There is a desire to pass down knowledge and traditions from one generation to the next. From parents to their children, to instruct and impart wisdom. Some traditions can weather the test of time, and other traditions should only stay in fashion for a generation or less. However, some of these traditions die hard.

Empires from the Roman empire, to Chinese dynasties, leave memorable impressions for generations to come. History though, should be left to the books, and not be revived continually.

Ever since I heard about the Chinese community in Barkerville, where they were an important part of the community in the largest city in the western part of British North America, I've had questions without answers.

Why after developing a strong presence, did the community die and wither away, was it systematic racism by the British against any non European settlers? What caused that turn of events, in the span of a little more than a decade when the first Chinese settlers arrived via San Francisco to the formation of an anti-Chinese society in the 1870's, barred from voting, being employed and further migration.
http://web.viu.ca/limi/Research/AsianInBC.htm

A possible missing link is the Chinese Freemason society or Hongmen, established in 1863 in Barkerville. The exclusionary practices of a secretive fraternal society dedicated to re-establish old empires in China, could not have shed a favorable light on the role of Chinese in British Columbia.

While this may have been an initial catalyst, white imperialism continued the racist treatment. Due to the desire of residents to be good British colonialists and have Victorian picnics, and to try to curry favour with Mommy dearest the Queen of Canada/England. They say absence makes the heart grow fonder, and Canadian colonialists were desperate for some royal glory, by clinging onto the coattails of a distant Queen.

Quote: Under the influence Chiang Kai Shek, the Hongmen attempted to remain secretive (although not exactly secret), but in recent years the organisation's activities have been more open.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tiandihui

It is these echoes of association with past glory, that cause these secretive societies to strive and continue. Unfortunately they miss the mark, because time and tide wait for no-one, and the local society that they refuse to be part of goes on without them, leaves them behind.

The tradition to cling on to past glory by not integrating, needs to die a graceful death. That tradition was created by the hopes of generals to create resistance cells to fund their campaigns in China.

A powerful enemy was made in the form of Amor de Cosmos.

Quote: He hated social, economic, and political privilege, distrusted “monopolies” and “incorporated companies,” and saw in ordinary people an intelligence and dignity that deserved respect.
http://www.biographi.ca/009004-119.01-e.php?BioId=40188

Quote: The British Colonist, founded on December 11, 1858, by Amor de Cosmos, the future British Columbia premier who quickly worked up a hatred for Asians, began referring to the Chinese community as 'Little Canton'.
A nation of immigrants

Amor de Cosmos while having good intentions of calling out what he saw needed improving, instead succeeded in turning the tide of public sentiment against Orientals, that culminated as outright violence and segregation.

Add the rousing statements of the British Colonist, with the lack of integration of the Chinese community, caused numerous rumours to fester and grow.

Quote: The low ration of women to men was seen by anti-Chinese agitators as an indication that few Chinese immigrants intended to settle in Canada. If they did, they argued, their wives and children would have left China for Canada long ago and Chinese families would be norm in Chinatown. But as Sing Cheung Yung, a Nanaimo market gardener, explained: 'I have been here twelve years. My wife and two children are in China. They are eleven and nine years old. I would like to bring my wife and children here'. These sentiments were echoed by Won Alexander Cumyow, who in 1861 became the first Chinese in Canada. A native of Port Arthur, British Columbia, he told the Royal Commission on Chinese and Japanese immigration that 'the Chinese have a very high regard for the marriage relationship. They usually marry at from sixteen to twenty years of age. Many of those who are here are married and have wives and children in China. A large portion of them would bring their families here, were it not for the unfriendly reception they got here during recent years which creates an unsettled feeling.'
A nation of immigrants

It was a great day in the local Chinatown in 1895, when the Governor-General of Canada, the Earl of Aberdeen, paid a visit. From the Colonist:
“An hour or two was spent in ‘the quarter,’

The Chinese presented an address to the governor: “We can assure Your Excellency of our happiness in the land we have chosen as our home; we have a high regard for the administration of its government and we have learned to appreciate that law and justice allow us to partake of their privileges in common with other citizens.”
http://www2.canada.com/victoriatimescolonist/pdfs/tc150th-b.pdf

He does not come to America to stay, but to get dollars, and then return to his own land. Should he die in America his body is preserved and sent back, for he believes that he can only get to heaven by being buried on Celestial soil.

As the market gardener Sing Cheung Yung explained to the 1902 Royal Commission on Chinese and Japanese Immigration when asked why he left his family in China, "the people in this country talk so much against the Chinese that I don't care to bring them here."
http://library.queensu.ca/ojs/index.php/edu_hse-rhe/article/viewFile/131...

The Churches here are in favour of the Chinese emigration, from hopes of being better able to convert them; but John has a profound contempt for all systems but his own, and as yet he is a purely heathen here as in his own land. It astonishes the msot of people to find that every oen of these 'Heathen Chinese' can read and write his own language-that, in fact, however poor, he is an educated man. He brings to this foreign land his virtues as well as his vices. He has schools, where his children learn to repeat the classics, as in China; and there are opium-shops, where he intoxicates himself, after his own fashion. But here he is the same good-natured, industrious, hard-working fellow that he is at home.
http://www.ist.uwaterloo.ca/~marj/genealogy/chinese.html

References
http://library.queensu.ca/ojs/index.php/edu_hse-rhe/article/viewFile/131...
http://www.canadianculture.com/geezer/jack78.html
http://www.mysteriesofcanada.com/Canada/history_of_the_chinese_in_canada...
http://www.vpl.ca/ccg/Museums.html
http://www.ccnc.ca/toronto/history/timeline.html
http://www.uglychinesecanadian.com
http://web.viu.ca/limi/Research/AsianInBC.htm
http://sen.parl.gc.ca/vpoy/english/Special_Interests/speeches/UofT_25110...
http://www.britishcolonist.ca/about.php