Lunar
New Year began this year on February
7th, ushering in the Year of the Rat. In
years gone by, there was a large Chinese
community in Revelstoke, and it often
celebrated the New Year in grand style.
The Kootenay Star newspaper of
February 10, 1894 described that year’s
celebrations in Revelstoke as the most
elaborate ever, stating that they
started at midnight on Sunday and
continued until Tuesday night.
Firecrackers were the main feature of
the festivities, with colored rockets
and dragons exploding in the night. That
year, the Chinese community spent $800
on the celebrations, with
the
small firecracker rockets costing 15
cents each, while the big firework
dragons cost $15 each. On the Tuesday
afternoon, merchant Wah Chung unfurled a
large Chinese flag at his store on Front
Street, and three large sleighs
decorated with flags drove members of
the Chinese community to the railway
station and back again, with
firecrackers being set off all along the
route. The festivities ended with
suppers at Wah Chung’s and Lun Ching’s
stores, with presents given to all white
visitors.
In this Year of the Rat, the Revelstoke
Museum and Archives and the Revelstoke
Railway Museum are opening two major
exhibits, to be unveiled during Railway
Days, August 15th and 16th. The “Chinese
Legacies” exhibits will explore both the
contribution of Chinese laborers during
the construction of the Canadian Pacific
Railway at the Railway Museum, and the
subsequent Chinese community that
developed in Revelstoke at the Museum &
Archives.
We
have been uncovering some fascinating
stories and we look forward to sharing
them through these exhibits. Several
thousand Chinese men worked on the CPR
mainline from Port Moody to
Craigellachie, and it is estimated that
between 600 and 2,220 of these workers
died as a result of accidents, disease,
and starvation. The Inland Sentinel
newspaper, originally published at Yale,
has many articles about the Chinese
laborers, and while many people believed
that their presence was necessary to
construct the railway, they were greatly
resented by the white population, and
suffered a great deal of discrimination.
Their wages were half those of white men
doing the same jobs, and they were often
exploited by their crew bosses.
Once the Canadian Pacific Railway was
completed in
1885,
many of the Chinese laborers were left
destitute. Quite a few of them settled
in Revelstoke, where they
worked mainly as cooks, servants,
laundrymen, and laborers. In 1901, there
were 113 Chinese people living in
Revelstoke, close to one-tenth of the
population. It is interesting to note
that of those 113 people; only one was a
woman, although half of the men were
married. This was a result of the head
tax imposed on Chinese immigrants,
making it very costly for men to bring
their wives to Canada. The community was
a vibrant one, however, and continued to
thrive for many years.
