Hook Sin Tong Charity Association

The Hook Sin Tong Charity Association commissioned architect C. Elwood Watkins to design a new association building at 658 Herald Street in 1911. Parfitt Brothers constructed the three-storey building that was opened in March 1913 (Photo by Charles Yang, 2011).

The Hook Sin Tong Charity Association was formally founded in Victoria in 1902 by eleven Zhongshan merchants who had already been operating a shantang, or charity society, to ship the bones of deceased fellow countrymen back to their home county of Zhongshan. The Hook Sin Tong Association specifically welcomed people who originated from that county, located in the Guangdong Province of China. The purpose of the club was to provide a social venue and to assist new immigrants to adapt to life in Canada.

In 1904, with donations from other Zhongshan people in Vancouver, New Westminster and Nanaimo, the association purchased a lot at 658-64 Herald Street and constructed a wooden hut there. In 1912, the association tore down this hut and commissioned architect C. Elwood Watkins to design a new brick building on the site which was opened in March 1913. This building is still in use by this association. The Hook Sin Tong building is an impressive three-storey structure. On the third floor, granite columns frame a recessed balcony. The association’s meeting hall on the third floor is distinct from other meeting halls in Victoria’s Chinatown since Watkins combined stained glass, mirrors and ivory white wood panels, a break from other association halls that tend to have a red, gold or gray colour scheme. The result is a very bright interior that is crowned with a six-foot tall stained glass dome made up of twenty panels with tulip motifs. The distinctiveness of this meeting hall may reflect the radical changes happening in China in 1911, when Dr. Sun Yat-sen’s revolution overthrew the Manchu government. Indeed, across the room from the balcony, instead of a shrine, the Hook Sin Tong has hung a picture of Dr. Sun Yat-sen, a Zhongshan native who became the provisional president of the newly established Republican China in early 1912, and was known as the father of modern China.

Interview

By Chen and Yang

This is a view of the meeting hall of the Hook Sin Tong Association facing out toward the balcony where the tulip motif echoes that of the glass dome overhead. The upper half of the walls features paintings and calligraphy behind glass panels (Photo by Charles Yang, 2011).

Where other associations might have a shrine, the Hook Sin Tong has hung a portrait of Dr. Sun Yat-sen (also from Zhongshan county) in front of a stained glass window featuring a bulrush design. Dr. Sun Yat-sen visited this building on his trip to Victoria in 1911 (Photo by Charles Yang, 2011).

This is a view of the meeting hall of the Hook Sin Tong Association facing out toward the balcony where the tulip motif echoes that of the glass dome overhead. The upper half of the walls features paintings and calligraphy behind glass panels (Photo by Charles Yang, 2011).

These two photos show calligraphy panels explaining the history of the Hook Sin Tong and replicas of famous paintings, embroidered by students at the Binhua Embroidery School in Guangzhou (Photos by Charles Yang, 2011).

The Lung Kong Association of Vancouver presented this calligraphy to the Hook Sin Tong Association when the meeting hall was opened in 1913 (Photo by Robert Amos, 2008)

This is a statement of the twenty-one rules of the Hook Sin Tong, before 1902 (Photo by Charles Yang, 2011).

This framed document records donations made to the Hook Sin Tong in 1905 and 1906, when the association raised funds for its new building (Photo by Charles Yang, 2011)

This plate commemorates the 8th Worldwide Zhongshan Association Convention in 2010 and signifies the connections that the Hook Sin Tong maintains with Zhongshan organizations elsewhere (Photo by Charles Yang, 2011).

By-laws of the Hook Sin Tong Charity Association, 1925 (Royal BC Museum, BC Archives, 840035-1252-S140).

Declaration of purposes of the Hook Sin Tong Charity Association, 1904 (Royal BC Museum, BC Archives, 840035-1252-S140).

Interview with the Hook Sin Tong Charity Association

Sources

Amos, Robert and Kileasa Wong. Inside Chinatown: Ancient Culture in a New World. Victoria: TouchWood Editions, 2009.

Lai, David Chuenyan. Chinese Community Leadership: Case Study of Victoria in Canada. Singapore: World Scientific Publishing Co., 2010.

Lai, David Chuenyan. The Forbidden City within Victoria: Myth, Symbol and Streetscape of Canada’s Earliest Chinatown. Victoria, BC: Orca Book Publishers, 1991.

“Associations - An Art Nouveau Landmark: Victoria’s Hook Sin Tong Building.” Chinese in Northwest America Research Committee.

http://www.cinarc.org/Associations.html#anchor_127 (accessed 17 October 2012)

“Hook Sin Tong Charity Building.” Canada’s Historic Places.

http://www.historicplaces.ca/en/rep-reg/place-lieu.aspx?id=14792&pid=0 (accessed 17 October 2012)