1 janv. 1885 - The Chinese Head Tax

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After the completion of the railroad, the government went to many lengths to create policies that would exclude Chinese immigrants. In 1885, the Canadian government introduced the head tax. THis was a fee Chinese immigrants had to pay to enter Canada from 1885 to 1923. The head t was set at $50 per person in 1885, which is equal to about $1,222.50 today and steadily increased. The government introduced policies that continued to raise the head tax. By 1903 the head tax became $500 which is equal to about $13,222.96 today and the average pay of Chinese workers was $1.00 per day. The high cost of head tax meant that only one family member could come to Canada, leaving behind the rest of the family.

Many of the Chinese workers could afford the coast to return to China, so they moved to cities across Canada to find work. They settled mostly in the west but were not welcomed to the new cities they settle in. Most were turned down at job interviews and denied job opportunities. This caused many Chinese workers to become entrepreneurs. They worked in laundries, cafes, and restaurants as it did not cost a lot of money to open a laundry of cafe business. From the 1890s, cities across Canada began developing their own Chinatowns. These towns were safe areas in which Chinese people could attend social gatherings, buy Chinese goods and live and work.

The Chinese people were excluded from social clubs run by white people, they created there own and ran their own social gatherings. One of the clubs formed was the Chinese Canadian Club which was formed in 1914 by a group of young Chinese men in Victoria, BC. The founding members called themselves Chinese Canadian, this was the first time this term was used to identify Canadian-born people of Chinese descent.The largest Chinatown is in Vancouver and today, about 70 percent of the Chinese Canadain live in either Toronto or Vancouver.

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