Circulated by the Revelstoke Railway Museum, Chinese Legacies: Building the Canadian Pacific Railway explores the story of the Chinese labourers during the construction of the Canadian Pacific Railway’s transcontinental line, in the 1880s, the lasting impact it had on their lives, as well as their contribution to Canadian national development.
Between 1881 and 1884, as many as 15,000 Chinese men came to B.C. to work as labourers on the CPR. They worked cheaply, at one-third the rate of other workers, and did the dangerous and deadly work white workers refused to do. Unneeded after the CPR was completed in 1887 some returned to China while others stayed to labour in menial, low-paying jobs. Reliable, industrious, sober and law-abiding, their very numbers inflamed anti-Asian sentiment, the “yellow peril,” that resulted in race riots during the early 1900s, the Chinese Immigration Act of 1923 and the Chinese Head Tax.
Features of the exhibit include a railway workers’ campsite diorama, a video presentation of historical photographs, storyboards and original artifacts with text available in English, French, and Mandarin.
