Hand laundries, cafés built a community
Part two of the history of Toronto’s first Chinatown
Once the Canadian Pacific Railway was more or less complete, Chinese workers settled in to Toronto’s St. John’s Ward district and opened businesses with relatively low start-up costs, such as hand laundries and restaurants.
As the number of these businesses multiplied in The Ward, the status quo tried to stop the growth of this competition with special business taxes for hand laundries and rules prohibiting white women from working at Chinese restaurants.
Once there were close to 100 Chinese laundries operating in the city, the competition became too much for existing white business owners, who brought their complaints to City Council.
The Laundry Association of Toronto was upset by the competition posed by Chinese laundries which offered cheap rates and quick turnaround. Toronto City Archives notes on its website that in 1902, the association asked council to levy a license fee: “It wanted to stop Chinese newcomers from starting more laundries.”
At first the city’s property committee approved a license fee of $50, no matter the size of the business. This unduly hurt the smaller Chinese-run outfits. But Toronto’s first African-Canadian politician, Alderman William Hubbard, didn’t think that was fair, and got the fee reduced to $5 to $20, depending on the laundry size.
Restaurants, which also had relatively low start-up costs, had been the other primary occupation for Chinese immigrants, ever since Sing Tom opened Toronto’s first Chinese café at 371-2 Queen St. W. in 1901, opposite Toronto City Hall (now the Old City Hall). But again, racism reared its head. To run the restaurants, low-cost part-time help was needed. By 1910 there were more than 1,000 Chinese in Toronto but the majority were men, because of the Head Tax. Most men wanted full-time work, but white women were willing to work part-time in Chinese restaurants.
However, this revived fears of opium corruption and white slavery — even if not backed up with any stated facts. As Toronto author Arlene Chan, who wrote The Chinese in Toronto from 1878, From Outside to Inside the Circle, puts it, contact between Chinese men and white women was discouraged: “The fear was that Chinese were an amoral and evil influence on innocent girls and women . . . ”
In 1908, Toronto’s city solicitor advised the Board of Police Commissioners to refuse licences to Chinese restaurateurs who employed white women. Chinese restaurant owners protested and the policy was rarely enforced. Then, in 1914, the province of Ontario passed a law (similar to those enacted around the same time in Manitoba, Saskatchewan and British Columbia) forbidding Chinese businesses from hiring white women.
Not surprisingly, Chinese restaurant owners protested vigorously and in essence, won the day. The law stayed on the books but was rarely enforced.
But in1928, the issue came up again. It may have had something to do with the ongoing increase in Chinese restaurants (from 32 in 1917 to 202 by 1923). Again, Chinese businessmen objected, calling it a “national insult.’’
Also, contributing to the raw feelings was the fact the federal government’s Exclusion Act was in place. The 1923 Act banned all Chinese immigration (with exceptions, like diplomats) and forced all Chinese, even those born in Canada, to get identity cards (it would stand until 1947).
An August 25, 1928, front page Star story quoted one unnamed Chinese spokesperson as saying the law against hiring white women was “unfair and unequal. We pay the same taxes and are as good citizens as anyone else in the city, so why should we be treated thus?”
The Chinese consul-general Dr. Chow Kwok-Shien, stationed in Ottawa, objected about the unfairness of the law to the Toronto mayor and Ontario attorneygeneral.
Again, the furor died down and the situation went back to the law being on the books but not enforced.
Most people who went to Chinatown cafés — which specialized in Chinese, not Canadian, dishes — weren’t thinking about the colour of their server’s skin — they just wanted good affordable food. Chan says in her book that many visiting vaudeville actors in the 1920s loved going to Chinatown restaurants. Actor Edward G. Robinson apparently swore that “12 1⁄ (Elizabeth
2 St.) was the best place to eat” in the 1920s. The actor, who performed on stage at Shea’s Hippodrome Theatre, was referring to two restaurants — Hung Fah Low and Jung Wah, which shared that address.
Over the years, certain dishes made for western tastes — chop suey (meaning “mixed bits”), chow mein (fried noodles) and egg foo young — became as popular in Toronto Chinatown restaurants as they were in cities elsewhere. American author Sinclair Lewis even wrote about chop suey in his 1920 novel, Main Street.
Of course, during Prohibition, Chinatown restaurants — like others across Toronto — were sometimes raided by police. In1918 police arrested Youk You, owner of a restaurant at 12 Elizabeth St., for selling Chinese whiskey in teapots for 25 cents.
Games of chance such as “fan-tan’’ and “pai gow’’ were also played in some Chinatown restaurant back rooms on Sundays, in violation of Ontario’s Lord’s Day Act. A police raid in 1919 at a restaurant at Elizabeth and Albert Sts. netted an arrest of 27 men illegally playing fan-tan.
And sometimes, Chinatown proprietors were the victims of crime.
On Nov. 18, 1919, the Star reported that a mob of 400 men and boys descended upon “Hop War Low’s café at 31Elizabeth St., stole $300 in cash” and then ran on, smashing store windows. Police restored order but no arrests were made.
By 1921, Toronto had the third-largest Chinatown in Canada with 2,019 Chinese men and 115 Chinese women, according to Statistics Canada.
Cantonese opera fans were thrilled when the Chinese United Dramatic Society built a huge hall in the 1930s with 250 seats for popular music performances.
But the Depression — which rolled across Canada from 1929 to 1939 — took its toll. By the early 1940s many Chinatown restaurants had folded or had fallen into disrepair.
Chinese laundries had given way to larger-scale enterprises, home appliances and Laundromats.
Urban change was afoot. City funding to redevelop The Ward and build a new city hall and Civic Square at Terauley St. (Bay St.) and Queen St. W. was approved in 1947 — the same year that Chinese Canadians were granted the right to vote federally. The Canadian government repealed the Chinese Exclusion Act at the end of the Second World War because it contravened the United Nations Charter of Human Rights. This meant those Chinese who were Canadian citizens could apply to sponsor family members — only 2,055 of 34,627 people. Full liberalization of immigration policy didn’t come until 1967.
The plan for the new city hall meant expropriation and destruction of most of the buildings in Chinatown. By1958, twothirds of Chinatown was destroyed. To- day a few buildings on Dundas St. W., Elizabeth St. and Hagerman St. survive.
The opening of Toronto’s City Hall in 1965 did not end talk of expropriating the remaining buildings on Elizabeth St. But this time the Chinese community fought back and in 1967 a Save Chinatown Committee was established. It was a coalition headed by restaurateur Jean Lumb. Their passionate plea to city council in 1969 to save what was left of Chinatown — one of the most popular tourist attractions in the city — was successful. Other demolition proposals in 1970 and 1975 were also quashed. Lumb received the Order of Canada in 1976 for her efforts.
Some of the businesses relocated to the Spadina Ave. and Dundas St. W. area, now called west Chinatown. It’s one of five Chinatown “hubs’’ in the Greater Toronto Area, according to the Toronto Chinatown Business Improvement Area website. The other four are at Broadview Ave. and Gerrard St. in the east-end, Markham-Richmond Hill, Scarborough and Mississauga.