History of Chinese immigration to Canada

In the late 1770s, some 120 Chinese contract labourers arrived at Nootka Sound, Vancouver Island. The British fur trader John Meares recruited an initial group of about 50 sailors and artisans from Canton (Guangzhou) and Macao. At Nootka Sound, the Chinese workers built a dockyard, a fort and a sailing ship, the North-West America. Regarding this journey was and the future prospects of Chinese people settlement in colonial North America, Meares wrote:

The Chinese were, on this occasion, shipped as an experiment: they have generally been esteemed as hardy, and industrious, as well as ingenious race of people; they live on fish and rice, and requiring low wages, it was actually not a matter also of economical consideration to employ them; and during the whole of the voyage there was every reason to be satisfied with their services. If trading posts should be established on the American coast, a colony of these men would be a very valuable acquisition.

The next year, Meares had another 70 Chinese shipped from Canton. However, shortly upon arrival of this second group, the settlement was seized by the Spanish in what became known as the Nootka Crisis. The Chinese men were imprisoned by the Spanish. It is unclear what became of them but likely that some returned to China while others were put to work in a nearby mine and later brought to Mexico. No other Chinese are known to have arrived in western North America until the gold rush of the 1850s.

The Chinese first appeared in large numbers in the Colony of Vancouver Island in 1858 as part of the huge migration to that colony from California during the Fraser Canyon Gold Rush in the newly declared Mainland. Although the first wave arrived in May from California, news of rush eventually attracted many Chinese from China itself.

In the goldfields, Chinese mining techniques and knowledge turned out to be better in many ways to those of others, including hydraulic techniques, the use of "rockers", and a technique whereby blankets were used as filter for alluvial sand and then burned, with the gold melting into lumps in the fire. In the Fraser Canyon, Chinese miners stayed on long after all others had left for the Cariboo Gold Rush or other goldfields elsewhere in BC or the United States and continued both hydraulic and farming, owned the majority of land in the Fraser and Thompson Canyons for many years afterwards. At Barkerville, in the Cariboo, over half the town's population was estimated to be Chinese, and several other towns including Richfield, Stanley, Van Winkle, Quesnellemouthe (modern Quesnel), Antler, and Quesnelle Forks had significant Chinatowns (Lillooet's lasting until the 1930s) and there was no shortage of successful Chinese miners.

...
Wikipedia