$500 to enter the country, then total exclusion for 24 years
The Chinese Head Tax
Between 1885 and 1947, federal law imposed a punishing entry tax on Chinese immigrants and then banned Chinese immigration outright — a history Toronto's Chinese-Canadian community lived through directly, and one Canada formally apologized for in 2006.
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Our ethnic enclaves guide covers Toronto's Chinatown as it exists today. This page is about a federal law that shaped the community living there for more than six decades, and the community's connection to a national apology decades later.
A tax that kept rising
Starting with the Chinese Immigration Act of 1885, the federal government imposed a head tax on every Chinese immigrant entering Canada — $50 initially, raised to $100 in 1900 and then to $500 in 1903, an amount equivalent to roughly two years' wages at the time. Between 1885 and 1923, an estimated 81,000 Chinese immigrants paid it, generating millions of dollars for the federal government specifically from one targeted community.
Then total exclusion (1923–1947)
The head tax gave way to something more severe: the Chinese Immigration Act of 1923, commonly called the Chinese Exclusion Act, banned virtually all Chinese immigration to Canada outright. It took effect on July 1 — Dominion Day — a date the Chinese-Canadian community came to call "Humiliation Day" instead. The exclusion stayed in force until 1947.
An apology in 2006
On June 22, 2006, Prime Minister Stephen Harper formally apologized in the House of Commons for both the head tax and the exclusion act. Toronto was part of the national redress effort directly: that same year, a 106-year-old Toronto-area head tax payer, Ralph Lung Kee Lee, was among those honoured as the "Redress Express" reached the city, and in December 2006, surviving Toronto-area head tax payers received $20,000 redress payments from the federal government.
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Sources
- The Canadian Encyclopedia — Chinese Head Tax in Canada
- Canadian Museum for Human Rights — The Chinese Head Tax and the Chinese Exclusion Act
- Government of Canada — Canada's New Government Provides Ex Gratia Payments to Greater-Toronto-Area Chinese Head Tax Payers