In my last story “Rectify and reconciling: A Historical Discussion on the Kamloops Chinese Cemetery,” a student scholar and I discussed why and how the TRU community can help reconcile with the Chinese Canadian population of Kamloops. We also briefly mentioned the efforts of the city of Kamloops to help with reconciliation for this community, and this story will take a deeper dive on those communal efforts.
When the Canadian government recognized their wrongdoing towards the Chinese Canadian community there have since been many efforts from various groups to help recognize and rectify this dark past. These efforts include the Canadian government’s gifting of a commemorative monument to the cemetery, the ongoing maintenance to the surrounding gardens from Kamloops cultural associations, and even the beautification of grave markers by elementary school students.
Through a conversation with Madeline Hobgood, a TRU student knowledgeable on the subject of cultural ethics, we will gain insight on why these efforts from the community are important and should be recognized.
The city’s Chinese cemetery is a great historical site to learn about the history and culture of the early Chinese Canadian population in our community. It is also the city’s effort to reconcile with this demographic of Kamloops as the cemetery’s emergence was due to racial segregation of immigrants who moved to Canada to find solace. What this Tragic Truths of Kamloops story aims to discover is how the TRU community can help to reconcile with this dark past. To find these answers, I sat down with Jane Smith, who is not only formally educated in Chinese history but also a previous TRU student with a Chinese-Canadian background. All of these aspects of Jane’s character help to provide her with in-depth cultural perspectives and knowledge about the history of the cemetery and how we, the TRU community, can help reconcile with this tragic past.
Through this perspective that Jane has, she was able to provide Tragic Truths of Kamloops with educated insights into the history of the cemetery itself in order to give context to how we can help with reconciliation efforts for the Chinese Canadian community.
DISCLAIMERS: Although as reporters, our goal is to interview candidates with the closest connections to the cemetery as possible, sources have indicated there are no close connections to anyone buried in the cemetery currently living in Kamloops. Our solution to this has been to interview individuals who are a part of our target audience- people in the TRU community who have significant knowledge of Chinese culture and customs. Also, this interview candidate has asked Tragic Truths Kamloops to not disclose her identity, so we have changed her name to Jane Smith and have not provided a photo of her.
Why should the TRU community care about the truths, or in other words, the history behind the Chinese Cemetery in Kamloops BC? The reason knowing and learning about history is always important is because learning about this subject makes society aware of why we should reconcile and show compassion for the Chinese population in our community. The event I am referring to and will be discussing throughout this article is the segregated burial practices of Chinese immigrants who came to Kamloops B.C. during the late 19th and early 20th century, and therefore, why the Kamloops Chinese cemetery was born.
According to the Kamloops Chinese Cultural Association (KCCA), the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1923 was culminated when mass discriminatory practices and policies against Chinese-Canadians came into place upon their search to find jobs- and refuge, in Canada by helping build the Canadian Pacific Railway. Historians from Heritage BC add that along with halting the expansion of any Chinese-Canadian communities by forcing immigrants to carry status cards at all times to avoid deportation, the 1923 act also barred these individuals from burial in Canadian cemeteries. Due to this, the Hudson’s Bay Company allowed the Chinese to select a small burial site on the south edge of Kamloops where they could be buried. Despite the belittlement the Chinese population was facing, they still stood against this discrimination they endured even in death. The plot of land they selected kept in line with the traditional principles of Chinese burial customs as the cemetery was on a slope of a north and south axis facing the Thompson river.
Now that you have been provided a broad understanding of why the Kamloops Chinese cemetery is deemed to behold tragic truths, you can read up-coming stories about individuals connected to this past and gain further insight on the dark histories of this location and why awareness of such knowledge is important.
