Won Alexander Cumyow

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As a young man

Won Alexander Cumyow (温金有; pinyin: Wēn Jīnyǒu) was an early Chinese Canadian activist. Born 1861 March 24 or February 14 in Port Douglas, British Columbia (at the head of Harrison Lake, at the start of the Douglas Road to Lillooet, British Columbia during the Fraser Canyon Gold Rush), Won Cumyow was the oldest son of Won Lin Ling, a store and restaurant owner who had emigrated in 1858 from Canton, China to San Francisco and later to Port Douglas. Won Cumyow was the first person of Chinese descent born within the boundaries of present-day Canada (British Columbia being a colony in 1861). After attending high school in New Westminster, he studied law, even articled, but was not permitted a license. He became a court interpreter (1888) and labour contractor. He was an interpreter in the Vancouver police court from 1904 to 1936, speaking several Chinese dialects, and also the Chinook Jargon, which was the lingua franca of the colony.

Cumyow voted for the first time in 1890 but legislation in 1895-1896[1] [2] stripped Chinese (and Japanese and Indian) voting rights in municipal elections in BC (though his name still does appear on the 1898 BC voters list). The voters' list in federal elections came from the provincial election's voters' list, and the provincial ones came from the municipal one. The Chinese Immigration Act of 1923 also known as the Chinese Exclusion Act, was repealed after World War II on 1947 May 14, and he then voted again in the next federal election in 1949 -- making him the only Chinese person to have voted both before and after the disenfranchisement. Photos of him voting have been reprinted many times.

Active in the Vancouver's Chinese community, he was founder of the Chinese Empire Reform Association (an organization of overseas Chinese, active mostly between 1899 and 1911, made up of mostly the older, more prosperous Chinese merchants in Canada, and supporting the modernization of China through progressive reforms within the framework of a constitutional monarchy rather than by armed revolution), and a president of the Chinese Benevolent Association. Chinese merchants had formed the Chinese Consolidated Benevolent Association, with the first branch in Victoria in 1885 and the second one in Vancouver in 1895. The Association was mandatory for all Chinese in the area to join, and it did everything from representing members in legal disputes to sending the remains of a member who died back to his or her ancestral homeland in China.

Won Cumyow married Ye Eva Chan 1889 November 29. She was brought from Hong Kong by a Chinese Methodist missionary family who adopted her and lived in Victoria, British Columbia. Eva and Won Cumyow's son, Gordon Won Cumyow, was the first Chinese notary public in Canada. Won Alexander Cumyow died 1955 October 6 in Vancouver.