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Sam Kee Building

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94-560: The Sam Kee Building ( Chinese : 三記號大樓 ), also known as the Jack Chow Building , is a two-storey commercial building in Vancouver , British Columbia , Canada , located near the entrance to the city's Chinatown . It is noted for its narrow depth, which varies by floor. The ground floor is 4 feet 11 inches (1.50 m) wide, while the upper floor spans 6 feet (1.8 m) because of its overhanging bay windows. Additionally,

188-609: A "mosaic" in the 1920s, as hundreds of thousands of immigrants from central and eastern Europe settled across the Prairies beginning in earnest during the late 19th century, with large scale immigration flows lasting through the mid-20th century. " New Canadians, representing many places and widely separated sections of Old Europe, have contributed to the Prairie Provinces a variety in the way of Church Architecture. Cupolas and domes distinctly Eastern, almost Turkish, startle one above

282-645: A basement extends under the sidewalk adjacent to the storefront. This discrepancy has led to a dispute with the Skinny Building in Pittsburgh , Pennsylvania , over which commercial building is more narrow, as the Skinny Building has a consistent depth of 5 feet 2 inches (1.57 m). Nonetheless, the Sam Kee Building is recognized by Guinness World Records as the "narrowest commercial building in

376-444: A building for his narrow lot. On March 27, 1913, a building permit was issued for a building "6.19 feet in width, 96.04 feet in length". The Sam Kee Building was completed later that year and reportedly cost CA$ 8,000. For half a century, the Sam Kee Building saw mixed commercial-residential use. Retail shops were located on the ground floor, while the upper floor housed units for residential and organizational use. The basement contained

470-503: A certain extent in South Korea , remain virtually identical to traditional characters, with variations between the two forms largely stylistic. There has historically been a debate on traditional and simplified Chinese characters . Because the simplifications are fairly systematic, it is possible to convert computer-encoded characters between the two sets, with the main issue being ambiguities in simplified representations resulting from

564-404: A depth of 5 feet 2 inches (1.57 m) on all its floors, while the depth of the Sam Kee Building varies by floor, with the lower floor's depth measuring 4 feet 11 inches (1.50 m) but the upper floor's measuring 6 feet (1.8 m). The municipal government formally recognized the Sam Kee Building as a cultural heritage site on January 14, 2003. It is listed number 2814 in

658-616: A group from the Brunswick Regiment settled southwest of Montreal and south of Quebec City . In this, they formed part of a larger population movement composed of several waves of migration northward from the newly-founded United States to Upper and Lower Canada . In traditional Canadian historiography, these migrants are often grouped together under the broad label of United Empire Loyalists , obscuring particular ethnic and religious identities, as well as their exact motivations for migrating to Canada. Welsh mapmaker David Thompson

752-578: A number of soldiers fighting on what modern historiography terms the pro-British side of the conflict were members of regiments hired from various small German states. These soldiers were collectively known as " Hessians ", since many of them came from Hesse . Following the defeat of British forces in the Revolutionary War, about 2,200 of them settled in Canada once their terms of service had expired or they had been released from American captivity. For example,

846-416: A public baths. Local businessman Jack Wing Chow ( 周永職 ; 1930–2021) purchased the Sam Kee Building in 1985. Chow hired architect Soren Rasmussen to restore the building, and renovations were completed in 1986. Reinforced glass blocks were built into the sidewalk in front of the building, with the approval of Vancouver City Council. During nighttime, lights in the basement illuminate the sidewalk above, marking

940-417: A series of floods that ruined Welsh farmers' crops led to some emigrants resettling at Llewelyn near Bangor, Saskatchewan, where they once again took up farming. A community of Welsh farmers was also established at Wood River near Ponoka, Alberta . In the early 20th century, Yugoslavs (Serbs) arrived in the prairies . In Saskatchewan , they took up farming . In Alberta, coal mining and road construction

1034-761: A young age and went on to become a successful businessman in the United States. When he returned to Wales, he found his family living in poverty and became convinced they should emigrate to Canada. In 1817 his family settled in the township of Southwald, near what is now London, Ontario . By 1812 he had brought over more relatives who built homes on the 100-acre (0.40 km ) lots granted to them by Colonel Thomas Talbot. A continual influx of immigrants from Scotland and Ulster meant that by 1843 there were over 30,000 Scots in New Brunswick. Broader English, Scottish, and Irish settlement of British Columbia began in earnest with

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1128-850: Is 産 (also the accepted form in Japan and Korea), while in Hong Kong, Macau and Taiwan the accepted form is 產 (also the accepted form in Vietnamese chữ Nôm ). The PRC tends to print material intended for people in Hong Kong, Macau and Taiwan, and overseas Chinese in traditional characters. For example, versions of the People's Daily are printed in traditional characters, and both People's Daily and Xinhua have traditional character versions of their website available, using Big5 encoding. Mainland companies selling products in Hong Kong, Macau and Taiwan use traditional characters in order to communicate with consumers;

1222-917: Is bound to the history of English settlement of North America, and particularly New England, because of the resettlement of many Loyalists following the American Revolution in areas that would form part of Canada. Many of the fifty thousand Loyalists who were resettled to the north of the United States after 1783 came from families that had already been settled for several generations in North America and were from prominent families in Boston, New York and other east coast towns. Although largely of British ancestry, these settlers had also intermarried with Huguenot and Dutch colonists and were accompanied by Loyalists of African descent. Dispossessed of their property at

1316-617: Is especially relevant in diaspora, as is the case with European people in Canada. Statistics Canada does not use the term "European Canadian". The 2021 census asked individuals to self-identify their ethnic origins, within seven general categories (subcategories shown for clarity): The exploration of Canada by European nations commenced with the Norse in the late 10th century along the East Coast. After Jacques Cartier's arrival in 1534, British and French explorers progressively ventured westward over

1410-661: Is now Prince Edward Island were seized by the British. After the 1713 Treaty of Utrecht ceded the French colony of Acadia (today's mainland Nova Scotia and New Brunswick ) to Great Britain, efforts to colonize the province were limited to small settlements in Canso and Annapolis Royal . In 1749, Colonel Edward Cornwallis was given command of an expedition for the settlement of Chebucto by some three thousand persons, many of whom were Cockney . Cornwallis' settlement, Halifax , would become

1504-596: Is now Quebec , parts of Ontario, Acadia, and select areas of Western Canada, all in Canada (see French colonization of the Americas ) .Their colonies of New France (also commonly called Canada) stretched across what today are the Maritime provinces , southern Quebec and Ontario , as well as the entire Mississippi River Valley. Hélène Desportes is considered the first child with European ancestry to be born in New France . She

1598-496: Is wider at 6 feet (1.8 m) due to its overhanging bay windows, which were characteristic of many buildings in Chinatown at the time of its construction, in 1913. The building also has a basement that extends 10 feet (3.0 m) under the sidewalk of Pender Street. The three floors are connected by glass staircases, which the municipal government disapproves of because they are a potential fire hazard. Local historians have described

1692-483: The Chinese Commercial News , World News , and United Daily News all use traditional characters, as do some Hong Kong–based magazines such as Yazhou Zhoukan . The Philippine Chinese Daily uses simplified characters. DVDs are usually subtitled using traditional characters, influenced by media from Taiwan as well as by the two countries sharing the same DVD region , 3. With most having immigrated to

1786-547: The Anglo-European business establishment. In 1912, Vancouver City Council expropriated most of the lot without compensating Chang. The width of the lot was reduced from roughly 30 feet (9.1 m) to 6 feet (1.8 m), making conventional commercial use of the remaining frontage impractical. However, Chang bet a business associate that he could nonetheless construct a building on what remained of his lot. Chang hired architects Kennerly Bryan and William C. F. Gillam to design

1880-586: The Canadian Register of Historic Places . Vancouver City Council's Chinatown Legacy Stewardship Group described the Sam Kee Building as a "key part of Chinatown's cultural heritage" and Jack Chow Insurance as a "legacy business". The Sam Kee Building was one of two winners of the People's Choice Award for the 2017 Vancouver Heritage Awards, the other being the Mah Society Building. The award's description of

1974-462: The Canadiens , and came mostly from northwestern France. The early inhabitants of Acadia, or Acadians ( Acadiens) , came mostly but not exclusively from the southwestern regions of France . Canadien explorers and fur traders would come to be known as coureurs des bois and voyageurs , while those who settled on farms in Canada would come to be known as habitants . Many French Canadians are

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2068-619: The Isle of Skye , was organized by the Earl of Selkirk , Lord Thomas Douglas, 5th Earl of Selkirk . The Earl, who was sympathetic to the plight of the dispossessed crofters (tenant farmers in the Highlands), brought 800 colonists to Prince Edward Island. In 1811, he founded the Red River Colony as a Scottish colonization project on an area of 300,000 square kilometres (120,000 sq mi) in what would later be

2162-716: The Kensiu language . European Canadians European Canadians are Canadians who can trace their ancestry to the continent of Europe. They form the largest panethnic group within Canada. In the 2021 Canadian census , 19,062,115 people or 52.5% of the population self-identified ethnic origins from Europe. 8,329,950 people or 22.9% of the population self-identified ethnic origins that were from North America and were not Indigenous . Most of these responses are not counted as visible minority by Statistics Canada (such as " Canadian " and " French Canadian " ethnic origin responses). People may nominate more than one ethnic origin in

2256-622: The Shanghainese -language character U+20C8E 𠲎 CJK UNIFIED IDEOGRAPH-20C8E —a composition of 伐 with the ⼝   'MOUTH' radical—used instead of the Standard Chinese 嗎 ; 吗 . Typefaces often use the initialism TC to signify the use of traditional Chinese characters, as well as SC for simplified Chinese characters . In addition, the Noto, Italy family of typefaces, for example, also provides separate fonts for

2350-725: The Tsarist regime in Russia. The farmers were used to the harsh conditions of farming in southern Imperial Russia (now Ukraine ) and so were some of the most successful in adapting to the Canadian Prairies . Nearly one million European immigrants, primarily from non-British and non-French origins, came through Pier 21 in Halifax, Nova Scotia in the early-mid 1900s. In 1902, Welsh immigrants arrived from Patagonia , which had been incorporated into Argentina in 1881. Compulsory military service and

2444-543: The 1800s. Montreal became Canada's largest city and commercial hub until surpassed by Toronto the following century. In the early 19th century, a large group of Germans ( Mennonites ) fled the United States. Many of their families' ancestors had been from southern Germany or Switzerland. They began to move to what is now southwestern Ontario and settled around the Grand River , especially in Berlin, Ontario (now Kitchener ) and in

2538-525: The 1920s, when the United States imposed quotas on Central and Eastern European immigration. Soon, Canada imposed its own limits, however, and prevented most of those trying to flee the Third Reich from moving to Canada. Many of the Mennonites settled in the areas of Winnipeg and Steinbach , and the area just north of Saskatoon . Victoria Hayward described the cultural changes of the Canadian Prairies as

2632-859: The 19th century. Around the same time, many thousands of Yugoslav- Aegean Macedonians emigrated to Canada in the 1890s. They settled primarily in Ontario , especially Toronto . Many early Aegean Macedonian immigrants found industrial work in Toronto. Later migrants found work as factory in abattoirs and foundries. Chatham and Windsor attracted many Macedonian immigrants who worked along the railroads. Many later settled in Detroit , Michigan. Western Canada started to attract in 1896 and draw large numbers of other German immigrants, mostly from Eastern Europe . Plautdietsch -speaking Russian Mennonites of Dutch-Prussian ancestry were especially prominent since they were persecuted by

2726-491: The 20th century, when various countries that use Chinese characters began standardizing simplified sets of characters, often with characters that existed before as well-known variants of the predominant forms. Simplified characters as codified by the People's Republic of China are predominantly used in mainland China , Malaysia, and Singapore. "Traditional" as such is a retronym applied to non-simplified character sets in

2820-671: The Balkans. They primarily originated from the Bay of Kotor and the Dalmatian coast which had similar climates as their destinations. The majority of these migrants came from territories controlled by Austria-Hungary for political and economic reasons, and only a small number came directly from Independent Serbia . Those who settled were typically young single men and employed in mining or forestry near such towns as Phoenix , Golden Prince Rupert and Kamloops . The German Protestants developed

2914-865: The Bulgarian ethnic group. The term Macedonian was used as a geographic/regional term rather than an ethnic one. At that time the political organization by the Slavic immigrants from the region of Macedonia , the Macedonian Patriotic Organization , also promoted the idea of Macedonian Slavs being Bulgarians . During the Great War , military-aged Serb males who hailed from Serbia or Montenegro were considered allies but those who were born in Austro-Hungarian territories were deemed enemy aliens by Canadian law, even though their sympathies tended to lie with

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3008-797: The German-speaking community in 1756. The church was designated a National Historic Site of Canada in 1997. After the fall of New France to the British in 1759, a colonial governing class established itself in Quebec City . Larger numbers of English-speaking settlers arrived in the Eastern Townships and Montreal after the American Revolution. A large group of Ulster Scots , many of whom had first settled in New Hampshire , moved to Truro, Nova Scotia in 1761. New Brunswick became

3102-810: The Germans from Europe and those who came from Pennsylvania. The French-English tensions that marked the establishment of the earliest English-speaking settlements in Nova Scotia were echoed on the Prairies in the late nineteenth century. The suppression of the rebellions allowed the government of Canada to proceed with a settlement of Manitoba , Saskatchewan , and Alberta that was to create provinces that identified generally with English Canada in culture and outlook, although immigration included large numbers of people from non English-speaking European backgrounds, especially Scandinavians and Ukrainians . The history of Yugoslav-Bosnian arrivals to Canada dates back to as far as

3196-615: The Irish elsewhere in Canada began in the decades following the War of 1812 and formed a significant part of The Great Migration of Canada . Between 1825 and 1845, 60% of all immigrants to Canada were Irish; in 1831 alone, some 34,000 arrived in Montreal. Between 1830 and 1850, 624,000 Irish arrived; in contextual terms, at the end of this period, the population of the provinces of Canada was 2.4 million. Besides Upper Canada (Ontario), Lower Canada (Quebec),

3290-587: The Lutheran Church along Canadian lines. In Waterloo County, Ontario, with large German elements that arrived after 1850, the Lutheran churches played major roles in the religious, cultural and social life of the community. By 1871, nearly 55% of the population of Waterloo County had German origins. Especially in Berlin, German was the dominant language spoken. Research indicates that there was no apparent conflict between

3384-730: The Maritime colonies of Nova Scotia , Prince Edward Island and New Brunswick , especially Saint John , were arrival points. Not all remained; many out-migrated to the United States or to Western Canada in the decades that followed. Few returned to Ireland. During the Great Famine of Ireland (1845–52), Canada received the most destitute Irish Catholics, who left Ireland in grave circumstances. Land estate owners in Ireland would either evict landholder tenants to board on returning empty lumber ships, or in some cases pay their fares. Others left on ships from

3478-498: The People's Republic of China, traditional Chinese characters are standardised according to the Table of Comparison between Standard, Traditional and Variant Chinese Characters . Dictionaries published in mainland China generally show both simplified and their traditional counterparts. There are differences between the accepted traditional forms in mainland China and elsewhere, for example the accepted traditional form of 产 in mainland China

3572-460: The Sam Kee Building as a "spite house", a building constructed or modified to anger neighbours or other parties with a stake in the land the building is on. The municipal government charged the building's owner – the Sam Kee Company and later Jack Chow Insurance – annual encroachment fees for the airspace used by the protruding windows and the under-street area used by

3666-516: The Sam Kee Building in 1985 and restored the property the following year. The building has since become a tourist attraction, although an insurance business still operates on the ground floor. It is considered a cultural heritage site by the municipal government and is listed in the Canadian Register of Historic Places . The Sam Kee Building is a steel-framed , two-storey building with an unusually narrow depth. Its ground-floor depth measures 4 feet 11 inches (1.50 m). Its upper-floor depth

3760-421: The Sam Kee Building is as follows: Fully restored and revitalized, the thinnest building in the world, and a Chinatown landmark and architectural marvel, its rehabilitation was part of the celebration of its centennial. This included its distinctive gold embellished columns, the prominent '1913' on its parapet, its continuous bay-windows, its block-long illuminated glass sidewalk, and iconic twinkling neon sign for

3854-515: The United States during the second half of the 19th century, Chinese Americans have long used traditional characters. When not providing both, US public notices and signs in Chinese are generally written in traditional characters, more often than in simplified characters. In the past, traditional Chinese was most often encoded on computers using the Big5 standard, which favored traditional characters. However,

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3948-527: The allied cause. The latter were restricted in their freedom of movements, had to wear special identity cards and had to identify themselves regularly at the police station. Several hundred were interned in prison camps throughout the country under terrible conditions. Physicist Mihajlo Pupin , Serbia's consul in New York during the war, and Antun Seferović, the honorary consul of Serbia in Montreal , advocated for

4042-415: The area of present-day Canada dates from 1536, when Irish fishermen from Cork traveled to Newfoundland. The French were the first Europeans to establish a continuous presence in what is now Canada. French settlers from Normandy , Perche , Beauce , Brittany , Maine , Anjou , Touraine , Poitou , Aunis , Angoumois , Saintonge and Gascony were the first Europeans to permanently colonize what

4136-466: The attempts to establish English settlements in Newfoundland in the sixteenth century. The first English settlement in present-day Canada was at St. Johns Newfoundland, in 1583. Newfoundland's population was significantly influenced by Irish and English immigration, much of it as a result of the migratory fishery in the decades prior to the Great Famine of Ireland . The first recorded Irish presence in

4230-430: The basement. In 1998, when the fee for the windows was waived by Vancouver City Council, the fees were CA$ 260 for the windows and CA$ 2,500 for the basement. Rod Chow, son of Jack Chow, described the decision to waive the window fee as "the moral support of [city] council" being given to the building and the hopeful end of an "85-year feud". Vancouver's Chinatown was home to the largest Chinese community in Canada during

4324-462: The building's business capacity. The Sam Kee Building holds the Guinness World Record for "the narrowest commercial building in the world". Ripley's Believe it or Not! , meanwhile, recognizes it as the "world's thinnest building". The ownership of these titles has been challenged by the owners of the Skinny Building in Pittsburgh , Pennsylvania , United States. The Skinny Building has

4418-402: The census. In the 2021 Canadian census , 25,364,140 Canadians self-identified as White and mixed White, forming approximately 69.8 percent of the total Canadian population. This included 24,493,090 people (67.4%) who were White only and 871,050 people (2.4%) who were White mixed with non-White groups. As with other panethnic groups, Statistics Canada records ethnic ancestry by employing

4512-538: The city of Hamilton, Ontario numbered around 1,000. Further Serb settlement was established in Niagara Falls , London , and Windsor . The first Serbian immigrants to the city of Toronto arrived in 1903; by 1914 there were more than 200 Serbs. Until the Second World War , most people who today identify themselves as Yugoslav-Macedonian Canadians claimed a Bulgarian ethnic identity and were recorded as part of

4606-571: The continental Protestants were encouraged to migrate to Nova Scotia between 1750 and 1752 to counterbalance the large number of Catholic Acadians . Family surnames, Lutheran churches, and village names along the South Shore of Nova Scotia retain their German heritage, such as Lunenburg . The first German church in Canada, the Little Dutch (Deutsch) Church in Halifax, is on land which was set aside for

4700-507: The descendants of the King's Daughters ( Filles du Roi , several hundred women who immigrated over a decade under the sponsorship of Louis XIV). A few also are the descendants of mixed French and Algonquian marriages (see also Metis people and Acadian people ). The area that forms the present day province of Nova Scotia was contested by the British and French in the eighteenth century. French settlements at Port Royal , Louisbourg and what

4794-475: The early 1900s, with 3,559 residents listed in the 1911 national census . The Asiatic Exclusion League , an all-European lobbyist group opposed to immigration from Asia to Canada and the United States, established a branch in Vancouver in 1907, with the goal of expelling Asians from the city. In 1912, the league successfully petitioned Vancouver City Council to widen Pender Street, the main street of Chinatown at

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4888-578: The end of the Revolutionary War, the Loyalists arrived as refugees to settle primarily along the shores of southern Nova Scotia, the Bay of Fundy and the Saint John River and in Quebec to the east and southwest of Montreal. The colony of New Brunswick was created from western part of Nova Scotia at the instigation of these new English-speaking settlers. The Loyalist settlements in southwestern Quebec formed

4982-415: The entrance to Chinatown. Chow later received numerous heritage awards for his restoration initiative. At present, the ground floor is used for insurance sales by Jack Chow Insurance, while the upper floor and basement are used primarily for tourism purposes. Most of the decorations and furniture inside the building are either "skinny or mini" to match the building's self-given title of "skinniest building in

5076-622: The founding of Fort Victoria in 1843 and the subsequent creation of the Colony of Vancouver Island in 1849. The capital, Victoria developed during the height of the British Empire and long self-identified as being "more English than the English". After the permanent settlement in Newfoundland by Irish in the late 18th and early 19th century, overwhelmingly from Waterford , increased immigration of

5170-434: The home for many Scots. In 1761, a Highland regiment garrisoned Fort Frederick . The surrounding lands surveyed by Captain Bruce in 1762 attracted many Scottish traders when William Davidson of Caithness arrived to settle two years later. Their numbers were swelled by the arrival of thousands of loyalists of Scottish origin both during and after the American Revolution. One of the New Brunswick and Canada's most famous regiments

5264-412: The identified ethnic groups is greater than the total population estimate, because a person may report more than one ethnic origin in the census. There are several subgroups of Canadians of European origin. Although approximately defined categories (due to imprecise, or ethnocultural, regionalization of the continent), the subgroups have been utilized widely in ethnic and cultural identification. This

5358-493: The inverse is equally true as well. In digital media, many cultural phenomena imported from Hong Kong and Taiwan into mainland China, such as music videos, karaoke videos, subtitled movies, and subtitled dramas, use traditional Chinese characters. In Hong Kong and Macau , traditional characters were retained during the colonial period, while the mainland adopted simplified characters. Simplified characters are contemporaneously used to accommodate immigrants and tourists, often from

5452-725: The mainland. The increasing use of simplified characters has led to concern among residents regarding protecting what they see as their local heritage. Taiwan has never adopted simplified characters. The use of simplified characters in government documents and educational settings is discouraged by the government of Taiwan. Nevertheless, with sufficient context simplified characters are likely to be successfully read by those used to traditional characters, especially given some previous exposure. Many simplified characters were previously variants that had long been in some use, with systematic stroke simplifications used in folk handwriting since antiquity. Traditional characters were recognized as

5546-682: The majority of Chinese text in mainland China are simplified characters , there is no legislation prohibiting the use of traditional Chinese characters, and often traditional Chinese characters remain in use for stylistic and commercial purposes, such as in shopfront displays and advertising. Traditional Chinese characters remain ubiquitous on buildings that predate the promulgation of the current simplification scheme, such as former government buildings, religious buildings, educational institutions, and historical monuments. Traditional Chinese characters continue to be used for ceremonial, cultural, scholarly/academic research, and artistic/decorative purposes. In

5640-916: The merging of previously distinct character forms. Many Chinese online newspapers allow users to switch between these character sets. Traditional characters are known by different names throughout the Chinese-speaking world. The government of Taiwan officially refers to traditional Chinese characters as 正體字 ; 正体字 ; zhèngtǐzì ; 'orthodox characters'. This term is also used outside Taiwan to distinguish standard characters, including both simplified, and traditional, from other variants and idiomatic characters . Users of traditional characters elsewhere, as well as those using simplified characters, call traditional characters 繁體字 ; 繁体字 ; fántǐzì ; 'complex characters', 老字 ; lǎozì ; 'old characters', or 全體字 ; 全体字 ; quántǐzì ; 'full characters' to distinguish them from simplified characters. Some argue that since traditional characters are often

5734-399: The northern part of the province and to Cape Breton Island , beginning with the arrival of 189 Highlanders on the sailing ship Hector in 1773. A few Germans came to New France when France colonized the area, but large-scale migration from Germany began only under British rule, when Governor Edward Cornwallis established Halifax, Nova Scotia in 1749. Known as the Foreign Protestants ,

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5828-447: The northern part of what later became Waterloo County, Ontario . The same geographic area also attracted new German migrants from Europe, roughly 50,000 between the 1830 and 1860. Research indicates that there was no apparent conflict between the Germans from Europe and those who came from Pennsylvania. Another large group of Scottish Gaels immigrated to Canada and settled in Prince Edward Island in 1803. This migration, primarily from

5922-450: The nucleus of what would become the province of Upper Canada and, after 1867, Ontario . At the end of the 18th century, Cape Breton Island had become a centre of Scottish Gaelic settlement, where only Scottish Gaelic was spoken. Throughout the 18th and 19th centuries, Canadian Gaelic was spoken as the first language in much of "Anglophone" Canada, such as Nova Scotia , Prince Edward Island , and Glengarry County in Ontario. Gaelic

6016-556: The official script in Singapore until 1969, when the government officially adopted Simplified characters. Traditional characters still are widely used in contexts such as in baby and corporation names, advertisements, decorations, official documents and in newspapers. The Chinese Filipino community continues to be one of the most conservative in Southeast Asia regarding simplification. Although major public universities teach in simplified characters, many well-established Chinese schools still use traditional characters. Publications such as

6110-700: The original standard forms, they should not be called 'complex'. Conversely, there is a common objection to the description of traditional characters as 'standard', due to them not being used by a large population of Chinese speakers. Additionally, as the process of Chinese character creation often made many characters more elaborate over time, there is sometimes a hesitation to characterize them as 'traditional'. Some people refer to traditional characters as 'proper characters' ( 正字 ; zhèngzì or 正寫 ; zhèngxiě ) and to simplified characters as 簡筆字 ; 简笔字 ; jiǎnbǐzì ; 'simplified-stroke characters' or 減筆字 ; 减笔字 ; jiǎnbǐzì ; 'reduced-stroke characters', as

6204-442: The overcrowded docks in Liverpool and Cork. Most of the Irish immigrants who came to Canada and the United States in the nineteenth century and before were Irish speakers , with many knowing no other language on arrival. The first South Slavs (including Serbs ) to arrive in Canada came to British Columbia in the 1850s. Many of them came from the state of California in the United States , while others directly emigrated from

6298-466: The province of Manitoba — land that was granted by the Hudson's Bay Company , in what is referred to as the Selkirk Concession . This formed the earliest English and Scottish settlements in Assiniboia (part of present-day Manitoba ), involving some 300 largely Scottish colonists. One of the first efforts to encourage Welsh emigration to Canada began in 1812, when Welsh native John Mathews endeavoured to bring his family to Canada. Mathews left home at

6392-408: The provincial capital, the primary commercial centre for the Maritime provinces , a strategic British military and naval outpost and an important east coast cultural centre. To offset the Catholic presence of Acadians, foreign Protestants (mainly German) were given land and founded Lunenburg . Nova Scotia itself saw considerable immigration from Scotland, particularly to communities such as Pictou in

6486-403: The public to enjoy. Traditional Chinese characters Traditional Chinese characters are a standard set of Chinese character forms used to write Chinese languages . In Taiwan , the set of traditional characters is regulated by the Ministry of Education and standardized in the Standard Form of National Characters . These forms were predominant in written Chinese until the middle of

6580-522: The results, has become increasingly complex due to a number of factors, and poses challenges for historical data comparisons. The concept of ethnicity is fluid and is probably one of the more complex concepts measured in the census." As well, patterns of self-reporting ethnic origins on the census vary with different population groups in Canada, with particular fluidity on self-reporting of the category " Canadian ". Use of statistics in this subject area must be approached with these cautions in mind. The sum of

6674-475: The rights of the classified aliens and internees through diplomacy via the Srpska Narodna Odbrana u Kanadi ( Serbian National League of Canada ) which resulted in exemption, compensation and the release of many ethnic Serbs. Another advocate for the rights of Serbs of Austro-Hungarian origin was Serbian-born court interpreter Bud Protich, who enlisted in the Canadian Army and was wounded in action in 1917. German immigration and settlement to Canada accelerated in

6768-571: The ship Hector brought 200 Gaels to Pictou , beginning a new stream of Highland emigration — the town's slogan is "The Birthplace of New Scotland". At the end of the 18th century, Cape Breton Island had become a centre of Scottish Gaelic settlement, where only Scottish Gaelic was spoken. Furthermore, a number of Scottish loyalists to the British crown, who had fled the United States in 1783, arrived in Glengarry County (in eastern Ontario ) and Nova Scotia. Prince Edward Island (PEI)

6862-525: The slaves ashore to run along the waterfront to gauge whether it was safe for the rest of the crew to follow. After the Scots survived a day without being attacked, by either human or animal, the Vikings deemed it safe to spend the night ashore. The expedition was abandoned three years later; the original sagas were passed on in an oral tradition and then written down 250 years later. English Canadian history starts with

6956-555: The subsequent three centuries. The first documented source of Scots in what would become Canada comes from the Saga of Eric the Red and the Viking expedition of 1010 AD to Vinland (literally, the land of meadows), which is believed to refer to the island of Newfoundland . The Viking prince Thorfinn Karlsefni took two Scottish slaves to Vinland. When the longships moored along the coast, they sent

7050-473: The term "European origins" under the ethnic origin population section in the census data, but does not specifically use the term "European Canadian". "Euro-Canadians" and "European Canadians" are terms primarily used by those opposed to immigration to Canada from the Third World, and their use has been criticised as conflating distinctions between very different European groups and nationalities. Those employing

7144-580: The terms can recognise that most Canadians of European descent do not see that as their collective identity and instead identify with a specific ethnicity or country of ancestral origin, characterising themselves as for example "Anglo" or "Québecois" rather than as part of a larger "Euro-Canadian" group. For most of the history of European settlement in North America, the French and the English were seen as two distinct races, with distinct cultures and national spirits. Statistics Canada has cautioned that "the reporting of ethnicity, and subsequent interpretation of

7238-469: The time, in order to render Chinese-owned properties unsuitable for commercial use. One such property, located at the corner of Carrall Street and Pender Street, was owned by the influential local businessman Chang Toy ( 陳才 ; 1857–1921), known in the European community as "Sam Kee" ( 三記 ). Chang purchased the original, standard-sized lot for his primary business, the Sam Kee Company, in 1903. The original lot

7332-488: The tops of Manitoba maples or the bush of the river banks. These architectural figures of the landscape, apart altogether of their religious significance, are centers where, crossing the threshold on Sundays, one has the opportunity of hearing Swedish music, or the rich, deep chanting of the Russian responses; and of viewing at close hand the artistry that goes to make up the interior appointments of these churches transplanted from

7426-627: The traditional character set used in Taiwan ( TC ) and the set used in Hong Kong ( HK ). Most Chinese-language webpages now use Unicode for their text. The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) recommends the use of the language tag zh-Hant to specify webpage content written with traditional characters. In the Japanese writing system , kyujitai are traditional forms, which were simplified to create shinjitai for standardized Japanese use following World War II. Kyūjitai are mostly congruent with

7520-970: The traditional characters in Chinese, save for minor stylistic variation. Characters that are not included in the jōyō kanji list are generally recommended to be printed in their traditional forms, with a few exceptions. Additionally, there are kokuji , which are kanji wholly created in Japan, rather than originally being borrowed from China. In the Korean writing system , hanja —replaced almost entirely by hangul in South Korea and totally replaced in North Korea —are mostly identical with their traditional counterparts, save minor stylistic variations. As with Japanese, there are autochthonous hanja, known as gukja . Traditional Chinese characters are also used by non-Chinese ethnic groups. The Maniq people living in Thailand and Malaysia use Chinese characters to write

7614-509: The ubiquitous Unicode standard gives equal weight to simplified and traditional Chinese characters, and has become by far the most popular encoding for Chinese-language text. There are various input method editors (IMEs) available for the input of Chinese characters . Many characters, often dialectical variants, are encoded in Unicode but cannot be inputted using certain IMEs, with one example being

7708-527: The wake of widespread use of simplified characters. Traditional characters are commonly used in Taiwan , Hong Kong , and Macau , as well as in most overseas Chinese communities outside of Southeast Asia. As for non-Chinese languages written using Chinese characters, Japanese kanji include many simplified characters known as shinjitai standardized after World War II, sometimes distinct from their simplified Chinese counterparts . Korean hanja , still used to

7802-571: The words for simplified and reduced are homophonous in Standard Chinese , both pronounced as jiǎn . The modern shapes of traditional Chinese characters first appeared with the emergence of the clerical script during the Han dynasty c.  200 BCE , with the sets of forms and norms more or less stable since the Southern and Northern dynasties period c.  the 5th century . Although

7896-402: The world" and by Ripley's Believe It or Not! as the "world's thinnest building". The building was constructed as a spite house in 1913, in defiance of Vancouver City Council 's decision to expropriate without compensation a lot belonging to local business magnate Chang Toy, also known as "Sam Kee". Located at the corner of Carrall Street and Pender Street, the depth of the original lot

7990-421: The world". Rod Chow, son of Jack Chow, offers guided tours of the building in addition to his insurance services. In 2013, the building was given a million-dollar renovation. The project was financed by Jack Chow's retirement funds and a CA$ 100,000 grant from the municipal government. A glass window wicket was installed in 2016, allowing customers to be served on the sidewalk in front of the building and doubling

8084-595: Was "The King's First American Regiment" founded in 1776. It was composed mostly of Highlanders, many of whom fought with their traditional kilts to the sound of bagpipes . The regiment distinguished itself when it defeated Washington's forces at the Battle of Brandywine . When it disbanded after the War, most of its members settled in New Brunswick. In 1772, a wave of Gaels began to arrive in Prince Edward Island , and in 1773

8178-400: Was a trapezoid measuring 30 by 88.71 by 30.94 by 96.04 feet (9.14 m × 27.04 m × 9.43 m × 29.27 m). Its southern and eastern sides were slightly longer than its northern and western sides, respectively. By 1907, the Sam Kee Company had become one of the four main firms operating in Chinatown, running a large-scale import-export business that involved members of

8272-608: Was a source of employment. Many Serbs worked on the construction of railway lines that now extend from Edmonton to the Pacific coast . Communities of Serbs emerged in Regina , Lethbridge , Edmonton and Calgary while significant populations formed in Atlin, British Columbia and Dawson, Yukon . In Ontario and Quebec , Serbs were drawn to work in the industry sector. By 1914, the Serbian community of

8366-506: Was also heavily influenced by Scottish Gaelic settlers. One prominent settler in PEI was John MacDonald of Glenaladale , who conceived the idea of sending Gaels to Nova Scotia on a grand scale after Culloden. The name Macdonald still dominates on the island, which received a large influx of settlers, predominantly Catholics from the Highlands, in the late 18th century. The history of English Canadians

8460-422: Was born circa 1620, to Pierre Desportes (born Lisieux , Normandie , France) and Françoise Langlois. The first permanent European settlements in Canada were at Port Royal in 1605 and Quebec City in 1608 as fur trading posts . The territories of New France were Canada , Acadia (later renamed Nova Scotia ), and Louisiana . The inhabitants of the French colony of Canada (modern-day Quebec) called themselves

8554-645: Was on the front lines in the War of 1812 between the British Empire and the United States . The province also received immigrants from non English-speaking sources such as Germans, many of whom settled around Kitchener (formerly called Berlin). Ontario would become the most populous province in the Dominion of Canada at the time of Confederation , and, together with Montreal, formed the country's industrial heartland and emerged as an important cultural and media centre for English Canada. English, Scottish, and Irish communities established themselves in Montreal throughout

8648-537: Was one of the great explorers of the North West Company in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, and is often called "Canada's Greatest Geographer". He covered 130,000 kilometres on foot and surveyed most of the Canada–United States border in the early days of exploration. Upper Canada was a primary destination for English , Scottish and Scots-Irish settlers to Canada in the nineteenth century, and

8742-449: Was reduced from roughly 30 feet (9.1 m) to 6 feet (1.8 m) for the widening of Pender. Chang bet a business associate that he could construct a building on the land that remained, and the Sam Kee Building was completed a year later. It originally consisted of a ground floor housing retail shops, an upper floor housing residential and organizational units, and a basement containing public baths . Local businessman Jack Chow purchased

8836-624: Was the third most commonly spoken language in Canada. In the late 18th century, British colonies in North America were significantly affected by the outbreak and subsequent loss of the American Revolutionary War . At the time, Great Britain and its overseas empire were ruled by the German-descended King George III , who was also the Prince-Elector of Hanover , a state in what is now northwestern Germany. Notably,

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