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History

In conversation with Artist Paul Wong:

“You could gauge the prosperity, the future, and the demise of a town by how many Chinese café families lived there.”

Often the only places to eat on the main streets of small towns, these small, family-run Chinese-Canadian cafés are deeply connected to early Chinese immigration stories. These were sometimes the first, and sometimes still the only restaurant in town.

Early 1880s

17.000+ Chinese immigrants were brought to western Canada (British Columbia) as low-paid labour to build the most dangerous section of the Canadian Pacific Railway.

Late 1800s-mid 1900s

Once the CPR railway was complete, the Chinese Head Tax (1885) and Chinese Exclusion Act (1923-1947) were enacted to restrict the industries they were able to gain employment from and ban further immigration from China.

Unemployed after their work on the railway was complete and unable to pay for their journey home, most of the Chinese labourers stayed in Canada. Immigration moved eastward closely following the railway lines.

Along the rail line, “towns developed, main streets were established, …businesses emerged”

(Cho, 9)

Banned from many professions, Chinese labourers worked in industries such as sawmills and fish canneries, also operating small stores and laundries, and later opening cafés.


Dotted across the country from West to East, Chinese-Canadian cafés are important cultural spaces that mark the pioneering stories of early Chinese railway workers who stopped along the way to open cafés and start new lives, and the development of Chinese communities across Canada.

References & Books

For further reading