page_title: Chinese Canadians in British Columbia
section_title: Earliest arrival
hierarchical_section_title: Chinese Canadians in British Columbia / History / Earliest arrival
caption_attribution_description: English: Drawing of the launch of the North West America at Nootka Sound, 1788. Caption: The launch of the North-West America at Nootka Sound, 1788. From Meares's Voyages.
context_page_description: The history of Chinese Canadians in British Columbia began with the first recorded visit by Chinese people to North America in 1788. Some 30–40 men were employed as shipwrights at Nootka Sound in what is now British Columbia, to build the first European-type vessel in the Pacific Northwest, named the North West America. Large-scale immigration of Chinese began seventy years later with the advent of the Fraser Canyon Gold Rush of 1858. During the gold rush, settlements of Chinese grew in Victoria and New Westminster and the "capital of the Cariboo" Barkerville and numerous other towns, as well as throughout the colony's interior, where many communities were dominantly Chinese. In the 1880s, Chinese labour was contracted to build the Canadian Pacific Railway. Following this, many Chinese began to move eastward, establishing Chinatowns in several of the larger Canadian cities.
context_section_description: While the legend of the mythical country of Fusang is sometimes claimed to refer to Chinese monks in British Columbia in the 6th Century AD, it wasn't until the late 1780s that the first confirmed record was made of Chinese arrivals in BC.  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 and the future prospects of Chinese settlement in colonial North America, Meares wrote:
  The Chinese were, on this occasion, shipped as an experiment: they have generally been esteemed an hardy, and industrious, as well as ingenious race of people; they live on fish and rice, and, requiring but low wages, it was a matter also of œconomical consideration to employ them; and during the whole of the voyage there was every reason to be satisfied with their services. If hereafter trading posts should be established on the American coast, a colony of these men would be a very valuable acquisition.
  — John Meares, Voyages Made in the Years 1788 and 1789, from China to the North West Coast of America
  The next year, Meares had another 70 Chinese craftsmen brought from Canton but, shortly after arrival of this second group, the settlement was seized by the Spanish in what became known as the Nootka Crisis, with the Chinese being imprisoned by the Spanish in the course of their seizure of Meares' property, which brought Britain and Spain to the brink of global war. 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 Fraser gold rush of 1858.
caption: The launch of the North-West America at Nootka Sound, 1788
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