2. SOURCES AND LIMITATIONS
Information for these posts comes from a number of sources that appear reliable:
a) City directories were originally designed for marketing within a community. Accordingly, businesses were organized in categories. The category of Chinese Laundries or labelling as Chinese Restaurant or Chinese (rather than names) was indicative of the attitudes of the times and has proven helpful in this project in determining what businesses were operated by Chinese.
Directories also provided listings by streets and alphabetically by name. In some instances, names of occupants, occupations, and if they were tenants or owners were given. However, the names of women were seldom included unless they were single, working or widows. In addition, there was also a lapse from the time when information for the year was collected and when the directory was actually published. In other words, things could have changed during the year.
The Niagara Falls Public Library collection of Vernon Niagara Falls City Directories spans 1904 onwards. Not all years are available.
b) Census records for Niagara Falls in the years 1901, 1911 and 1921 provided name, addresses and socio-economic information about the Chinese in Niagara Falls. As each individual had to identify his race, it was simpler to identify who was Chinese and who was not. (In studying city directories, sometimes a guess was made as to whether a name sounded Chinese.)
The 1921 census is made available to the public by ancestry.ca. The online copies are poor and difficult to read. In addition, there are errors in Ancestry's transcriptions of the census records. For instance, an individual is recorded as being "female" even though the census record indicates "M" under the sex heading. In the 1921 census, individuals were asked to give their age and not year of birth. Accordingly, year of birth, as reported by Ancestry is an approximation; subject to calculation error and rounding.
Census records beyond 1921 are not presently available to the public.
c) Other sources such as obituaries, correspondence with long-time Niagara Falls residences, newspaper articles as well as a few surveys distributed at Ching Ming and returned later by mail provided additional information about the lives of Chinese in Niagara Falls.
Each reader needs to question the accuracy, the perspective, and factors that remain yet unaccounted for.
Textual records, in particular census records and city directories, are inconsistent. In years for which both census and city directories exist, an individual can be listed in one but not the other.
My memory as well as the recollection of others may have faded with age, been altered by experiences, or even changed in re-telling from one generation to another.
Another pervasive problem has to do with Chinese names: name parts and order, Westernization, transliteration, and "paper names" versus true identity. The Vancouver Public Library outlines the difficulties associated with Chinese Names in Canada. Moreover, most Chinese had limited English language skills to communicate with enumerators and enumerators likely had limited knowledge about Chinese culture. In some cases, enumerators themselves had overall weak literacy skills: a conclusion borne out by overall examination of records.
Still, the stories in these posts are the truth of the contributors. Please comment to add or revise what you read in this blog. Share your stories of the Chinese in Niagara Falls.
a) City directories were originally designed for marketing within a community. Accordingly, businesses were organized in categories. The category of Chinese Laundries or labelling as Chinese Restaurant or Chinese (rather than names) was indicative of the attitudes of the times and has proven helpful in this project in determining what businesses were operated by Chinese.
Directories also provided listings by streets and alphabetically by name. In some instances, names of occupants, occupations, and if they were tenants or owners were given. However, the names of women were seldom included unless they were single, working or widows. In addition, there was also a lapse from the time when information for the year was collected and when the directory was actually published. In other words, things could have changed during the year.
The Niagara Falls Public Library collection of Vernon Niagara Falls City Directories spans 1904 onwards. Not all years are available.
b) Census records for Niagara Falls in the years 1901, 1911 and 1921 provided name, addresses and socio-economic information about the Chinese in Niagara Falls. As each individual had to identify his race, it was simpler to identify who was Chinese and who was not. (In studying city directories, sometimes a guess was made as to whether a name sounded Chinese.)
The 1921 census is made available to the public by ancestry.ca. The online copies are poor and difficult to read. In addition, there are errors in Ancestry's transcriptions of the census records. For instance, an individual is recorded as being "female" even though the census record indicates "M" under the sex heading. In the 1921 census, individuals were asked to give their age and not year of birth. Accordingly, year of birth, as reported by Ancestry is an approximation; subject to calculation error and rounding.
Census records beyond 1921 are not presently available to the public.
c) Other sources such as obituaries, correspondence with long-time Niagara Falls residences, newspaper articles as well as a few surveys distributed at Ching Ming and returned later by mail provided additional information about the lives of Chinese in Niagara Falls.
Each reader needs to question the accuracy, the perspective, and factors that remain yet unaccounted for.
Textual records, in particular census records and city directories, are inconsistent. In years for which both census and city directories exist, an individual can be listed in one but not the other.
My memory as well as the recollection of others may have faded with age, been altered by experiences, or even changed in re-telling from one generation to another.
Another pervasive problem has to do with Chinese names: name parts and order, Westernization, transliteration, and "paper names" versus true identity. The Vancouver Public Library outlines the difficulties associated with Chinese Names in Canada. Moreover, most Chinese had limited English language skills to communicate with enumerators and enumerators likely had limited knowledge about Chinese culture. In some cases, enumerators themselves had overall weak literacy skills: a conclusion borne out by overall examination of records.
Still, the stories in these posts are the truth of the contributors. Please comment to add or revise what you read in this blog. Share your stories of the Chinese in Niagara Falls.
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