Early Chinese Canadian gold miners remembered for their contribution to B.C.’s Cariboo communities – by Winston Szeto (CBC News British Columbia – May 20, 2022)

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/

Many places in the Cariboo, Prince George named after early Chinese Canadian miners Ah Bau and Chew Nam Sing

For May’s Asian Heritage Month in Canada, two historians in B.C.’s Interior are remembering the legacies of two early Chinese Canadian miners.

For more than a decade, Lorna Townsend in Quesnel and Richard Wright in Kamloops have both studied the history of Ah Bau and Chew Nam Sing, two of the most well-known pioneers among an estimated 5,000 people who came from China to B.C.’s Cariboo region in the late 19th century to prospect for gold.

The Cariboo Gold Rush from 1861 to 1867 attracted thousands of prospectors from other parts of Canada, Britain, the United States, Latin America and China. The Royal B.C. Museum says many Chinese prospectors chose to make the Cariboo their new home and ran farms, grocery stores and other businesses to serve local communities.

Townsend, who volunteers with the Quesnel and District Museum and Archives, said based on her interpretation of census data, mining records and newspaper articles, Ah Bau was born around 1840 in China, and started mining in the North Cariboo as early as 1862 in what is known today as the Ahbau Creek watershed between Quesnel and Hixon.

For the rest of this article: https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/ahbau-namsing-chinese-miners-northern-bc-1.6455923