Season’s greetings from RBSC!

Posted on December 23, 2024 @9:37 am by cshriver

Just a reminder that the Rare Books and Special Collections satellite reading room will be closed from Wednesday, December 25, through Wednesday, January 1, inclusive. Additionally, the RBSC offices will be closed on the following stat holidays: Wednesday, December 25; Thursday, December 26; and Wednesday, January 1.

RBSC’s offices and our satellite reading room will reopen on Thursday, January 2.

We look forward to seeing you in the New Year!

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The S.S. Tartar and the Tale of “Soapy” Smith

Posted on December 21, 2024 @9:57 am by Emily Witherow

This blog post is part of RBSC’s new series spotlighting items in the Phil Lind Klondike Gold Rush Collection and the Wallace B. and Madeline H. Chung Collection.

 

 

The SS Tartar, pictured above at a wharf in Vancouver, BC, was one of two steamships that the Canadian Pacific Railway purchased in 1897. They did so with the intention of capturing a portion of the Klondike Gold Rush traffic, as stampeders traveled northward from San Francisco, Seattle, Victoria, and Vancouver to Alaskan ports in Skagway, Juneau, and Dyea. Although the Tartar and its companion, the SS Athenia, completed their weekly route from Vancouver to Skagway only six times before they were withdrawn from service in July 1898, the steamship became an unlikely figure in the saga of the American con man Jefferson Randolph “Soapy” Smith. On July 12, 1898, the Tartar arrived in Skagway just in time to carry ten of Smith’s accomplices to Seattle, who were “hunted like wild beasts” and exiled by local citizens following Smith’s death a few days earlier.[i] 

 

re based on swindling travelers in Skagway, such as his famous “prize soap racket” where he would sell bars of soap which had the chance of containing money bills; of course, none did. As Smith’s cons redirected mining traffic away from Skagway, which became known for its crime and crooks, the local townspeople were outraged and formed a vigilante committee to restore law and order. On July 8, 1898, Smith exchanged shots with a member of the committee, City Engineer Frank Reid, with both men dying from their wounds. Reid’s funeral was the largest in Skagway history, with his gravestone inscribed with the words: “He gave his life for the honor of Skagway.”

 

More than a century later, Jefferson “Soapy” Smith lives on in through a myriad of biographies, a dedicated museum in Skagway, and an annual Soapy Smith Wake on July 8, though the SS Tartar has been relegated to the back pages of those stories. After 1898, CPR re-directed the ship to supplement the Empresses on the Pacific trade route.  

 

Both the Wallace B. Chung and Madeline H. Chung Collection, and the Phil Lind Klondike Gold Rush Collection, have materials touching on this episode of history. For more images, documents, and information about “Soapy” Smith and the CPR’s coastal steamships, plan your visit to the Chung Lind Gallery here! 

 

 

 

 

[i] “Skaguay’s First Shipment of the Unwelcome,” The Daily Alaskan, July 12, 1898, p.4, https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/2017218619/1898-07-12/ed-1/seq-4/; “Arch Desperado Dead,” The Daily Alaskan, July 11, 1898, p. 3. Chronicling America: Historic American Newspapers. Library of Congress,  https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/2017218619/1898-07-11/ed-1/seq-3/  

 

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Posted in Chung, Chung | Lind Gallery, Collections, CPR, EarlyBC, Exhibitions, Frontpage Exhibition, Immigration and Settlement, Lind, Research and learning | Tagged with Canadian Pacific Railway, Chung Collection, Chung Lind Gallery, Klondike Gold Rush, Lind Collection

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Within the Gaps Exhibition

Posted on December 17, 2024 @9:24 am by Claire Malek

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Part 2: A Tale of Seattle’s Chinatown 

Posted on December 7, 2024 @12:00 pm by Andrew R. Sandfort-Marchese

 

This blog is a continuation of a series exploring a letter in the Wallace B. and Madeline H Chung Collection. You can find part one HERE. 

 

Thanks to Jeffrey Wong for assistance on translation, and to the staff at the National Archives and Records Administration, Seattle branch. 

THE MAN, THE LETTER

The story of the Shaunavon Crystal Bakery, introduced to me by a single letter found in the Chung Collection, offered an intimate lens into the lives of every-day Chinese Canadians: their resilience, and the vibrant networks of family and business they built across the Prairies and beyond. As we shift our focus from Saskatchewan to Seattle, we’ll explore how these transnational connections informed another story, beginning with Harry K. Mar Dong, the letter’s recipient. 

First off, what does the letter itself say? 

 

“To Younger Brother Gim Dong, 

Last time I received a letter from you about these matters, but I haven’t heard back from you about things and miss folks dearly. I am now writing to you to inquire if all was done properly regarding Oct 30th money transfer to Hong Kong so that [Mah] See Gey can pass over the $300 cash to [Mah] Gay Yun. I have yet to hear from See Gey that he has received this money and the last money I sent previously, so now I’m asking you now if you can inquire on both the money transfers to ensure they have received.

From Gim Sing.”

 

This letter is a somewhat everyday business affair that reflects some of the dynamic networks that connected the Chinese Canadian and American communities, namely those for sending money back to family in China. From our small town of Shaunavon, Saskatchewan, this author is writing to a broker, someone who is a trusted and maybe powerful member of the Mah clan who is facilitating the transfer of these hard earnings. That person is Harry K Mar Dong. 

 

 

According to historical records, Mar Dong was born in 1881 above a shop in San Francisco Chinatown, to a shopkeeper and his wife. When interviewed by US Immigration in 1923, he had sworn witnesses to attest to this fact, and even his mother’s death certificate, to establish he was a native-born US citizen. This all, however, was false. Mar Dong was a “paper son.” [1]

 

The term “paper sons” refers to Chinese immigrants who entered the United States and Canada by falsely claiming citizen status, domicile, merchant status, or descent from citizens using real or fake government documents. This practice grew widespread after the 1906 San Francisco earthquake, which destroyed city records, allowing many Chinese individuals, including Mar Dong, to claim U.S. citizenship. These claims often involved elaborate stories and forged documents, helping immigrants bypass restrictive laws like the US Chinese Exclusion Act and build new lives in America.  

 

 

According to Mar Dong’s son Al Mar, the real story is that his father arrived in the United States in the late 1800s with a brother, working in Montana, and then Seattle, where he witnessed the violent 1885-86 anti-Chinese riots.[2] By the 1920s, Mar became a powerful labor contractor managing mostly Chinese and some Filipino cannery crews. When US canneries moved towards employing more of the latter, his business declined. He did not lose his status though, for he soon became a transportation agent for the many transportation companies that Chinese immigrants relied on to travel in a world of Exclusion barriers.[3] Maybe these is the reason he bought papers to establish his US citizen status, which would improve his business and personal legal protections. 

 

You can learn more about the Chinese Diaspora’s role in the Pacific Northwest cannery industry and the importance of Chinese ticket agents at the Chung Lind Gallery. 

 

By 1924, Mar Dong was the official Chinese agent for the Admiral Oriental Line, a steamship line with offices across the globe, and was meeting their regular ship arrivals in Canada every month by taking coastal ferries like the CPR Princesses to Victoria and Vancouver. This required the swift navigation of both the US and Canada’s labyrinthine Exclusion regulations. However, with powerful friends in the shipping industry, this was possible. In fact, Mar Dong was issued a special permit and ID card to cross with their assistance. Emboldened, he even tried to get permission to cross on CPR ships without being manifested, a bold tactic that most of the poor, single Chinese workers could never dare to try, fearful of being deported or turned away on arrival.[4]

  

In 1926, Mar was implicated in an affair where a detained potential immigrant, Wong Yick, sought entrance to the US. Ticket agents were powerful brokers, often using bribes, false papers, and political influence to shape Chinese movement across borders, but also could exploit these migrants for profit. According to Al Mar, his father was deeply enmeshed in this trade of paper lives.[5] The incident above may or may not have involved shady dealing, but it definitely involved the strategic deployment of a box of feces.[6] 

 

The Hotel Mar

 

In 1927, one of Mar Dong’s most lasting legacies was completed: The Mar Hotel building, still standing at 507–511 Maynard Ave. S. in Seattle. It was at this address that our humble letter arrived in 1944. This building became the hub of Mar’s offices, his ticketing and money transfer business, as well as a bustling residential hotel. The Mar Café, yet another business of his, opened on November 10, 1927, with a public announcement in the Seattle Star proclaiming that it was not only “offering under Oriental atmosphere-the best food, best service-Chinese and American food, dancing and music” but that it was “The only original Chinese Cafe in America.”[7]

Big banquets of both the White and Chinese community were held there in the following years, with one notable occasion featuring the full live orchestra from the SS President Pierce.[8] It’s no coincidence that this steamship was part of the Dollar Steamship Co. and American Mail Lines fleet that Harry K. Mar Dong was now the Chinese agent for. Harry Mar Dong was also a founding executive of the Seattle branch of the powerful Hoy Sun Ning Yung Benevolent Association when it was formally incorporated in 1928.[9] The celebratory banquet, with delegates from across the North American Toisanese diaspora, was held at the Cafe Mar in the Mar Hotel.[10]

 

 

The Mar Hotel was often called the “Hong Kong Building” after the Mar Café transitioned into the popular Hong Kong Restaurant.[11] In the 1930s, the Mar Hotel hosted an infamous nightclub and dance hall called the Hong Kong Chinese Society Club, nicknamed the “Bucket of Blood.”[12] During the latter years of Prohibition, the club was raided, catching some of Seattle’s blue-blues red-handed at the craps table, sipping on bootleg whiskey (potentially smuggled from Canada) and in-house moonshine.[13] The blaring headlines did not stop the community of mostly Chinese men living in the tiny single rooms of the Mar Hotel, or even some famous Chinese visitors, from making use of this so-called “sordid structure” as a place to lay their head at night.[14] The Mar family continued to run the Hotel until 1941, when Al Mar sold it. Interviewed by the Seattle Times about his father in 1993, Al remembered his father as ““jolly; he was one of Chinatown’s most prominent members, but he wasn’t that Chinafied; a lot of his association was with the lo fan [white folks, lit. barbarians 佬番].” 

 

 

In the early 1950s, the Sakamoto family, survivors of internment at Minidoka and Tule Lake Camps, purchased the Mar Hotel. Daughter Janet Sakamoto provides the following description of residential hotel life: 

 

“Our family had the entire second floor of rooms where we lived right next to the lobby. We children didn’t go upstairs to the floors where the guests were staying. At the top of the stairs from the first to the second floor was the lobby with a check-in desk, mailboxes, and a switchboard system connected to the rooms. There was also a huge kitchen and a ballroom floor that was once part of a restaurant. It wasn’t used when we bought the hotel and hadn’t been for years. We rode our bicycles on the marble dance floor. Most of our residents were either white or African Americans who worked in the neighboring train stations or jazz clubs. Sarah Vaughn and Count Basie stayed at our hotel along with other Black entertainers who weren’t allowed to stay in the other downtown Seattle hotels.”[15]

 

Living legacies of objects, place and space.

 

The lives of those who inhabited hotels like the Hotel Mar often represent a historic cross section those most marginalized by urban society: poor Chinese bachelors, single working-class women, sex workers, transient LGBTQ+ folks, performers, homeless, addicted, widowed seniors on fixed pensions, and more. By 1971, the Mar Hotel closed, but the building continued to live on the street level. Seattle icon Ron Chew shares a memory from his time as a busboy with his head waiter father at the Hong Kong Restaurant downstairs:  

 

“The Chinese men had very Spartan lives… A lot of the kitchen help lived in the Mar Hotel upstairs or other hotels in the district. You learned things from paying attention to the men you worked with…you’d just know some things without their saying a word. Picture yourself…12 hours, non-stop with a few breaks for food…standing and running back and forth with trays that weighed 50 pounds. You could do it in your twenties and thirties, but forties, fifties, sixties, seventies…it wasn’t a way to live your life. Some of the waiters faded away because they couldn’t continue to handle the ten to fourteen hour days on their feet. Both waiters and busboys would be so tired at the end of the day…you’d open up the door and smell the air outside of the kitchen along with your own clothes that smelled of grease and subgum.”[16]

 

One of the main reasons inspiring me to write this series was to highlight how our encounters with daily objects, or even the spaces we inhabit and move through each day, can connect us back to a deeper history if we seek it. Behind each archival object is a real memory, a person with a family and story. In the case of the Chinese diaspora community, these are stories that have been too often ignored, erased, appropriated, or papered over. Working class stories are minimized or forgotten. Real work remains to reclaim the archive as a place of reconciliation and community story sharing.  

 

The same holds true for physical spaces, especially Chinatowns, which currently face displacement across North America. Returning to our narrative, the Hong Kong Restaurant in the Mar Hotel closed in mid to late 1980s, a period corresponding with many beginning to move away from Chinatowns to suburbs. Entrepreneur James Koh purchased the historic Mar, Milwaukee, and Alps residential Hotels in Chinatown in 2003. By 2008 the Mar reopened with offices for rent.[17]

 

I hope you have enjoyed this two-part series, please keep an eye out for continued blogs about the Wallace B. and Madeline H Chung Collections, as well as the Phil Lind Klondike Gold Rush Collection on this webpage or HERE. 

 

 

Further Reading 

Groth, Paul. Living Downtown: The History of Residential Hotels in the United States. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999 

Wong, Marie Rose. Building Tradition: Pan-Asian Seattle and Life in the Residential Hotels. First ed. Seattle, WA: Chin Music Press, 2018. 

Endnotes

[1] NARA Seattle, Chinese Exclusion Act Case Files series, Mar Dong, Box 566, Case File 7030/4626

[2] Links To History — Passengers And `Paper Sons’ In Chinatown, The Seattle Times, Sep 5 1993, Online Edition, https://archive.seattletimes.com/archive/19930905/1719427/links-to-history—-passengers-and-paper-sons-in-chinatown

[3] McKeown, Adam. Melancholy Order: Asian Migration and the Globalization of Borders. 1st ed. New York: Columbia University Press, 2008.

[4] There are extensive correspondences on these dynamics or border crossing in Mar Dong’s Seattle Chinese Exclusion Act case file. Reference above.

[5] Links to History, Seattle Times, 1993

[6] Mar had to provide some excuses for this incident to immigration authorities and was banned from the building for a time. NARA Seattle, Chinese Exclusion Act Case Files Series, Mar Dong.

[7] Seattle Star Nov 10 1927 Pg.3

[8] Seattle Union Record Jan 11 1928 Pg.3

[9] 台山寧陽會館 the Native-place association for those from Taishan/Toisan county. Notably, both Mar Dong and our Mah men of Crystal Bakery in Shaunavon are Toisan men. Perhaps they came from the same village area?

[10] Seattle Star, Dec 8 1928 Pg.2

[11] Historic South Downtown Oral Histories: Marie Wong Discusses Her Research on Seattle’s SRO Hotels and the Men and Women Who Lived in Them, historylink.org. Essay 11135. Nov 2 2015. https://www.historylink.org/File/11135

[12] Wong, Marie Rose. Building Tradition: Pan-Asian Seattle and Life in the Residential Hotels. First ed. Seattle, WA: Chin Music Press, 2018. Pg.248

[13] Seattle Star, Feb 12 1931 Pg.1

[14] Famous General Fang Zhenwu 方振武  (Fang Chen/Cheng-Wu) stayed at the Mar Hotel while on his North America leg of a two year anti-Japanese imperialism tour in 1936 (Seattle Star, May 27 1936 Pg.2) . He later stopped in Victoria and Vancouver (see RBSC-ARC-1679-CC-TX-301-23). General Fang was assassinated by the KMT in 1941.

[15] Pg. 236, Building Tradition, Wong

[16] Pg.298, Building Tradition, Wong

[17] Pg.332, Building Tradition, Wong

 

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Posted in Chung, Chung | Lind Gallery, Collections, Exhibitions, Frontpage Exhibition, Highlights, Immigration and Settlement, Research and learning, Uncategorized | Tagged with BC Coast Steamships, Chinatowns, Chinese American History, Chinese Canadian History, Chung Lind Gallery, Correspondence, Guangdong, History, Hotels, Immigration, letters, Mar Dong, photos, Restaurants, Saskatchewan, Seattle, Vancouver, Victoria

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The Northland’s Greatest Disaster – The Sinking of the SS Princess Sophia

Posted on November 29, 2024 @10:13 am by Emily Witherow

By 1918, the world had all but forgotten the Klondike and smaller rushes had lured away Dawson City’s population, leaving small pockets of miners, merchants, tourists, and civil servants along the Yukon River. On October 23rd 1918, the Canadian Pacific Railway steamer SS Princess Sophia arrived in Skagway, Alaska, completing her regular three-day route between Vancouver-Skagway to bring a load of these Northerners ‘outside’ for winter. Her passenger list included Dawson City politicians and merchants, miners, employees of the Yukon Gold company, and their families. 

As the Princess Sophia departed several hours late, perhaps Captain Leonard P. Locke and First Officer Jerry Shaw were looking to make up for lost time. Either way, despite heavy snow and reduced visibility, the Sophia showed no signs of slowing when she entered the Lynn Canal, and at 2:10 am October 24th she ran aground on the rocky Vanderbilt Reef, more than a mile off course. Rescue ships were immediately dispatched to the canal, but as the Sophia wasn’t taking on water and high waves kept rescue ships from approaching, passengers remained onboard for a tense 40 hours, hoping for relief. As a blizzard raged and rescue vessels retreated to shelter on the night of October 25th, the ship began taking on water and radioed desperately for help, but to no avail – other ships captains could hardly see the Sophia, let alone navigate to her. When the US steamer Cedar approached the reef the next morning, all it saw of the Princess Sophia was 40 feet of foremast above the surface of the water. All 343 passengers had perished – 275 men, women, and children, and 68 CPR employees, including 11 Chinese workers, making it the worst maritime disaster in the history of the West Coast. 

Although residents of Seattle, Vancouver, and Victoria reacted to the Sophia’s sinking with shock and horror, the news was quickly overshadowed by the spread of the Spanish flu and by the end of the First World War. In fact, as Vancouver celebrated Armistice Day on November 11, the SS Princess Alice steamed into Vancouver harbour, returning the bodies of Sophia’s passengers to their families for identification and burial. In the North, however, the tragedy created a gaping wound. In the “Northland’s Greatest Disaster,” an already-fading Dawson City lost almost a tenth of its population with every Klondiker knowing at least one person on the Sophia. Many were leading figures in the North’s community, business, industry, and government, including William J. O’Brien, a Territorial and city councilor who was travelling with his wife Sarah and their five children, William Scouse, a wealthy miner credited with taking the first bucket of gold out of Eldorado Creek, and John Zaccarelli, a local merchant.  

 

 

Although the 1918 Princess Sophia tragedy was washed away by news of the Spanish Flu and the long-awaited end of the Great War, its passengers continue to be mourned and commemorated, most recently by a traveling SS Princess Sophia exhibit in 2018 that visited the Maritime Museum of British Columbia and other museums across Alaska and the Yukon. 

For more information on the Yukon’s post-Klondike Gold Rush history and the CPR’s Princess steamers, please visit the Chung Lind Gallery. 

 

Further reading: 

“Submerged in Memory: The Sinking in Cultural Context.” Remembering the Princess Sophia: Titanic of the Pacific West Coast, WordPress, University of Victoria HIST 359. Accessed November 27, 2024. https://onlineacademiccommunity.uvic.ca/ssprincesssophia/victoria-reacts/submerged-in-memory/. 

Coates, Ken and Bill Morrison. The Sinking of the Princess Sophia: Taking the North Down with Her. Toronto: Oxford University Press, 1990. 

Belyk, Robert C. Great Shipwrecks of the Pacific Coast. New York: John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 2001. 

BC Historical Newspapers – For more insight into newspaper reactions, check out the BC Historical Newspapers project, which contains digitized archives from The Province (1894-1910), The Times Colonist (1884-2010), and The Vancouver Sun (1912-2010), as well as this archive of The British Colonist (1858-1980). 

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Posted in Carousel, Chung | Lind Gallery, Collections, Exhibitions, Frontpage Exhibition, Lind | Tagged with BC Coast Steamships, Canadian Pacific Railway, Dawson City, Phil Lind Klondike Gold Rush Collection, Seattle, SS Princess Sophia, Vancouver, Victoria

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Remembering Loo Gee Wing (1861-1923)

Posted on December 3, 2024 @9:50 am by Andrew R. Sandfort-Marchese

Loo Gee Wing: The Forgotten Tycoon Who Helped Shape Chinese Canadian History

This blog post is part of RBSC’s new series spotlighting items in the Phil Lind Klondike Gold Rush Collection and the Wallace B. and Madeline H. Chung Collection.

Part 1: Do you know this man?

Compared to famous early Chinese Canadians like Yip Sang 葉春田, Chang Toy 陳才, and Won Alexander Cumyow 溫金有, very few known the name of Loo Gee Wing 盧梓榮  (or 盧仰喬 Loo Yet Kue.), despite him being one of the richest and most prominent leaders of those early times. His portrait, in fact, hangs in Vancouver’s Chinese Benevolent Association alongside such well-known and respected company, as a “founding father” of Chinese Vancouver, and indeed Chinese Canadian history.

Loo was born around 1861-1863 to a yet unknown woman and Loo Chock Fan 盧卓凡, one of two partners in the massive Kwong Lee Company 廣利號. This firm was the largest corporate landowner in the colonial period after the Hudson Bay Company, and Chock Fan was one of the first four Chinese merchants in British Columbia. Just a few years before his birth, in the summer of 1858, his father’s Hop Kee Company 合記號 brought the first boat of Chinese gold miners to Fort Victoria from San Francisco, starting the first large wave of Chinese migration to British Columbia.[i] His mother, or one of his father’s wives, may have been the first Chinese women to enter what would eventually become Canada. [ii]

 

You can view the historic 1858 deed issued to Loo Chock Fan, perhaps the oldest record of a property owned by a Chinese person in all of Canada, in the Chung Lind Gallery.

 

Loo’s childhood is unclear; we don’t know if he grew up in China or spent his early years in North America. However, there is evidence that he was in San Francisco managing the massive Hop Kee Co headquartered at 617 Dupont St, in his father’s absence in Victoria until at least 1885.[iii] At that time, Hop Kee was one of the largest Chinese companies in North America.[iv] In 1887 he bought out the smaller, but still titanic, Kwong Lee firm from bankruptcy due to family and business disputes. He then relocated to Victoria to manage the large operations, traveling frequently between both key Chinese ports of North America. Kwong Lee Co supplied dry goods and labour for operations up the Fraser Canyon to Yale, Quesnel, and then beyond to Barkerville, netting a fortune in the early years of settlement and mining.[v]

 

According to Head Tax payment data, most Loo 盧 surnamed people in Canada had origins in the counties of Jang Shing 增城, Hoksan 鶴山, Namhoi 南海, and Shundak 順德 in Guangdong/Canton province.[vi] These were places that didn’t send tons of men to Canada, so they formed a very small group compared to people from the Szeyup, or Four Counties 四邑, that formed the majority.[vii] More men may have come from the smaller sending-areas during the 1850-1885 gold rush period, but are unrecorded. Victoria seems to be the hub for this clan surname, as well as eventual farming operations in the Okanagan run by Jang Shing countrymen, including famous hockey player Larry Kwong’s father.

By the 1890s Loo was firmly part of the merchant elite of Victoria, forming a business and political alliance with Lee Mongkow 李夢九 (translator, comprador, and CPR ticket agent), Chu Lai 徐全禮 (Hakka merchant supplier) and others from non-Sze Yup origins. In 1892 — alongside these merchant brokers and others from the business community — Loo offered a $300 dollar reward to find out who had forged the names of his faction members on a notice posted on a public bulletin board, hiring someone to kill prominent translator Yip Wing and another man. This shows that tensions were brewing between factions based on place of origin that would later continue to grow even larger.[viii] The community presented a united face, when “the Chinese Bismarck” Li Hung Chang visited Vancouver, with Loo attending alongside Chinese big-wigs from across the Pacific Northwest.[ix]

Part 2: Building an Empire

Loo Gee Wing naturalized as a British subject in 1895, and one of his wives Jsong Mong Lin did so in 1899. She signed her documents in English and had been in Canada for at least ten years. She formed a part of the Kwong Lee business empire in BC, signing partnership documents in her own right, including in 1897 for the formation of a dry goods and general store branch in Barkerville called Kwong Lee Wing Kee 廣利榮記.[x] The building for this store still stands in the large National Historic site. Hydraulic gold mining in the Cariboo region for the Loo family firm also operated under the Kwong Lee Wing Kee Company name. Kwong Lee had business with numerous copper and gold mines across the province throughout its existence. In addition, the Point Hydraulic Gold Mining Co. which was active in the Slough Creek claims near Barkerville, was also managed for a time by Loo’s son Leon J Loo 盧宗亮.[xi]

 

There are many items relating to Kwong Lee Company activities in many collections through UBC Rare Books and Special Collections. We display some documents and artifacts at the Chung Lind Gallery.

 

In 1897, Loo Gee Wing submitted an application to the privy council through the Minister of Trade and Commerce requesting that when he sent his children to China for education, upon their return to Canada they would not pay the head tax. He listed his children as follows: Loo Chung Sheung and Loo Chung Leung, twins both of age 11; Loo Yuo Bet, age 9; Loo Chung Key, age 6; Loo Part Wo, age 2; and Loo Gem/Gein Mon, age 1. All children recorded as Canadian-born. The Minister requested the Privy Council approve the request and “that assurances be given to Loo Gee Wing that on return of the children to Canada the amount of the Capitulation Tax [Head Tax] payable under the existing law will be remitted [re-payed] on proper application and evidence of identity.”[xii] This shows Loo already was a known quantity to the federal government, powerful enough to get this direct line to the top, and wealthy enough to pay up front for so many head tax costs.

 

Not just accumulating wealth and power in Canada, Loo Gee Wing accompanied the famous late-Qing reformer Kang Youwei 康有爲 to the east as his translator in 1899. At that time he was a director of the Chinese Consolidated Benevolent Association in Victoria, and still managing Kwong Lee and Co.[xiii] The Chinese Empire Reform Association (CERA) was one of the first mass political parties in Chinese history, and deeply connected to the elite merchants of Western Canada. Loo and the Kang party were the talk of the town in Montreal that May, with many remarks on Loo’s fine silk attire, perfect English, and impeccable Victorian manners.[xiv] Loo eventually became disillusioned with the Empire Reform movement by later that Summer, when Kang failed to get support in Europe. At that point he left the organization, returning to Victoria to try to get Lee Mongkow to distance the Victoria merchants from Kang’s plans but was shunned by powerful Reform partisans. Eventually unknown enemies tried to assassinate him multiple times.[xv]

 

In the early 1900s, Loo invested in three things that brought even more money to many of BC’s Chinese merchant dynasties: Vancouver real estate, labour contracting, gambling operations, and opium.[xvi] Each of them had him involved in legal cases both inside and outside the Chinese community, including bribing police and attempted murder. In this period, Loo seems to relocate the center of his operations to Vancouver, where the Chinese community was growing on the land between the Burrard Inlet and False Creek; future Chinatown. He built a Chinese opera theatre and patronized troupes as an important contributor to the rise of early Cantonese opera in Canada.[xvii]

 

Loo remained active in fights between those with Szeyup origins and his minority community. This evidenced by a letter in our collection from 1903 about his “bullying and threats” sent to powerful Vancouver Szeyup merchant Yip Sang, asking for his support in the struggle.[xviii] Around the same time, the Loo residence on Fisgard St. caught fire in a case of arson, shortly after an attempt to blow it up had failed.[xix] Leon Loo, one of his elder sons, courageously broke through the wooden walls at great risk to his own life to save his mother, brother, and cousin from the flames.[xx]

 

Apparently not fazed, Loo backed an attempt led by non-Szeyup merchants to break the hold of the Yip clan over the corrupt Vancouver Chinese immigration machine. The Yips were CPR ticket agents, translators, and connected to Vancouver’s white elite, and had the ability to prevent entry of Chinese who were not their clients. Using accusations of fraud lobbed by rakish instigator and fixer David C. Lew 廖鴻翔, their enemies tried to unseat their control of the growing city and Chinatown.[xxi] Not incidentally, Lew was a manager for Loo Gee Wing and in his own words considered him “like a father…he raised me” and was close to Loo’s son Claude Loo Chung Key.[xxii]

 

These internal fights over control of illegal immigration and “middleman” positions like broker and translator exploded onto the national political stage in 1911, heightening anti-Chinese sentiment still simmering from the 1907 Vancouver riots.[xxiii] Loo Gee Wing testified before the commission alongside Chang Toy with the English Press reporting:

 

“This morning the two wealthiest celestials in British Columbia appeared, Loo Gee Wing and Sam Kee, their combined wealth exceeding a million dollars…The remarkable difference between Loo and Sam, the former dressed like a tailor’s model in the suit of a prosperous Englishman down to his patent leathers, while Sam still retains his Chinese costume and speaks only in his native tongue.”[xxiv]

 

Loo Gee Wing built some of his most lasting and famous buildings during this time. They include: the Sun Ah Hotel Building, famous for the Ho Ho Restaurant, in 1911, the Chinese Theatre, presently home of Dragon Boat BC offices, in 1909, the first two stories of the Wong Benevolent Association Building in 1908, and the Loo Building, present-day Abbott Mansions, in 1909. The latter construction led to many courtroom battles, with Loo trying to construct this massive edifice in spite of permit restrictions by short charging or avoiding his suppliers and builders. This eventually culminated in an appeals court case.[xxv] For these and other buildings, Loo seems to have had the mentality to dare the city and contractors to come for him, preparing a strong and well-funded legal team to fight back. This pattern of shady behavior ran in the family apparently, with Yorkshire Guarantees and Securities Co. suing Loo Gee Wing’s son Claude Loo for issuing a bounced cheque for $2574 in 1915.[xxvi] Loo would assign leases and property ownership to relatives to avoid debtors, though practices like this appear in records of other prominent Vancouver and Victoria merchant families.

Part 3: The End of an Era

This powerful family who could easily sweep away legal obstacles would not last. Loo Gee Wing’s capable son Leon J. Loo died unexpectedly in 1918, a personal loss that stripped him of one of his chosen successors.[xxvii] Loo himself then died in 1923, leaving an estate valued at $245,000 dollars (4.3 million in 2024). In a twisted reflection of what Loo himself had done in picking up the Kwong Lee Co in the aftermath of a family feud, his own vast family now fought over their inheritance. His estate had 17 named beneficiaries, but only two sons, Loo Chung Sheung 盧宗向 and Claude Loo Chung Key remained in Canada. To their horror, the vast fortune evaporated when the will was probated (submitted before the court). This was due to huge mortgages on the many buildings Loo had constructed, debtors calling from all across BC and the Pacific, outstanding tax debts, judicial payment orders, and even much of his property being seized by the federal government.[xxviii] The net valuation as a result fell to just $28,274, with one sixth set aside for his wife alone, with an additional $300 dollars for her maintenance.

 

Claude Loo, the perennial family troublemaker, then contested the will in court, alleging his father was not of sound mind and that he had forgotten to include the Barkerville gold mines and his bank account in his assets.[xxix] Claude also claimed that at the end he was disoriented, unable to clothe himself, ordered 12 meals a day, and was “indulging in vulgar and foolish talk with his servants.” As the family fought, Loo Gee Wing’s body lay embalmed in the Nunn & Thompson Funeral Parlor awaiting transport back to China. This writer does not know if Loo Gee Wing ever made it back home, but his body sat there for over four years at least.[xxx] In the meantime, Loo’s fixer, the fiery courtroom battler David Lew, was gunned down in September 1924 in what is still one of Vancouver’s longest cold cases. Claude Loo soon lost his fight for the will, and seemingly left Canada permanently in 1926 with only his father’s funeral home and estate lawyer as contacts in immigration documents.

Despite this sad end, Loo Gee Wing’s legacy does live on. He was a founding director of the Vancouver Chinese Benevolent Association and a builder whose business empire shaped our image of Vancouver Chinatown today. His businesses and family left traces in archives across the province, including the UBC Chung Collection and the Barkerville Historical Society. As an early “pioneer” he was close to the center of all Chinese Canadian historical moments from the mid-1800s till the beginning of the Exclusion era. While some of his family seemingly did return to Canada during that period, they never reclaimed the prominence they formerly had.[xxxi] By the 1920s and 30s the monopolies of the early merchant dynasties like the Yips, Loos, Lee Kee, and Chang Toy families were losing centrality. In their place rose a new generation of Chinatown businessmen, local-born brokers, and western-educated elites

 

Endnotes

[i] Zhongping, Chen. “Vancouver Island and the Chinese Diaspora in the Transpacific World, 1788-1918.” BC Studies no. 204 (2019): 45-65.

[ii] The British Colonist, March 1 1860 Accessed 20/11/2024 https://www.mhso.ca/chinesecanadianwomen/en/database.php?c=1512

[iii] Victoria, B.C. 12 Mar 1885 3c Insurance Cover to Loo Gee Wing https://allnationsstampandcoin.com/victoria-b-c-12-mar-1885-3c-insurance-cover-to-loo-gee-wing-sfr/

[iv] San Francisco Chronicle, Aug 26 1883 Pg.8

[v] Tzu-I Chung, “Kwong Lee & Company and Early Trans-Pacific Trade: From Canton, Hong Kong, to Victoria and Barkerville,” B.C. Studies, 185 (Spring 2015), 137-161.

[vi] This was based off the author’s original research and assessment of head tax databases.

[vii] Loo Gee Wing made a large donation in establishing a benevolent society for those with Zengcheng/Jang Shing origins 增邑仁安堂公. This was done in partnership perhaps with Loo Nai Tong 盧乃堂 of Chee Jone Wo Co 致中和 of 67 E Pender or Yen Nam Tong 87 E Pender St)

[viii] Victoria Daily Colonist, Tues Nov 8 1892

[ix] Vancouver Semi-Weekly World, Sept 15 1896 Pg 5

[x] Atkin, John. Coupland, Andy “Loo Gee Wing” buildingvancouver, blog, accessed 20/11/2024, https://buildingvancouver.wordpress.com/2011/08/22/loo-gee-wing/

[xi] Quesnel Cariboo Observer, May 5 1917, Pg. A1

[xii] Privy Council Minutes. 7 Jan-12 Jan 1897. Library and Archives Canada. RG 2, Series 1, Vol. 715. http://central.bac-lac.gc.ca/.redirect?app=ordincou&id=163519&lang=eng

[xiii] Chen, Zhongping 2023. Transpacific Reform and Revolution: The Chinese in North America, 1898-1918. 1st ed. Stanford, California: Stanford University Press Pg.31

[xiv] Montreal Star, May 13 1899 Pg.11

[xv] Chen, Transpacific Reform Pg. 34

[xvi] Loo Was head of the operations of the Man On Company, 330 Carrall St, which traded labour contracts and opium. Documents relating to this viewed by author in private papers of the Ian Lee family, accessed July 11 2022.

[xvii] Ng, Wing Chung. The Rise of Cantonese Opera. 1st ed. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2015. Pg. 155-157

[xviii] Letter to Yip Chun Tien complaining somebody’s evil behavior, 1903, Yip Sang Collection. doi:http://dx.doi.org/10.14288/1.0113998. UBC Open Collections.

Original Format: City of Vancouver Archives. Yip family and Yip Sang Ltd. fonds. Correspondence. Older letters in Chinese. AM1108-S2-3-083.

[xix] Victoria Daily Times Apr 25 1907 pg.1

[xx] Daily News Advertiser April 26 1907 Pg.1.

[xxi]Mar, Lisa. Brokering Belonging: Chinese in Canada’s Exclusion Era, 1885-1945. 1st ed. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2010. Pg. 22

[xxii] 1911 Immigration Commission: Vol 2, Chung Collection, Box 130 folder 18, Pg.839. Pg.968

[xxiii] David Lew interpreted the 1907 Riot commission before W.L.M King. In the aftermath of the 1908 Opium Act which King wrote after the riots, Loo also lost access to the vast revenues of legal opium factories in Victoria and Vancouver, which numbered about 15 at their height. David Lew then led the 1911 immigration corruption debate.

[xxiv] The Province Jan 04 1908 Pg.4

[xxv] Loo Gee Wing v. A.F. Amor (1909), 10 W.L.R. 383 (B.C. Co. Ct.)

[xxvi] Sept 30 1915, Vancouver Daily World, pg 12

[xxvii] Leon J Loo Chung Leung 盧宗亮 was born in Victoria in 1885 with twin brother Chung Sheung, and an active manager in Loo Gee Wing’s businesses. He was recorded as entering the country March 2 1902 in the Head-Tax General Register (probably after studying abroad). He travelled to HK October 1916, using a head-tax certificate even though he was native-born (CI.5 #33702, Vic. NB CI 9#219) He was issued a replacement head tax certificate with photo when he returned March 5 1917 (CI 36#12404). Leon Loo died young at age 33 on Oct 3 1918. Grave at Mountainview has nothing but English name, Chinese name, and death date. Interestingly, someone registered under his identity for a Native-born CI 9 to go to China in Oct 1923 (Vic. NB CI9#828). Under instructions from the Chief Controller of Chinese, Nov 12 1930, this CI 9 permission was removed, i.e. canceled, preventing return. This indicates that it was fraudulent and had been caught.

[xxviii] The Province Aug 4 1923 Pg.21

[xxix] The Province, Sept 26 1923 pg.11

[xxx] The Province May 30 1926 Pg.30

[xxxi] Loo Chung/Jung Yat 盧宗日. CI 44#57901, born in Vancouver Oct 18 1918, left as a child age 4 to China, returned July 17 1935 under status of student to Vancouver. In 1946 he was 27 years old and living in North Vancouver working as a merchant in the food industry. That year he married Chu Shut Far, daughter of Victoria merchant Chu Kum Wah.

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Posted in Chung, Chung | Lind Gallery, Collections, EarlyBC, Exhibitions, Frontpage Exhibition, Immigration and Settlement, Research and learning | Tagged with Businesses, Chinese Canadian History, Chung Collection, Chung Lind Gallery, collections, Early Vancouver, Early Victoria, Family History, History, Kwong Lee Co., Leon Loo, Loo Gee Wing, photos

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26 Above Bonanza

Posted on November 20, 2024 @11:13 am by Emily Witherow

This blog post is part of RBSC’s new series spotlighting items in the Phil Lind Klondike Gold Rush Collection and the Wallace B. and Madeline H. Chung Collection.

When Phil Lind’s grandfather, John (Johnny) Grieve Lind, arrived in what was then part of the Northwest Territories in June 1894, he first traveled to a mining town on Fortymile River. Following the discovery of gold on Bonanza Creek in August 1896, Johnny and several business partners purchased interests in a dozen mining claims in the Klondike – including one of his most famous and wealthy claims, 26 Above Bonanza, pictured below.[1] 

With his partners, Johnny bought half of 26 Above in January 1897 for $12,000 cash (around $360,000 today). To prepare it for mining, they purchased lumber, provisions, nails, and tools at high prices and built sluice boxes, flumes, dams, a food tent, and a cabin. By spring 1897, they employed 200 men working two shifts per day. Their payroll alone cost their business $4,000 a day, and Johnny recalls that the returns were “at times enormous and at other times hardly anything.”[2] Sometimes, however, the pay dirt was fabulously rich – in a single day, 26 Above once yielded over $50,000 in gold dust and nuggets. For every dollar Johnny and his partners made, they re-invested it into other claims, until they grew to be large operators; in February 1898, they purchased the other half of 26 Above for $200,000. 

 

In July 1897, when Dawson’s nouveau riche arrived in Seattle and San Francisco carrying half a million in Klondike gold and setting off a mad stampede north, they also carried some of the gold mined from 26 Above Bonanza. Johnny, who cashed out of the Klondike in 1902 and established a cement company in St. Mary’s, Ontario, with his mining partners, was always proud of his role in helping to ignite the famous Klondike Gold Rush (1897-1898). 

 

This image is currently on display at the Chung Lind Gallery. For more information or to plan your visit, please visit the Chung Lind Gallery website. 

  

[1] Mining claims were staked in relation to the first claim, or Discovery claim, on each creek. As Johnny wrote in his family memoir; “Discovery did not have a number, but was always know[n] as discovery. The first claim downstream was No. 1 below, next No. 2 and so [on], as far as they were staked.” John Grieve Lind, 40 Mile River and the Klondike [Unpublished Memoir] (1983), 24. 

[2] Lind, 40 Mile River and the Klondike, 25.

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Posted in Carousel, Chung | Lind Gallery, Collections, Exhibitions, Frontpage Exhibition, Lind, Research and learning | Tagged with Chung Lind Gallery, History, Klondike Gold Rush, Mining, Phil Lind Klondike Gold Rush Collection

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The Wide World of Queer Travel

Posted on November 13, 2024 @8:42 am by cshriver

Many thanks to guest blogger Quinn Monleon for contributing the below post! Quinn is a graduate student at the UBC School of Information and completed a co-op position with Rare Books and Special Collections at UBC Library this past summer.

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As Project Librarian at RBSC during a summer co-op from May to August 2024, I undertook the task of organizing and processing a significant donation from Rick Hurlbut, a former travel agent operating in Vancouver and specializing in LGBTQ+ travel and tourism from the early 1990s to the late 2010s. The donation consisted of 15 loosely organized bankers boxes which contained an assortment of over 3,500 LGBTQ+ travel and tourism-related items including ephemera, artifacts, business correspondence and other records, monographs, serials, and audiovisual resources from the 1970s to the late 2010s.

The Rick Hurlbut LGBTQ+ travel, tourism and hospitality collection offers a unique window into the private circles of LGBTQ+ tourists and travelers and the ways in which they connected with one another before the internet was widely used. At first, I had little knowledge of this specialized travel industry, but the more I examined each item in this collection, I discovered the remarkable level of detail and specificity that characterized this industry. Also, based on the sheer volume of materials collected on locations such as Palm Springs, Fort Lauderdale, Key West, and Puerto Vallarta, it became clear that these were “queer destinations,” at least historically.

I wanted to share some of the materials in the collection that stood out as highlights; these are only a few of the types of materials found in this very diverse collection.

 

The Rick Hurlbut LGBTQ+ travel, tourism, and hospitality collection showcases the diversity of materials available for research at Rare Books and Special Collections, and adds an important collection for research into the material history of 20th century LGBTQ+ travel.

To access the collection, contact RBSC about making a research visit. You can also learn about other resources related to 2SLGBTQIA+ community and organizations through our 2SLGBTQIA+ History and Archives research guide.

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Part 1: The Mah family of Crystal Bakery-Letters and Legacies

Posted on November 4, 2024 @4:07 pm by Andrew R. Sandfort-Marchese

This blog post is part of RBSC’s new series spotlighting items in the Phil Lind Klondike Gold Rush Collection and the Wallace B. and Madeline H. Chung Collection. This Part One of two long-form blogs.

 

Thank you to Kelly Attrell and Kathleen East from the Grand Coteau Heritage & Cultural Centre for helping share this story.

 

Often when people ask me about doing archival historical work, they think that it involves sifting through boring stacks of musty papers for hours on end, just cataloging, sorting and writing dates down. While this can sometimes be part of the work, the core of archives are the people and memories they hold. The papers, photos, and artifacts within these collections allow us a window into individual lives, a glimpse of our shared humanity.

 

One of the great gifts of the Dr. Wallace B. and Madeline H. Chung Collection is that there is an abundance of opportunities to have these personal encounters, with countless stories from around the world found in the over 25,000 materials stored. While some of our greatest treasures are currently on display at the Chung | Lind Gallery, I wanted to allow you a peek into the vaults with a humble letter that captures the intimacy of archival encounters.

 

This letter, posted in 1940 from the town of Shaunavon, Saskatchewan, the “Oasis of the Prairies,” challenges the idea that the Chung Collection is only a BC collection, and that Chinese Canadian history is only about big cities. While we cannot identify the sender, it was mailed to Mr. Harry K. Mar Dong in Seattle, most likely a relative or clansmen, showing how interconnected these networks of migration and business were. The letter itself concerns money, which was always a pressing concern, especially in a society still dealing with the aftermath of the Great Depression, and particularly for Chinese migrants living under the oppressive 1923 Chinese Exclusion Act. But this made me wonder, what is this Crystal Bakery, and who are some of the men behind this letter?

 

 

The Men of the Crystal Bakery

I began my exploration at the online resources of the Grand Couteau Heritage and Cultural Centre in Shaunavon, cross referencing them with digitized documents from Canada’s vast Chinese immigration surveillance apparatus. I came to discover that Crystal Bakery was opened on November 6, 1930, by Mah Yock Cheong 馬毓祥 and Mah Ark Shim 馬德深, who had been in the Shaunavon area since the 1920s.[i] Both journeyed from the same village in Toisan county in Southern China, to Canada in 1918 and 1921 respectively.[ii] There were many men from the Mah clan employed or share owners in the Crystal Bakery throughout its history. From the 1920s-50s, Shaunavon’s Chinese men worked in industries common to bachelor men on the prairies: Chinese Canadian cafes and restaurants.[iii]

Other businesses in Shaunavon run by Chinese people included tailors, laundries, hotels, and of course special stores like confectionaries and bakeries. Most of the Chinese men in the town came from regions that sent a lot of their sons to North America, such as Toisan 台山, Hoiping 開平, and Hoksan 鶴山 counties. They were well connected to other men in the towns and cities of the region, many of them being village cousins and relatives, often meeting for special holidays, recreation, and to share a meal. These networks were critical in that harsh Prairie winters, as well as keeping folks connected to major Chinatowns across Canada. People, goods, and services were facilitated by the ties of shared town of origin, clan, schoolmates, sworn brotherhood, business partnership, and friendship.[iv]

 

In April 1940, the same spring our letter was written, a glowing column was written about the Crystal Bakery in the local Shaunavon Standard Newspaper:

“During the winter, the Crystal’s modern equipment turns out an average of 500 loaves per day…In hot weather the daily output of the bakery rises to an average of 700 and more loaves per day. Capacity of the steam-heated oven is 210 loaves at a time and the bread is baked at a temperature of 350 degrees F. Alongside the oven is a warming oven where the bread rises and in a separate room are the cooling racks where the product cools for market.  An average of 400 lbs. flour per day or 300 sacks per week is used.  Bread is baked six days per week, the idle day being Saturday since there are no trains on Sunday.  Modern, electric, machinery is used for mixing, etc. Bread from the Crystal is shipped as far east as Meyronne and Assiniboia, west as far as Senate and Manyberries and all intermediate points, as well as to towns on the southline.”[v]

Many men across Canada thought about their hometowns and families with significant fear and anxiety during World War Two. The men of the Crystal Bakery collected $10 dollars to be donated to the Chinese War Relief Fund drive that was organized in nearby Swift Current, SK, in 1943, most likely sending more donations on other occasions.[vi] As the War continued, Chinese community leaders, working alongside allies across Canada, began to advocate for the end of the Exclusion Act and for civil rights for all. They were later joined by some Chinese Canadian veterans, who took the fight to Ottawa.

 

In 1949, after the repeal of the Chinese Exclusion Act in 1947, Mah Yock Cheong was one of four Chinese men to be the first Chinese granted Canadian citizenship in the Shaunavon region. That cold February day they braved snow-blocked roads to finally be recognized as equals in a country that had been their home for so long.[vii] Now the men of Crystal Bakery entered a new era, the period of family reunification after the repeal of the cruel separating provisions of the Exclusion Act.

 

Despite the act’s demise, Canada still maintained a system of race and nation-based quotas that kept Chinese families trapped in a web of paperwork, delays, and even invasive interrogations and medical examinations in order to come together again. For Mah Yock Cheong, the same year he got his citizenship, he was able to bring his wife May and teenage son Danny through the maze of regulations to join him in Shaunavon after thirteen years of separation. He had left China four months before his son was born, not uncommon for many bachelor men, and had not seen them since. He explained to The Standard’s reporter that “he was very happy that when the opportunity came for them to sail to San Francisco, their passports were in perfect order and all other details had been attended to. ‘There is too much trouble in China, Mr. Mah said, ‘this country will be a lot better for them.’”[viii]

 

Demand for baked goods was booming in those post-war years, especially for staples like bread. The Crystal Bakery also became famous for its donuts and cream puffs. Sweet treats that had once been unaffordable luxuries during the Depression, became weekly indulgences for those who benefited from Post-War prosperity. With new help from his son Danny and Mah relatives who had also reunified with their families, Yock Cheong was able to install new modern equipment in 1953, like a slicer that cut 400 loaves an hour, and a fully automatic bread wrapper that could package over 800 loaves per hour.[ix] Responding to increased demand, the Crystal Bakery extended family of workers and partners still had to work extremely hard. Sadly, Yock Cheong would pass away suddenly of a heart attack in 1958.[x] He had been in Canada for forty of his sixty years on earth and was sorely missed by his community of Shaunavon that he had supported through the hard Depression years.

 

 

The bakery was put up for sale in 1958, after his death but was purchased and operated by longtime partner King Yee 余景, who had known Yock Cheong since the 1920s.[xi] After the passing of Yee and later Chan Wah Sen 陳華銓 , another partner in the bakery for many years, the bakery was closed permanently in 1970 (Shaunavon Standard, October 7, 1964, and July 22, 1970).[xii] It became an appliance store, and then was vacant for a time, before being torn down at the end of August in 1986. The Chan, Mah, and Yee families remained in Shaunavon and in Saskatchewan for years to come, continuing to participate in many businesses and community-oriented activities.[xiii]

 

Please join us for part two of this blog exploring Harry K. Mar Dong, the letter’s recipient, and connections to Seattle’s rich Chinese American history.

 

Footnotes and References

[i] “Chinese C.I. 44 forms and index cards” 1923-1946, Microfilm, Canadian Immigration Service, RG76-D-27, T-16181, Image 163, CI 44#46558.

“Chinese C.I. 44 forms and index cards” 1923-1946, Microfilm, Canadian Immigration Service, RG76-D-27, T-16181, Image 468, CI44#46860

[ii] Their hometown: Taishan (Toisan) County 台山 Sanhe (Samhop) Town 三合鄉 Lidong (Laitung) Township 黎洞鄉新華里 Xinhua (Sunwah) Hamlet

[iii] Details about aforementioned: Mah Ark Shim “Sam” 馬德深 also known as 馬世孚 (Grave Name) born in the town above, Ark Shim immigrated in 1921, and spent time in the Frontier, SK and Shaunavon area before opening the Crystal Bakery. He lived in Halifax in 1949, according to immigration documents, and then moved to Calgary in 1955. Was later reunited with his wife Mah Fung Siu 馬余鳳秀; his wife and three children, William, Helen, and Anne all lived in Canada when he passed. Mah died in Calgary in 1977, and was buried in Queen’s Park Cemetery.

[iv] Marshall, Alison R. 2014. Cultivating Connections : The Making of Chinese Prairie Canada UBC Press., Cheung, Helen Kwan Yee. 2022 Mercantile Mobility: Chinese Merchants in Western Canada University of Alberta Library.

[v] Unknown. 1940. “The Crystal Bakery Supplies Large Area.” The Shaunavon Standard, Apr 10.

[vi] Unknown. 1943. “China Fund Going Up.” The Regina Leader-Post, Sep 9, 11.

[vii] Unknown. 1949. “Chinese Receive Citizenship.” The Shaunavon Standard, Feb 24.

[viii] Unknown. 1949. “Three Chinese Families are Re-united Here.” The Shaunavon Standard, Dec 15.

[ix] Unknown. 1953. “Crystal Bakery Instals [sic] New Equipment.” The Shaunavon Standard, Oct 15

[x] Unknown. 1958. “Rites for ‘Slim’ Mah Tomorrow.” The Shaunavon Standard, Mar 19

Posthumous (Gravestone) name is 馬世纘

[xi] Unknown. 1958 “Crystal Bakery Sale.” The Regina Leader-Post, Sept 25, 36.

Yue King “E.King” Yee King 余景 Imm. Docs. CI 44#8593, CI 36#15858, multiple CI 9s. From Sanhe Township 三合鄉  Taishan County 台山. Born in 1889, Yee arrived in Canada in 1911. He worked as a farm hand in the Steveston, BC area, contracted through the famous Lee Yune/Yuen Co. before coming to Shaunavon to work at the Royal Cafe alongside Yock Cheong, then becoming a owner-partner at the Crystal Bakery. Ran the bakery after Yock Cheong’s death. Brought part of the family over after repeal, and was related to Mr. Mah Poy who worked at the Ohio Café in town, and who had himself brought his wife back from China in 1955 to Shaunavon. Yee King died in 1961.

[xii] Unknown. 1964 “Services Held for Joe Chan.” The Shaunavon Standard, Aug 12, Unknown. 1970 “Announcement: Crystal Bakery Now Closed.” The Shaunavon Standard, Oct 7 1964

Chan Wah Sen “Joe” 陳華銓, Imm. Docs. CI 44#3340, CI5#88604. Born in Taishan County 台山 Sanhe Township 三合鄉 Gangmei Village 崗美村 in 1901 and immigrated to Canada in 1918. Worked in the Weyburn district of Saskatchewan, operating cafes in Ponteix, Orkney, and Limerick SK before coming to Shaunavon and working at the Crystal Bakery in 1942. Married in 1924 in China, after he traveled back during the year of Exclusion Act registration. He returned to China in 1947, the year of repeal. He got citizenship in 1949, reunified with wife and one year old son the same year, and worked at Crystal Bakery, most likely until his death in 1964.

[xiii] This is further reinforced by volunteer Kathleen  and materials in the GCHCC Archives.

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Posted in Chung, Chung | Lind Gallery, Collections, Exhibitions, Frontpage Exhibition, Immigration and Settlement | Tagged with Bakery, Chung Collection, Chung Lind Gallery, Family History, Guangdong, History, letters, Saskatchewan, show and tell

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Map of Guangdong Province, 1924

Posted on October 30, 2024 @3:04 pm by Andrew R. Sandfort-Marchese

This blog post is part of RBSC’s new series spotlighting items in the Phil Lind Klondike Gold Rush Collection and the Wallace B. and Madeline H. Chung Collection. 

Welcome to our second short-form blog highlighting items from the Dr. Wallace B. Chung and Madeline H. Chung Collection. This week we will be introducing one of the of many large and oversized materials we have in the collection: a historic map of Guangdong Province (廣東省).

 

 

This vibrant and colourful map was published in February 1924 by the Commercial Press of Shanghai (上海商務印書館), the first modern publishing house in China, which is still running today. It belonged to Vancouver’s prominent Yip family of merchants associated with the Wing Sang Co. Guangdong province, also known as Canton or Kwantung province during this period, is the ancestral origin place of the vast majority of Chinese Canadians before the immigration reform of the late 1960s, including the Yips. Similarly, many generations have emigrated from Guangdong to other places overseas, including from the Chaoshan (潮汕) and Hainan (海南) regions to Southeast Asia, as well as to other parts of North and South America. Maps like these are a valuable resource for rediscovering family roots.

A particularly cool detail of this map includes the line showing the Sun Ning Railway (新寧鐵路) one of China’s first railways, and entirely financed by Chinese rather than colonial capital. Its main proponent, Chin Gee Hee (陳宜禧), was a titan of the Pacific Northwest Chinese community, especially in Washington. Also indicated is the Chao Chow-Swatow Railway, the very first Chinese owned line, that was favourably supported by overseas donations from Southeast Asian Chinese. Sadly, both these important railroads would be torn up and destroyed during the 2nd Sino-Japanese war in the late 1930s.

We welcome you to explore these themes and connections between migration, memory, transportation, and colonial conflict in the Chung Lind Gallery, as well as through the Rare Books and Special Collections Reading Room.

 

Further Reading

Willard G. Jue, “Chin Gee-hee, Chinese Pioneer Entrepreneur in Seattle and Toishan”, The Annals of the Chinese Historical Society of the Pacific Northwest, 1983, 31:38.

Hsu, Madeline Y. (2000). Dreaming of Gold, Dreaming of Home: Transnationalism and Migration Between the United States and South China, 1882-1943. Stanford University Press

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Posted in Chung, Chung | Lind Gallery, Collections, Exhibitions, Frontpage Exhibition, Immigration and Settlement, Research and learning | Tagged with Chung Collection, Chung Lind Gallery, Digitization, Guangdong, Maps

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