Canada's First Chinese Clan Associations in 1885

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The Sudden Appearance and Disappearance of Canada's First Chinese Clan Associations in 1885

Until 1884, the year before the Victoria’s Chinese Consolidated Benevolent Association (CCBA) was established, public life among the Chinese community was largely built around its merchant companies, its secret societies (mainly the Hong Men--later the Chee Kung Tong or Chinese Masons), and its three Daoist temples. Victoria seems to have had few other formal Chinese organizations. While men with the same family name probably did tend to socialize together, they did so in an informal, unorganized way. Clan associations, whose members shared a family name but not necessarily genealogical ties, were characteristic of overseas Chinese communities elsewhere. But in Victoria there is no evidence of clan associations until 1885, when one of the three existing temples, the Liesheng Gong or Multi-Deity Temple, was taken over and rebuilt by the new CCBA. The evidence took the form of donations, usually not to the CCBA itself but to the temple.

www.cinarc.org/Associations.html#anchor_423