Wah Chong's Laundry, Vancouver, British Columbia, 1884.
New industries clamoured for Asian workers at the same time that white Iabourers intimidated Chinese to force them out of skilled, highly-paid positions. Wah Chong opened his laundry in Vancouver in 1884, and was tolerated because no whites wished to compete with him. But when a party of twenty-five Chinese was brought over from Victoria in 1887 to clear a property that unemployed whites wished to log, violence broke out. After the outbreak all the Chinese but the town's five laundrymen had been driven away. Though court proceedings were taken against the rioters, no convictions ever resulted.
