Gold Mountain Elegy–Matthew Tran-Adams
Gold Mountain Elegy composer: Matthew Tran-Adams www.geocities.com/tranadams The Vancouver Chinese Choir Association conductor: Frank Huang Lawrence Wong, erhu There is a saying that one Chinese man died for every mile of railroad that was built in Canada. Gold Mountain Elegy is dedicated to those men who lost or risked their lives building the railroad so that all Canadians would benefit. Chinese workers first immigrated to Canada in the 1850’s during the gold rush days and they called North America “Gold Mountain”, or “Gum San” in Cantonese. In the 1880’s Chinese- Canadians helped to build a railroad which was to connect all of Canada for the first time. These workers were given the hardest and most dangerous jobs such as setting off explosives to move rock and create flat land for the railways. They were also exploited in that they worked for less money than the white workers. Because of this, white Canadians felt that these workers were taking their jobs. The government responded by first creating a head tax which went as high as five-hundred dollars in 1905. The Chinese were the only immigrant group in Canada that had to pay a tax based on their race. Women were discouraged from immigrating to Canada because officials wanted to keep Canada as a “white” and “British” nation. The men that stayed here existed in large bachelor communities and many dreamt of a day when they could either afford to return home or bring their wives to Canada. In 1923 the Canadian Parliament …
