Exhibit celebrates 155 years of Chinese-Canadian history

Canada's oldest Chinatown is the focus of a new exhibit at the Royal British Columbia Museum that chronicles the history of the city's early Chinese migrants who came in search of riches with the start of the Fraser Canyon gold rush.

When word filtered to San Francisco in February 1858 that a new gold rush was happening in British Columbia, it brought thousands of Chinese north by boat to Victoria, their first point of entry into what would eventually become the future Canada in 1867.

The discovery of gold put the current B.C. capital on the map as wealthy San Francisco Chinese merchants expanded their operations to Victoria to provide supplies, labor, accommodations and transportation, among other things.

"Traditions in Felicities, Celebrating 155 years of Victoria's Chinatown," documents the second oldest Chinatown in North America after San Francisco and how its advent proved to be the start of the Chinese diasporas in Canada that today numbers more than 1.3 million people.

The exhibit features archive photos from Victoria's Chinatown, which at its 1911 peak had more than 3,000 residents, as well as artifacts, historical documents and a re-creation of an old Chinese alleyway.

There are also video interviews with elderly Chinese-Canadians who lived in Victoria's Chinatown in the 1930s and 1940s and recalled their memories of an area that stretched seven city blocks at its height.

Dr. Chung Tzu-I, Royal BC Museum curator, said the exhibit came about through working with the local Chinese-Canadian community.

With many of the interviews with seniors ranging from their late 70s to early 90s, she said the importance of "preserving those histories and cultures that are quickly disappearing" was a motivating factor.

"This is the last generation of Chinese that is still alive and lived in Chinatown," said Chung, noting that many of these people were descendants of the early settlers who had to pay a discriminatory head tax, ranging from 50 to 500 Canadian dollars, to immigrate to Canada, a fee not levied on other nationalities.