Peter Ward, Professor of History and University Librarian pro tem, University of British Columbia
Recently one of my history colleagues and I completed the digitization of the Register of Chinese Immigrants to Canada from 1885 to 1949. The list includes just under 100,000 names of individual immigrants, most of whom paid an entry tax designed to limit immigration from China to Canada. The purpose of the legislation on which this policy was based was clearly discriminatory. Immigrants of Chinese origin are the only group ever to have been charged an entry fee on arrival in Canada. The register lists the names, ages, sexes, village origins, occupations, means of arrival, and destinations in Canada of all immigrants, as well as noting a physical description of each individual that includes height measured on arrival. My colleague and I are using this information to examine the migration process and the welfare of the immigrant population, but the list has many other possible uses, among them genealogical. Our intent has always been to allow public access to this information for research purposes, and to this end we have entered into a partnership with Library and Archives Canada that now allows the database to be used for genealogical research. While I began this project as an historian, when I started my work in the UBC Library I could see new opportunities for collaboration with librarians and, by extension, similar collaborative opportunities for many faculty members in the social sciences and humanities. My presentation outlines the nature of the research project, identify some of its preliminary findings, and comments on the possibilities for new forms of collaboration.
Presentation (PDF)
