What was the Head Tax?
- A fee to use the railway
- A race-based entry fee charged to Chinese immigrants
- A tax on every adult at Confederation
- A tax paid by Members of Parliament
Answer: A race-based entry fee charged to Chinese immigrants
The Head Tax was a race-based entry fee that Chinese people had to pay to come to Canada. It was one form of discrimination they faced after Chinese workers helped build the CPR. The Government of Canada apologized for it in 2006.
Learn more: A railway from sea to sea and moving westward
- British Columbia joined Canada in 1871 after Ottawa promised to build a railway to the West Coast.
- On November 7, 1885, Donald Smith (Lord Strathcona), the Scottish-born director of the CPR, drove the last spike.
- The CPR was paid for by British and American investors and built by European and Chinese workers.
- After the railway, Chinese people faced discrimination, including the Head Tax, a race-based entry fee. The Government of Canada apologized for it in 2006.
- During the economic boom of the 1890s and early 1900s, one million British and one million American immigrants came to Canada, and the economy became more industrialized.
- Sir Wilfrid Laurier was the first French-Canadian prime minister since Confederation. He encouraged immigration to the West, and his portrait is on the $5 bill.
- The railway made it possible for 170,000 Ukrainians, 115,000 Poles and tens of thousands from Germany, France, Norway and Sweden to settle in the West before 1914 and develop a thriving agricultural sector.
- Thousands of miners came to the Yukon during the Gold Rush of the 1890s, as celebrated in the poetry of Robert W. Service.