Beruflich Dokumente
Kultur Dokumente
Building the CPR Chinese Railroad Workers Working Conditions Head Tax & Exclusion After the Railway Identity & Success Interviewees
Working Conditions Type of Work Performed
"They did not have hats, gloves, boots or any warm clothing. Working & Living Conditions
They were from southern China, a very warm area, and they
Pay Discrimination
were totally ill prepared."
Type of Work Performed Casualties
Judi Michelle Young
Chinese railroad workers were given the difficult and dangerous jobs. Contact Us
Using simple tools and manual labour, they built roadbeds, bridges
Scholarship
and tunnels along a route that spanned deep canyons and rivers and
cut through hard granite mountains. The work was backbreaking. Credits
They moved an unimaginable amount of rock and gravel in
pushcarts, and on shoulder poles. Many died when explosives were Français
used, through tunnel collapses and other accidents. Blasting was
often done with cheaper nitroglycerine, rather than the more stable
and expensive TNT dynamite, which the white workers used.
Chinese worked under extreme conditions, sometimes clinging to the
side of a steep mountainside or while suspended in the air by
harnesses in the skeleton of a partially built bridge.
Despite the difficult work conditions and the weather, the Chinese
men earned the reputation of being excellent workers. Michael
Haney, Onderdonk’s superintendent, wrote that he could not recall
even one incident of dishonesty. J.A. Chapleau, the Premier of
Quebec, testified at The Royal Commission on Chinese Immigration
in 1885 that the Chinese workers were "... trained gangs of rock men
as good as I ever saw."
Alexandria Sham describes her grandfather working ...
1858 1867 1880 1885 1910 1923 1939 1947 1982 2006
Background image: Chinese railroad labourer camp near Kamloops, BC. Courtesy of Royal BC Museum, BC Archives Copyright © FCCRWC 2010
http://www.mhso.ca/tiesthatbind/WorkingConditions.php# 1/1