The Disease by Angelica Ng

One of the worst instances of anti-Chinese hostility in Alberta occurred in the first Chinatown, the 1892 Smallpox Riot. One Chinese resident had contracted smallpox in Vancouver and fell ill upon his return to Calgary. Despite the authorities’ attempts to quell the disease by burning the laundry in which the man lived and quarantining its other occupants outside of town, nine Calgarians were infected. Fearing the spread of the disease after several smallpox-related deaths, a mob of 300 men attacked a Chinese laundry, vandalizing property and ultimately injuring two men. The North-West Mounted Police eventually stepped in and offered their barracks as refuge for the targeted Chinese community and for three weeks, the area was patrolled day and night to dissuade further disturbance. 

Illustration by Jarett Sitter

The Disease by Angelica Ng, read by the author

There are times the mind issues a single, overwhelming command, and the body reacts swiftly without question. He is thankful this is one of those times. Through the windows of the laundry, he can see a sea of men—there must be hundreds of them—approaching like a deadly wave. They are roaring with fury, wielding heavy, grey rocks in their palms, and jostling with the kind of recklessness that is so often emboldened by drink. His heart ricochets into his throat, nearly choking him, but his legs are responding. 

Run. 

He scrambles through the backdoor. His legs take him as far and as fast as they can past the neighbouring shops and restaurants. Stealing a glance back at the laundry retreating into the distance, he checks to make sure all his fellow workers are close behind him. He winces as the echoes of shattering glass and triumphant hollering catch up to him.  

He wonders, Where are the police? 

~~~~ 

He returns to the laundry, now destroyed. The entrance door stands crooked on its hinges, and every single window has been smashed, leaving edges that cast jagged shadows along the wall. The men ransacked the entire laundry; they overturned kettles and tubs of water onto the floor and flung bars of soap across the room. Outside, he finds the clothes that had been hanging to dry torn from their clotheslines and dirtied on the ground. This mob, which appeared to have assembled after watching a cricket match, had run rampant for hours, terrorizing the rest of the neighbourhood and injuring two residents, before the North-West Mounted Police finally stepped in to dispel the riot.  

The Calgary Police never came.  

The growing bitterness against his race has not eluded him. In June, a Chinese employee from another laundry on Stephen Avenue contracted the smallpox disease after returning from a trip to Vancouver. The employee was caught, riddled with small blisters, attempting to recover from the illness in his residence at the laundry, which prompted authorities to burn the entire building down—including, much to the patrons’ dismay, all the clothes and household linens—and put everyone who occupied the property under strict quarantine in a facility at the mouth of Nose Creek. The Chinese were blamed for bringing smallpox to town as the sickness inevitably spread, and tensions grew after one of the local women who had fallen ill suffered a miscarriage and died. When word circulated four of the Chinese residents who had completed their quarantine were being released and returned to their homes, this mob of white men, drunk on alcohol and contempt, must have wanted to drive out the people they considered to be the disease.  

Tiptoeing over shards of glass littering the floor, he looks out through a fractured windowpane. The neighbourhood is quiet, its residents hushed with the dawning realization that veiled threats have morphed into violent action. He stares at the trampled dirt road in front of the laundry, dented with the footprints of angry men, marking the boundary between Chinatown and the rest of Calgary.  

~~~~  

Ever since the riot, one of his fellow workers at the laundry has become even more fed up with the irony of how the Chinese are regarded as living in nests of filth and disease, yet all the while dirty linens are sent to Chinese laundries for a good cleaning at a low price. Beneath his workmate’s air of frustration, however, is obvious fear over the increasing animosity against the Chinese. A few days ago, the local press published an editorial that suggested measures to put Chinese laundries out of business: levying special taxes, requiring monthly or weekly sanitary inspections, or employing the local women to do the washing instead.  

Before retiring for the night one evening, his workmate catches him for a quick conversation. Leaning in like a conspirator, his workmate reveals his plan to escape further violence and discrimination by moving to Edmonton. 

He hesitates, unsure of how to respond to this news. He does not wish to dissuade his workmate from seeking out a potential sanctuary, but he is not optimistic the Chinese will be any better received elsewhere. 

Thankfully, before much else needs to be said, they sense the day’s exhaustion settling down upon them, and decide to bid each other goodnight, each going their separate way. 

~~~~ 

The next morning, getting dressed in a room behind the laundry, he scrutinizes the stranger before him in the mirror. 

When he arrived in Canada two years ago, his eyes were bright with the hopeful desire to earn a better living for his wife back home in Hoi-ping. He peers at his almond eyes now, dull and weary; his olive skin, fatigued by lack of sleep and meagre meals; and his swollen hands, roughened by his daily chore of boiling, soaking, scrubbing, rinsing, starching, ironing, drying, and folding for twelve hours a day in the stifling heat of steam, sweat, and solitude. His Black hair, still shaved across the front and plaited down his back in the customary style of his homeland, is the only part of him that remains in this shadow of his former self. But what is perhaps most jarring to see in his reflection is how the locals have hollowed him out, filling his empty shell with ugly notions of the kind of person they think he is, to the point he fears even his own shadow is beginning to feel foreign to him. 

Walking out onto the porch of the laundry, he notices a North-West Mounted Police officer approaching, sitting atop the glossy coat of an equine companion, cutting a dignified figure in the uniform of a scarlet jacket and brown riding boots. The Mounted Police have taken to patrolling the neighbourhood day and night, in addition to offering their barracks as refuge for those targeted in the riot.  

The officer gives him a nod. His eyes dart away with nervousness.  

He has done nothing wrong, but when everything that makes him different—his appearance, his traditions, his origin—is enough to justify hostility, he knows his presence itself can be offensive.  

The officer passes by the laundry without a word and continues riding his horse through the area. With the officer’s back finally to him, he watches as the horse trots down the street, its steady steps drawing a line of hoof prints into the dirt in front of him. 

Illustration by Jarett Sitter