The Laurentian
Series
The Rail and the Tax
The Chinese contribution to Canada: the men who built the hard half of the railway, the laws that answered them, and what the community built anyway.
2 stories
- History· October 19, 2026
The School They Had to Build
In January 1908 the Victoria school board barred children born in China from its classrooms. The Chinese Consolidated Benevolent Association lost in court, raised money across the country, and opened its own school the next year. It is still standing.
- History· October 19, 2026
The Rail They Built and the Tax That Followed
About fifteen thousand Chinese workers cut the hardest section of the Canadian Pacific Railway. Parliament's answer, the same year it was finished, was the first racial immigration law in Canadian history.