Won Alexander Cumyow voting in the 1949 federal election at age 88. Source: UBC Library Rare Books and Special Collections, RBSC-ARC-1153-BC-1848-9.
Editor’s Note: This post is the second in our special election series.
Timothy J. Stanley
The photograph of Won Alexander Cumyow voting in the 1949 federal election marks an important landmark in the struggle for democratic rights in Canada. Although born in Canada before the country existed, Cumyow had to wait 88 years to have the unfettered right to vote.
Few other non-Indigenous British Columbians have roots as deep. Won Alexander Cumyou (Wen Jinyou in Mandarin pinyin romanization), was born in 1861 on the traditional territory of the In-SHUCK-ch Nation at Port Douglas on the North Shore of Harrison Lake in 1861. Cumyou’s parents, Won Ling Ling and Wong Shee,[1] were storekeepers and outfitters who came up from California in 1860. His mother was among the handful of women from China who migrated to BC at this time. His parents were Hakka, members of a minority ethnic group from South China that made up 10% of the 19th century Chinese migration to BC.[2] By the 1870s, Cumyow’s family had moved to New Westminster where Cumyou completed his schooling, including high school. In 1889, he married Ye Eva Chan, a woman from Hong Kong whose parents were Methodist missionaries. The Cumyow-Ye’s eventually had ten children. In 1923, their grandchild, the son of their eldest daughter Grace and her locally-born husband Chinese Cecil Sit-shiu Lee, became the first fourth generation Chinese Canadian.
Cumyow was well integrated into settler society at a time when there was almost no Chinese or Hakka community to speak of. He grew up speaking Hakka, Cantonese, English and Chinook, which was the Indigenous trade language and the main language of work on the coast in 19th century BC. Following the common practice of the times, although his father’s surname was Won, Cumyow’s given name became his surname. He attended school in New Westminster with Richard McBride, a future premier of British Columbia. The 1881 census lists his religion and that of his siblings as Anglican.[3] Reporting on his wedding, the New Westminster British Columbian Weekly described him as “well known to most of our readers, as, perhaps, the most intelligent, clever and best educated young Chinaman in the province, exceeding in his English education many young men of Caucasian origin.”[4] Indeed, his reputation was such that from 1889 until his retirement in 1936, the Vancouver Police Department employed him as its official Chinese and Chinook interpreter. During this time, he also worked as a labour contractor and importer.[5]
Despite his education and reputation, Cumyow experienced racism directly. Trained as a lawyer, he was unable to article because he was not on the provincial voters list. British Columbian and 1885 Canadian legislation barred any “Chinaman” from voting. Cumyow was able to register to vote in New Westminster during the 1890s and may have voted in elections, but he was unable to remain registered to vote in the 20thcentury. In 1885, an all-white jury took 20 minutes to convict Cumyow of fraud based on what Cumyow claimed was the falsified evidence of his white business partner. Chief Justice Matthew Bailey Begbie sentenced him to three years in the provincial penitentiary.[6] In 1914, when he moved his Christian, English-speaking family from Vancouver’s Chinatown to the Grandview area, the local ratepayers association passed resolutions calling to prevent Chinese from owning property in Vancouver and elsewhere in BC.[7] In 1923, like all other Canadian-born Chinese, he had to register with the federal government under the Chinese Immigration Act in order to remain in the country.
Throughout his life, Cumyow actively fought against discrimination and for the rights of Chinese people. Continue reading →
