Interview with William Franklin Bradshaw

Neil Grainger interviews William Franklin Bradshaw and discusses Chinatowns in Chilliwack, the Masonic Hall, On Lee and Peter Tom.

Transcript:

Grainger
Yeah, you mentioned a Chinatown on Young Road North, where was that?

Bradshaw
(unintelligible) it was o’er at the central school, where the central school is now, beyond north of the Elk Creek little office there, where the office is there, Elk Creek office now. There was Chinatown there, there was China buildings, there was some across the street on the corner there. That was, that was one of our Chinatowns and then of course they developed the one at the Fraser Vale, that was quite a big Chinatown there, yes it was, yeah that was there. They had a big Masonic temple there and, and quite the do. Several stores.

Grainger
Yeah, I’ve often wondered how many Chinese, well, how big the population of the Chinese was.

Bradshaw
Oh well I don’t know, there was hundreds of Chinese there then. There was a, a book in the Masonic temple there that had lots of names in it. Of course there was lots of Chinamen here then that made; come in after the CPR (Canada Pacific Railway) was built and they settled here and worked for the farmers and cleared land and grew potatoes and, lots of Chinamen. There was hundreds of them around the country. All hand-work of course. The farmers all had a Chinaman; all the big farmers had a Chinaman or two, some had them for cooks and some had them for labourers, milking cows; Chinamen everywhere, yeah.

Grainger
I remember oh, On Lee. Can you tell me much about him?

Bradshaw
Oh, Ol’ On Lee, he was one of the Chinamen; a characters [sic]; he’d a little store right up, just past the Paramount Theatre, next to, uh, where the old Phillips store is now. ‘Course that was a vacant lot until Mr. Gilbert built that store. A man by the name of Gilbert built that store where Ol’ Phillips are. He had a lady’s, a lady’s-ware store there. And On Lee was joining that, and he had a little store, done a little laundry work, so on, smoked his pipe I guess; times.

Grainger
Yeah? Well Pete Toms took over from him, now I can barely remember.

Bradshaw
Well Pete Toms, yeah they uh, Toms brothers, they had, uh, fresh vegetables and stuff in part of their old hotel joining that again towards the, uh, towards the Progress office. Their old hotel had been kind of abandoned and they had to have fruit and vegetables there for a while, and then Pete had a little stand in behind there for a long time, (unintelligible) grocery on Nowell Street.

Grainger
Yeah that was an old landmark.

Bradshaw
Where the police staton is now, eh?

Grainger
Yeah that was an ol’ real original landmark.