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Ban Seng Hoe. Gatineau, QC: Canadian Museum of Civilization, 2003. 86 pp. $19.95 sc.
Supplemented by more than eighty historical pictures and illustrations, Enduring Hardship: The Chinese Laundry in Canada offers a brief introduction to the ethnic history of Chinese in Canada with specific reference to Chinese entrepreneurship in the laundry cleaning business from the turn of the twentieth century to the 1950s.
With limited English/French language skills, insufficient educational background, and meagre financial resources, the Chinese men who came to Canada seeking employment almost all toiled in laboring jobs such as railroad building, ditch-digging, housekeeping, shoemaking, mining, cooking, and laundry cleaning. This book once again confirms that these early Chinese male immigrants worked in labor intensive occupations in small towns and big cities across Canada in spite of a strong tide of...