Talk:Chinese Canadian National Council

Confusion on the CCNC website

I'd like to fill in more information about this organization, and I'd like to use their website as a source, but when I dig into it, they seem to be publishing some a) unsourced, and b) simply contradictory information. I'm not sure what to believe. Can anyone shed light?

• "Some say that for every foot of the (hell gate) Fraser Canyon, one Chinese worker died." (thousands? tens of thousands?)
• "It is estimated that 600 Chinese workers died while constructing the CPR."

(Retrieved from http://www.ccnc.ca/toronto/history/pgallery.html 2006-07-10.) --Ds13 17:00, 10 July 2006 (UTC)

Those comments were also on a Digital Collections website (all Digital Collections pages have been deleted/cancelled sinc the Tories took power), alongside other a-factual or simply exaggerated statements. The latter number is perhaps close to the mark; if you search "Onderdonk's Way" in google, it will link you to a railway history site run by one of the regional museums in BC (Kamloops, I think). The figures are not on the Onderdonk's Way pages, but the museum itself may have the CPR's/Onderdonk's records, or may have an accurate figure. The former statement is a complete and bald-faced lie, typical of the bloated exaggerations that are too common in Chinese Canadian history; even a mile would be 5,280 dead, and the Hell's Gate stretch of the canyon is at least ten miles worth of track (52,800 dead).Skookum1 16:35, 3 November 2007 (UTC)

What's also missing from this page is that the CCNC is funded by the People's Republic and has been noted (by other Canadian Chinese) as a front for the PRC's political agenda in Canada.Skookum1 16:35, 3 November 2007 (UTC) Also a-factual from the CCNC's site:

• It describes the slim chance a Chinese miner has of finding gold, because most of the Chinese miners lacked mining experience and they could only mine on areas left behind by the white miners.
  • Actually Chinese in British Columbia and in Canada had equal rights in the goldfields, and were far more skilled miners than most whites, which is why they prospered longer when whites more often than not moved on; "white miners" is also a racist generalization, as many miners were native Indian, black and other "colours". The CCNC's portrayal of the gold rush is as distorted as their other revisionist views of Canadian history. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Skookum1 (talk • contribs) 16:38, 3 November 2007 (UTC)
• Despite the hard times the Chinese miners faced, they never gave up and some managed to strike gold.
  • ALL miners faced hard times, and only a few managed to strike gold; the Chinese were among the most successful because of their more sophisticated techniques and persistence, and dominated goldfields in the Cariboo and Fraser Canyon for decades (in both gold revenues and outright population figures); the CCNC site also mislabels the Fraser Canyon the "Fraser River Valley", an understandable enough mistake for a rank newcomer perhaps, but not forgiveable in a national-organization website. In the same section the Cariboo Wagon Road is misspelled as "Caribou"; another understandable but extremely amateurish mistake; clearly no British Columbians were involved in the writing of these pages...in another mistake, repeated throughout the site; the term (Hell Gate) Fraser Canyon is used; the term is Hell's Gate, and it's just a very short part of the entire Fraser Canyon.Skookum1 16:47, 3 November 2007 (UTC)

My main point is that the CCNC is founded and run by PRC-origin Chinese who, as criticized by multiple-generation Chinese Canadians, have little to no personal connection with early Chinese history in Canada, and clearly have no expertise or even half-decent knowledge of Canadian history, except what they want to believe. Some comments are clearly transposed from US-side history, as if Canada had the same conditions, which is far from the truth (inconvenient to the CCNC's political agenda though that may be).Skookum1 16:47, 3 November 2007 (UTC)

From the Canadian Pacific Railway Wikipage

This posted here because also contrary to material on CCNC site:

Many thousands of navvies worked on the railway. Many were European immigrants. In British Columbia, the CPR also hired workers from China, nicknamed coolies. A navvy received between $1 and $2.50 per day, but had to pay for his own food, clothing, transportation to the job site, mail, and medical care. After two and a half months of back-breaking labour, they could net as little as $16. Chinese navvies in British Columbia made only between $0.75 and $1.25 a day, not including expenses, leaving barely anything to send home. They did the most dangerous construction jobs, such as working with explosives. The families of the Chinese who were killed received no compensation, or even notification of loss of life. Many of the men who lived did not have enough money to return to their families in China, and many spent years in lonely, sad and often poor condition. But those navvies were hard working and played a key role in building the western stretch of the railway; even some boys as young as 12 years old served as tea-boys.

And even it needs fixing, but it's a sight better than the CCNC's material. See also Talk:History of Chinese immigration to Canada for more on the payscale thing. An excerpt from the above just caught my eye:

The families of the Chinese who were killed received no compensation, or even notification of loss of life. Many of the men who lived did not have enough money to return to their families in China, and many spent years in lonely, sad and often poor condition.

But none of that was the fault of the CPR or white people, as implied and browbeaten all over the media and curriculum since the "anti-racism" revisionism of Canadian/BC history was launched by the CCNC, but of the Chinese contractors who brought them over and were responsible for getting them home; then abandoning them. Publishing false information is not a pretty thing, especially not when it's used to foment political campaigns and cultural/political division/recrimination, as has been the case IMO.Skookum1 07:21, 14 July 2006 (UTC)