the growth is in the suburbs – Scarborough, Mississauga, North York.
The transition is from a central, condensed Chinatown area into more
sparsely populated North American style neighborhoods. Chinese have been more
slow to move to the suburbs than other ethnic groups, mainly due to the
extremely harsh racism which was outlined earlier. The Chinese, it is thought,
needed Chinatown to protect themselves, something which, arguably, is not
necessary any more.
Why Vancouver?
The change in structure of this new immigrant group as well as their
location amongst the community has caused many problems to surface. Vancouver
tends tobe one of the most popular destinations for new Hong Kong immigrants,
especially for the business-minded.
Why is Vancouver so popular? There are three core reasons for this
popularity 1)The provincial and civic governments have given clear signals to
the Hong Kong community that the city is open for business (i.e. the sale of
expo lands to Li Ka Shing). There has been a marked shift in view by policy
makers in the region away from the East where Europe and Central Canada lie,
towards the West, and the pacific rim nations. 2)Asian entrepreneurs are able to
do business in Vancouver around the clock. Vancouver is located in such a way as
to be in perfect position for Asian entrepreneurs, it is almost exactly halfway
between Tokyo and London. As a result businessmen can conduct business in London
in the morning, the west coast in the middle of the day, and Tokyo or Hong Kong
in the evening. 3)Asian businessmen also are begining to see how they can take
advantage of Nafta. By settling in Vancouver they are taking advantage of the
first two benefits and possibly using this third one. By immigrating into Canada
and ensuring that the Canadian content of the business is 51% or greater the
businessmen can take full advantage of Nafta benefits.
Social Strains As Vancouver enjoys the economic benefits of record levels of
immigration, the city of 1.6 million finds itself straining to accomodate the
needs of an increasingly multicultural population. Citizens of longer standing,
meanwhile, are asking other questions: as the face of the city changes, whose
values will prevail, those of traditional Vancouver – or those of the newcomers?
Vancouver is a city which still evokes strong British heritage, the visibly
changing population might prompt an even deeper question, one that has profound
meaning for the entire country. As the numbers of Canadians of non-European
origin increases, who are “we” anyways?
In contrast to the immigrants of past decades, most of whom arrived in
their new home with little money and a willingness to take any work that was
offered, many of the most recent newcomers to the city, particularly the roughly
one-fifth who arrive from Hong Kong, have both wealth and high expectations. As
investors and consumers their growing presence has extremely visible
consequences.
The new economic immigrants arrive in Vancouver flush with cash. They are
rich. At the Chinatown branch of the Hongkong Bank of Canada, half of the 20,000
clients have $3Million deposits. Ready to invest, they arrive in a city with
little industry to invest in. As a result they turn towards real estate. Over
the course of 1993 the real estate prices in Kerrisdale and Shaughnessy, two
communities popular with new chinese immigrants, rose over 40%. The following
figure shows examples of the “monster homes” built in Kerrisdale and Shaughnessy
on typical lots and compares them to examples of the more traditional homes.
Fig. 8
In late 1992, Kerrisdale and Shaughnessy were neighborhoods at the centre
of a heated debate over the right of new purchasers to level existing homes and
replace them with much larger dwellings that residents believed to be out of
place. In a district where many long-standing homeowners are avid gardeners, it
did not help that many builders felled full-grown trees in order to accomodate
the larger scale homes, and replaced greenery with multiple parking spaces.
“There is suffering going on in the neighborhood. People are emotionally
exhausted,” says Johanna Albrecht, chairwoman of the West Kerrisdale Residents’
Association tree committee about the greenery issue. At the same time, the
owners of the offending homes, many recently arrived immigrants from Hong Kong,
insisted that they had met existing zoning rules and had a cleara right to do as
they wished with their property.
After a series of emotional public hearings during early 1993, a compromise
was reached. In exchange for permission to build houses larger than anywhere
else in Vancouver, City Hall now insists that builders of new homes take into
account the style of the dwellings on either side. While city hall thinks that
this solution is working, many residents are not so positive.
Conclusions
To be honest with ourselves, we must begin by admitting that not everyone
rejoices in the “changing face” of our country. Nor is it the case that Canada
opens its arms equally and impartially to all corners of the earth, or looks
positively opun all of their cultural differences. Every Canadian nows that such
preferences exist; the task of a nation which is truly commtted to human rights
is to defy its own prejudices.
Discriminatory attitudes and acts are not necessarily aimed at the least
advantaged. 1995 was witness to several cases of vocal resentment directed
against relatively affluent Asian minorities in cities such as Toronto and
Vancouver. The cause of the disturbance is that some of these people have moved
into neighborhoods with different ethnic backgrounds. The increased Asian
visibility created a backlash, which in this case took the form of suggestions
that the community was too “concentrated” or “exclusive,” or insufficiently
“divers.” Perhaps what was most positive about these outbursts was that when
people began to calm down things usually led to a greater dialogue and a
determination by all sides to do better.
For instance, a story about “overly prominent” Chinese-Canadians in
Vancouver led to the publication of some advice in the city’s Ming Pao Daily
News suggesting that Canadians of Chinese origin might do more to avoid raising
intercultural resentments and to examine their own cultural and racial
prejudices. Perhaps this is good advice for all Canadians, especially in
Vancouver in Toronto.
One might ask whether the ideal of a color-blind and ethnically harmonious
society would not be better served by putting such differences to the side
rather than in-graining them through official hyphenization. If we are all
Canadians together, why do we continue to qualify our geographic identifiers
with words such as White, Black, French, Asian, German, Muslim, or Allophone?
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