Fraser Corridor Heritage Landscape Project Report 2014–2015 Assessing the potential heritage significance of placer gold mining and Chinese Canadian historical sites along the Fraser Corridor Prepared for: BC Heritage Branch, Ministry of Forests, Lands and Natural Resource Operations and Chinese Legacy BC, Ministry of International Trade and Responsible for Asia Pacific Strategy and Multiculturalism Prepared by: Fraser Corridor Heritage Landscape Project, UBC & SFU Report Authors: Douglas Ross, Henry Yu, Michael Kennedy, Sarah Ling, Denise Fong FRASER CORRIDOR HERITAGE LANDSCAPE PROJECT 2014-2015 Heritage Inspection Permit No. 2014-0222 Prepared for: BC Heritage Branch, Ministry of Forests, Lands and Natural Resource Operations and Chinese Legacy BC, Ministry of International Trade and Responsible for Asia Pacific Strategy and Multiculturalism Prepared by: Fraser Corridor Heritage Landscape Project UBC & SFU Report Authors: Douglas Ross Henry Yu Michael Kennedy Sarah Ling Denise Fong December 15, 2014 Last Revised July 17, 2015 Note: All figures included in this report remain the property of the authors and should not be reproduced without permission. Executive Summary: and Natural Resource Operations contacted leading researchers in BC geography, The Heritage Significance of Placer Gold history and archaeology to conduct a pilot Mining and Chinese Canadian Historical study of Fraser Corridor historic mining Sites in the Fraser Corridor sites. The primary aim of this project is to This Project began in early 2014 to develop heritage values assessment criteria assess the potential heritage significance of based on exemplary sites examined in the placer gold mining sites, particularly those pilot study. The criteria will be used to associated with Chinese Canadians, along determine which of the 503 sites identified the Fraser Corridor. At many locations along through historical records throughout the the Fraser and connected river shorelines Fraser River have enough heritage there is evidence of historic mining from the significance to warrant consideration for 1800s, in particular from Hope to Quesnel, provincial protection or heritage investment spanning a distance of approximately 600 through conservation, cultural asset kilometers of the Fraser and Quesnel Rivers. development, and/or heritage recognition. In Over 500 sites have been identified and order to achieve these goals, it is necessary mapped to date (Nelson and Kennedy 2012). to understand the heritage values of these These sites may have particular heritage places and create a priority metric that can significance for Chinese Canadian and First systematically determine which site(s) Nations communities, whose members often would be the best representatives of gold held and worked claims throughout the mid rush mining activities by First Nations, 1800s – 1900s. Recently, there have been Chinese Canadians and other immigrant requests from tenure holders along the prospectors whose mining activities have Fraser River to re-mine and remediate the been largely unrecognized in historical shoreline. As current and new mining assessments, and to determine where and tenures and related activities may impact how many sites fall into this scope. historic character-defining elements that This report details: 1) the history of may have high heritage value, there is an these sites within the context of other Gold Rush era placer mining sites in California, urgent need for conservation policies that Australia, and New Zealand, 2) the factors specifically address historic mining sites behind why they were ignored for so long along the Fraser River. Rare and important and why they have contemporary heritage evidence of ways of life and culture of these value within changes in how British early claim holders is at risk, an issue raised Columbia history is understood more in the recent British Columbia legislative broadly, and 3) a rubric and a set of exemplary sites to illustrate how any apology for anti-Chinese historical particular site within the hundreds identified legislation that is of particular concern to the along the Fraser River Corridor might be Chinese Canadian community of British interpreted and evaluated for heritage value Columbia. and significance using the perspectives In the summer of 2014, the Heritage outlined in this report. Branch of the BC Ministry of Forests, Lands This report argues that the many such historic sites along the Fraser corridor, 1 including but not limited to the exemplary sites identified in this report, are framed by multiple perspectives for heritage value: 1) they are of historical significance for substantively embodying the presence of Chinese Canadians along the Fraser Canyon for two centuries, 2) they bespeak a history that has long been ignored or suppressed and which has strong community support for heritage recognition, 3) they exemplify as historical sites a contemporary desire and aspiration to reimagine and reclaim an inclusive, common history of British Columbia that reflects the diverse peoples in its past, present, and future, 4) they provide significant potential for memory-making and place-making both at the current moment and in the future, and 5) perhaps most obviously and detailed in the clearest fashion from an academic and scholarly perspective in this report, some of these sites are unique and outstanding within the broader context of gold rush placer mining sites around the Pacific and are invaluable assets that have high heritage value. 2 Prologue—Historical Background migration in search of opportunity that long outlasted the gold rushes themselves. Chinese migrants have been coming A dream of wealth and a better life to the traditional First Nations territories that created a sustained process of migration— are now known as British Columbia since generation after generation—from a small the very first moments that European number of villages in just eight counties in migrants did. During the same period when Guangdong province on the south coast of expeditions led by Capt. James Cook and China. Often working alongside and Capt. George Vancouver surveyed—and sometimes marrying into First Nations claimed for the British crown—the coastline communities up the Fraser River and of modern-day British Columbia, Chinese throughout British Columbia, the mostly workers landed in Nu-chah-nulth territory in male migrants sought a better livelihood 1788 as part of Capt. John Meares’ through building early industries such as expedition to build the first year-round, non- market farming, logging, fishing, ranching, indigenous settlement in the place the and mining, as well as providing services British named “Nootka Sound.” Indeed, through businesses such as general stores, Chinese workers were the carpenters that cafés, and laundries. built the fort, grew food, and performed These Cantonese-speaking migrants much of the essential labour. came to British Columbia in a continuous, By the time that “Gold Rushes” in recurring process throughout the 19th and the mid-19th century drew migrants from 20th centuries that was linked to a larger around the world to alluvial deposits of gold trans-Pacific network (Figure 1). Just as around the edges of the Pacific basin (the British imperial migrants from Scotland, California territory, the Australian colonies, Wales, and England moved around the Aoteroa/New Zealand, and what was then Pacific along the same routes, Chinese claimed by the British crown as the colony migrants moved and settled and often moved of British Columbia), Chinese migrants were again in similar ways, crossing paths with a significant element both numerically and various migrants from Europe and other structurally. They often performed necessary parts of the Americas as well as the diverse functions such as growing food and building indigenous peoples upon whose land they infrastructure, as well as importing goods lived and worked. The Chinese who both drawn from their extensive trans-Pacific stayed, and moved on, are unquestionably a trade networks. Known for creating historically significant element of the rich, businesses that provided important services diverse history of British Columbia. to miners and other migrants, the Chinese And yet, there has until recently been were entrepreneurial and able to make a relative lack of attention both by scholars money in ways that extended well beyond and within popular histories to the enduring finding gold. Indeed, in the Cantonese presence of Chinese Canadians in British language that these migrants spoke, all of Columbia. Other than noting their presence these locations came to be known as “Gum during the Gold Rush and as the workers San 金山” (Gold Mountain) not just because who built the Canadian Pacific Railway in of the iconic presence of gold, but also British Columbia, the significance of metaphorically for the tremendous wealth Chinese Canadians in everyday life and as that could be created by young ambitious an integral part of the social fabric of small men crossing the seas to work in these towns throughout B.C. has often been places, a mythic name for trans-Pacific overlooked. 3 Figure 1. Chinese immigrants in British Columbia between 1910 and 1923. Much of this can perhaps be ignored or marginalized as the history of explained by the political use of white B.C. was centered upon European settlement supremacyi in the historical formation of the and what one prominent politician called province of British Columbia. As with the the creation of a “white man’s