstract

In broad terms the aim of this paper is to encourage historical research on the Chinese communities of British Columbia.* It is intended therefore to be suggestive rather than conclusive. I hope to interest students of British Columbian history in the sociological and historical problems arising from the presence of a Chinese population and its relations with the other settlers of this province for, despite the importance of the Chinese in the building of British Columbia, little scholarly attention has been directed towards this group. However, before turning to a sociological examination of Chinese history in BC, it may be useful to examine in some detail the provenance of the Chinese in Canada with a view to understanding their emigration in such large numbers. With very few exceptions, overseas Chinese throughout the world come from two provinces in southeastern China — Fukien and Kwangtung — and except for a handful of immigrants from north China, the Chinese in North America are from Kwangtung Province, almost all of them from a small region southeast of Canton only thirty miles in radius. Southeastern China is a region of cultural and linguistic diversity — at least six different Chinese languages are spoken in Kwangtung Province alone. Nearly all the Chinese in North America, however, speak Cantonese, albeit in several dialects, and of the more than 80,000 Chinese in Canada