stop asian hate : your asian community needs you now
Chinese workers on the Canadian Pacific Railway
(Image D-07548 courtesy of the Royal BC Museum and Archives)
Over the course of construction and by the end of 1882, of the 9,000 railway workers, 6,500 were Chinese Canadians. They were employed to build the B.C. segment of the railway through the most challenging and dangerous terrain.
Growing up in a small town in Ontario I was one of the few Asian people in my elementary school. At the time to be honest I didn’t feel any different from my friends nor do I remember them treating me any differently.
At home I had a supportive community. Our family had dinners with our cousins and like a big family it was as if I had a dozen siblings.
My mother, worked two jobs one in the morning and one at night so that she can support us.
We grew up in a basement and my mother and I didn’t have our own home until I was fourteen. We took care of each other within our community of relatives. Always making sure that the children were kept busy and constantly learning.
Even though we were poor growing up my mother always invested in my education. I was consistently enrolled in Chinese, Mandarin, gymnastics, swimming and art classes. Our weekends were always about spending time with our relatives, going to Chinese school and math school. It was imperative that we knew how to write and speak Chinese. We were taught to carry our culture forward with us. Summertime when I noticed our friends were going on holidays, we were going to Chinese immersion summer school where we can learn more Chinese in different subjects and connect with our extended community.
During the day I went to a French immersion school, which was very difficult for me at first because I had to learn English as well. But somehow through tutoring and the help of my cousins I learned to speak and write: English, French and Chinese.
This entire time my mother continued to work her minimum wage job day and night to support us. Life was about sacrifice. She wanted a better future for us.
As you can see, our life was surrounded by our own community and how important that was for us to feel supported.
My family consisted of a group of very hard working and sacrificing elders. We worked hard and our children did too. We understand and taste the understanding of sacrifice. We spent every holiday together and helped each other out whenever we can.
I hope that people can understand how special and unique our culture is. We may not speak up as much but we are human beings too. We are an incredibly hard-working, self-sacrificing and educated. We also, helped build the railway that Canadian Pacific Railway which you can read about here. But there again was an incredible sacrifice. We then not only built the Railway, but we found ways to build community in Canada even through the injustice of immigration against Canadian Chinese. We found a way to stay together because of our community.