| Victoria's Chinese heritage dates back to the 1860s when the Chinese population of Vancouver Island and British Columbia was about 7,000. In the 1870s and 1880s, thousands of Chinese immigrants came to work, under appalling conditions, in the building of the Canadian Pacific Railway. Victoria's Chinatown is believed to be the first in North America and remains the third largest after San Francisco and Vancouver. It has become a major tourist site and is home to the narrowest street in North America and perhaps the world, Fan Tan Alley. Édouard Deville, who took this photograph, became Canada's Surveyor General in 1885. He experimented with photography and is regarded as the Father of Canadian Photogrammetry, the science of making reliable measurements by using photographs. Reproduction
C-023415 |