An Exploration of Historic Prejudice: The Chinese

The Chinese began coming to British Columbia in the mid-1800's. They suffered terrible abuse during their voyages to get there and much discrimination afterwards, often forced to work in dangerous conditions. Many of them sought gold during the gold rush days and many helped to build the railway yet were never acknowledged publicly until recent years. There is a great deal of information here about the 'Chinese Problem' addressed by several Royal Commission studies. It provides a lot of background to the head tax that the Chinese had to pay.