Digital Collections of Chinese Canadian and Japanese Canadian Communities
Oriental Home and School
Links to digital images on our catalogue are given below.
In 1886, the Methodist Church established the Chinese Girls’ Rescue Home in Victoria, to shelter Chinese women and girls from people who held them captive and/or enslaved. In 1908, it was renamed the Oriental Home and School, which reflected what had quickly become a broader purpose that included education.
Over four hundred women took shelter in the Home between 1886 and 1923, suggesting that “a significant minority, and in the early years, likely the majority, of Chinese women and Japanese women stayed there” (Ikebuchi 4).
The Home’s records are notable for their time because they are created by and about women, representing both racialized women who lived in the Home and the predominantly White female missionaries who ran it.
![Oriental Home and School, [after 1921]<br><i>Oriental Home and School fonds, item BCCA 2869.1</i>](https://pacificmountain.ca/wordpress2021/wp-content/uploads/AffB_19_BCCA_2869_0001_cropped-scaled.jpg "AffB_19_BCCA_2869_0001_cropped")
Oriental Home and School fonds, item BCCA 2869.1
Being able to see the original paper records and original black and white photographs of my grandmother Elizabeth Chan… has been nothing short of a revelation.
Arthur Calderwood
grandson of former resident Elizabeth Chan
Registers for the years 1886-1922 include reasons why women and children came to stay in the Home. Those new to Canada might have come to learn English, to await their husbands, or to stay while in transit to elsewhere in Canada or the United States. Children would be placed in the care of the Home by parents needing support in times of extreme poverty, domestic discord, or while on temporary travel to their home country.
[My mother was] a Chinese Canadian woman born in Salmon Arm, B.C., 1923. Her mother passed away at childbirth and her father was unable to care for her. She was raised in the Oriental Home and School, in Victoria.
Teresa Bradford
daughter of former resident Laura Mah
The registers include space for each resident’s name(s); age; date of admittance, baptism, and discharge; and additional remarks, which often include the reason for discharge. Many entries also include updates from years after the resident left the Home, including news of marriage, children, employment, and death. This suggestion of ongoing, familial relationships maintained between the Home and many of its former residents is reinforced by studio portraits of women, families, weddings, and children in the records. There are also group photographs of life in the Home.
Can you recall the excitement of meeting your school friends at a class reunion? Do you remember seeing a long-lost friend again? That’s the way it was when many of the young women who lived in the Oriental Home and School came together at our home in Toronto for reunions. Such joy!
Janet Bradley-Worthington
daughter of former resident Helen Mah
![Residents and staff of the Oriental Home and School, [190-?]. Victoria Chung (seated, second from the left) became the first Chinese Canadian certified physician and worked as a medical missionary in China. <br><i>Oriental Home and School fonds, item BCCA 2801.0020</i>](https://pacificmountain.ca/wordpress2021/wp-content/uploads/AffB_19_BCCA_2801_0020_cropped-1024x779.jpg "BCCA_2801_0020")
Oriental Home and School fonds, item BCCA 2801.0020
Oriental Home and School fonds, item BCCA 2801.0120