Douglas Todd: The ethnic refashioning of Metro Vancouver a work in progress
Credit to Author: Douglas Todd| Date: Sat, 17 Aug 2019 02:53:19 +0000
Like many of his neighbours in Richmond, Tom Choy is trying to figure out what’s happening to his once-placid, semi-rural suburb.
In just a few decades, Richmond has turned into something dramatically new. Not long ago the place had a smattering of ethnic Chinese residents; now they make up 54 per cent of the city’s population, which has swelled to 200,000.
Whether rooted in Hong Kong, Taiwan or China, the demographic shift has inspired trend-spotting magazines, as well as Kevin Kwan, author of Crazy Rich Asians, to say Richmond has the best Cantonese and Mandarin restaurants in North America. The city’s downtown features Asian malls, hundreds of Chinese-language signs and a ride-hailing service catering to people who can communicate in Chinese.
Choy, a realtor since the 1990s in Richmond’s explosive property market, is not the only one wondering about the city’s many construction projects, increased traffic and complex cultural mix. Just one of the puzzles for Choy, who is part Chinese and part Filipino, revolves around why the city has only two councillors who are ethnic Chinese, while the other seven, including the mayor, are of European origin.
Such ethnocultural questions are not only being asked in Richmond. Based on ethnicity, the larger region of Metro Vancouver has in the past few decades become the most Asian major metropolis outside Asia. The ethnic Chinese population alone has mushroomed in a decade by 24 per cent, to a total of 500,000 residents. That’s out of Metro Vancouver’s total population of 2.5 million.
The expansion of the ethnic Chinese population is just one of the most obvious ethnic developments in the metropolis, which for thousands of years was home only to Indigenous villagers. Mostly European settlers then arrived in the late 1800s and continued to predominate until the 1970s.
Since the 1980s, however, census ethnic data shows newcomers have come from scores of other ethnic backgrounds, mostly Asian, which have been refashioning the city and its neighbourhoods.
Some ethnic groups have formed highly concentrated enclaves, others have spread themselves more thinly across Metro Vancouver.
Readers can now view these changing ethnic patterns online, with graphics designed by Postmedia data journalist Nathan Griffiths. His interactive maps and charts show how rapidly the region’s ethnocultural demographics have altered in the 10-year period up to the census in 2016.
After ethnic Chinese, the second biggest Asian cohort is made up of 243,000 people with ethnic roots in India. The census cites those of “East Indian” origin have increased by 34 per cent between 2006 and 2016. Many of them moved to the vibrant community forming in North Surrey.
The fastest-growing group by far is of people of Filipino extraction. They’ve swelled by 60 per cent in a decade, to a total of 134,000.
The number of residents with roots in France, meanwhile, is growing marginally across Metro Vancouver, to 143,000. The population of Italian background has increased faster, by about 15 per cent in a decade, to 88,000. The population of people with Polish and Russian has also expanded at about the same rate. The number of people of Mexican and Arab background is also growing, but the totals are relatively tiny.
The total number of people of British origin, meanwhile, has remained about the same. And it appears some Indigenous people are leaving the metropolis, often for other parts of the province.
It should be pointed out that Postmedia’s online ethnicity maps rely on census data based on “ethnicity,” which is different from that “visible minority” status. Residents of Canada are allowed to tell the Census they have three different ethnic origins, such as Scottish-German-Iranian.
Even though most Canadian residents choose just one ethnicity, the fact some name two or three means ethnicity totals add up to more than 100 per cent. The data is further complicated by increasing numbers of people choosing to identify, at least in part, as “Canadian.” The advantage of focusing on ethnicity, however, is it provides great detail about the Canadian population’s ancestral origins, of which there are 235 in Metro Vancouver alone.
Whatever measure is used, the census data reveals Metro Vancouver to be an experiment in living in an extremely multi-ethnic region. The city has become a social laboratory rare in the world (except for a few other similarly fast-changing cities, such as Toronto and Sydney, Australia).
Kirpal Singh Kahlon, a visitor from New Zealand, finds North Surrey to be much better than India, but not as good as his hometown of Auckland.
“Auckland is cleaner and greener than here,” said Kahlon, a turbaned Sikh, summing up his impressions of the swath of Metro Vancouver suburb that has one of the highest concentrations of people of Indian ancestry outside India.
Kahlon was interviewed with his young Canadian relative, Charandeep Singh Badda, as they visited Bear Creek Park, which is in the heart of the North Surrey zone where more than 120,000 people claim East Indian ethnicity.
After the Chinese enclave in Richmond, the second-biggest new enclave in Metro Vancouver is dominated by these residents rooted in India. They’ve created arguably the largest diaspora group of Punjabis, most of whom are Sikh, in the world. In many north Surrey neighbourhoods, three out of four residents have East Indian origins.
This once-anonymous grid of roadways that many East Indians have chosen to live along, an area about eight kilometres in diameter, now shines like a beacon in the Punjab region of India as a destination for would-be migrants.
Kahlon’s observation that “Auckland is cleaner and greener” than North Surrey captures some of the physical qualities of the region, which feature a stark grid of wide thoroughfares teeming with cars and trucks, punctured by malls. Since there is much new construction, large sections of North Surrey have few tall trees and little lush landscaping.
However, East Asian culture is easy to spot in North Surrey, which has nine gurdwaras. It’s common to see men on the sidewalks wearing turbans and knee-length shirts, while many women wear saris. There are also several East Indian-oriented malls, including the largest, Payal Plaza.
Kahlon and Badda make it clear North Surrey is a much better place to live in than the Punjab region of India, from where their ancestors hail.
“The reputation of Surrey is very good in India,” said Badda, making a thumbs-up sign.
“There are too many problems with corruption in India. The police are very bad, and the politics is very bad. People are very rude,” said Kahlon.
“The police system works better in Canada, the work system is better,” adds Badda. Both are pleased that people of East Indian origin seem for the most part to cooperate and support each other in North Surrey.
Some of the ancestors of the original inhabitants of what is now Metro Vancouver are slowly leaving.
Many Indigenous people live on urban reserves such as Musqueam, Burrard and Tsawwassen. But they make up only 2.5 per cent of Metro’s population, or 61,000 people. The total number of Indigenous people is declining in many municipalities, such as Langley Township, New Westminster, Richmond, Vancouver and Surrey.
Meanwhile, the number of people who are ethnically linked to the British settlers who were heavily involved in building up the city’s infrastructure in the 20th century remains roughly the same, at 760,000. But they’re shrinking as a percentage.
And the real number of people of British origin has slightly dropped since 2006 in Coquitlam, Surrey, Delta and Richmond. In the city of Vancouver, however, three in 10 residents still come with British roots. In other suburbs, such as North Vancouver and Langley, Britons continue to comprise about half the population.
In contrast to how people of Chinese and East Asian ethnicity have formed new enclaves in Metro Vancouver, the rapidly expanding group of Filipinos have spread themselves broadly across the region, including to New Westminster.
Filipinos now make up 6.4 per cent of the residents of the city of Vancouver. One in four of the people living in the zone of residential towers around Vancouver’s Joyce Street SkyTrain station are Filipino, regularly frequenting the many restaurants and shops that offer products from their homeland.
While there were almost no people of South Korean background in B.C. in the 1970s, they have also grown steadily since then, jumping by a quarter since 2006 to 56,000. South Koreans have spread themselves around, but favour Vancouver, Burnaby and especially Coquitlam. In Coquitlam, they’ve grown by 40 per cent in a decade, now making up 7.3 per cent of all residents. Korean-language signs are common on North Road. And South Koreans are especially present in the big homes of the Westwood Plateau.
Similarly, there are now about 46,000 people with Iranian roots in Metro Vancouver. They are especially moving to downtown Vancouver, West Vancouver and North Vancouver City, where their numbers have grown by a third in a decade — and Farsi-language shops are prevalent. One in 10 West Vancouver residents is now Iranian. Some say the North Shore Mountains remind them of Tehran.
The affectionate nickname for Richmond in the 1960s was ‘Ditchmond,’ because it had so many deep trenches and dikes running among its flat farm fields and modest spread-out bungalows.
But quiet “Ditchmond” is gone. Richmond has had a construction boom that’s turning it into a busy city of mansions, 12-storey condominium towers and dozens of Asian and other shopping malls.
Even though the ethnic Chinese population of Richmond was only a few thousand four decades ago, that has grown by 28,000 since 2006, to a total of 107,000. In the same period, the number of people of British origin in Richmond has gone down by one-quarter to 29,000.
As for other ethnic groups, Filipinos have expanded to eight per cent of Richmond’s population, East Indians have dropped to six per cent and First Nations have plummeted to less than one per cent.
Tom Choy is keeping an open mind as he watches the demographics develop in his beloved city, where he has made a living in real estate, even while he makes it clear he’s irritated by the worsening traffic congestion.
In several Richmond neighbourhoods, three of four residents are ethnic Chinese. They include the zone of new high-end houses along the Fraser River south of YVR, in the neighbourhood of Thompson, and in the zones south of Minoru Park and east of Garden City Road. The latter tend to be a mishmash of mini-mansions, worn-down old bungalows and pleasant new townhouse complexes.
Unlike in North Surrey, where visual signs of East Indian culture are plain to see, there is almost nothing in these extensive Richmond neighbourhoods of mostly quiet streets and sidewalks that distinguishes them as predominantly ethnic Chinese.
Such is not the case, though, at Golden Village, which used to be called the Golden Triangle. It’s a whirring, high-traffic zone of Asian malls in the downtown core centred around Cambie Street and the SkyTrain, where Chinese signs, food, people and products define the scene.
Interviewed in Richmond’s President’s Plaza shopping mall, Choy explains one of the latest question for him has become: How important is it to be able to speak Chinese to hold a job? He has already lost a high-paying position in property marketing because he couldn’t learn Mandarin quickly enough.
And what does Choy think about Richmond politics, since city council is mostly made up of people of European ancestry (even though several local MPs and MLAs are Chinese)?
“I don’t know whether it’s good or bad,” he says.
When it comes to casting a vote, ethnic fealty is not the most important factor for Choy. He also has friends of Chinese, Filipino and Punjabi origin who have no trouble supporting candidates of different backgrounds, including European, if they appear to have integrity.
What other issues lie ahead for Richmond, and Metro Vancouver, with its increasingly varied ethnic populations?
Will distinct enclaves continue to form in Metro? Or will there be vibrant intercultural connections? Or both?
Nobody really knows, and not many care to make predictions. Few academics study such demographic changes, which are complicated and raise sensitivities, in part because in many regions of the world serious tensions exist between various ethnic groups.
In Metro Vancouver, we are being largely left on our own to see whether distinct enclaves will continue to form. Or whether more people, like Choy, will join in vibrant intercultural connections. Some combination of the two trend seems most likely.