On March 23, The Victoria Historical Society will present “Historical and Cultural Perspectives on Victoria’s Chinatown,” a talk featuring historian John Adams and former Victoria city councillor Charlayne Thornton-Joe, who will share her own experience with the Chinatown community.
“Chinatown has always had a place in my heart,” she says. “Whether it’s the sounds of the mahjong tables or the lion dancing, or the smell of certain foods like salt fish, a lot of my childhood memories that are very positive revolve around Chinatown and the things that I would see, hear, taste, and smell.”
In early Victoria history, Chinese immigrants arrived in Victoria in search of gold, and to escape poverty and drought in China at the time. As a third-generation member of Victoria’s Chinese community, Thornton-Joe—who was a Camosun Humanities student in 1979—wants to help people learn about what it was like for the first members of our Chinatown, their history, and their experiences.
“It’s a place that I deeply love, and it’s fairly important that we share the story about our Chinatown, and let people know why Chinese came to Victoria, why they stayed in Victoria, and some of the discrimination they encountered, as well as some of the successes, and doors that opened for them for the future,” she says.
Thornton-Joe got involved with the Chinese culture as an educator in her adult life as a way to resolve earlier difficulties growing up and accepting her status as a Chinese person in an overwhelmingly racist culture.
“When I grew up, I faced a lot of discrimination, and because of that, I rebelled against my Chinese culture, I didn’t want to learn to speak the language, I was actually ashamed of being Chinese, and I did everything to be less Chinese, if there was such a thing,” she says. “As I grew up to an adult, I really realized what I missed, and I wish I had more of an opportunity to talk to my grandparents and learn more about my culture. So part of doing this work is because of my own regret that I didn’t appreciate it when I was younger.”
Although Victoria’s Chinatown is the oldest in Canada, many of the current shops are not Chinese-owned, but Thornton-Joe says that rather than being an example of the gradual overwriting of Chinese culture, this actually signifies a victory on behalf of the early founders of Chinatown.
“My parents worked hard, they worked double jobs, and for them, they didn’t want me to take over the shoe store or grocery store that we had,” she says. “They wanted me to go to university and possibly get a job that had a pension, that had medical and dental, that paid better, so I didn’t have to work seven days a week and 12-hour days. When you see some of the businesses not being Chinese, that’s a success story, that their children have gone and done other things than take over their businesses.”
Thornton-Joe says that it’s important to show respect for the people who sacrificed much in their lives so that their descendants could have a better life than they did.
“We need to honour those that paved the way for us,” she says. “I meet so many young Asians today, and myself as well, I took for granted my life without knowing the sacrifices that those generations before me had to endure so that I would have the freedoms and the opportunities that I have today.”
Historical and Cultural
Perspectives on Victoria’s Chinatown
7:30 pm, Thursday, March 23
Free for VHS members,
$5 for guests
James Bay New Horizons,
234 Menzies Street
victoriahistoricalsociety.bc.ca