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Won Alexander CumyowWon Alexander Cumyow was born 1861 March 24 or February 14 in Port Douglas, British Columbia (at the head of Harrison Lake at the start of the road to Lillooet and the Cariboo Gold Rush). His father ran a store and restaurant in Port Douglas. Won Cumyow was the first person of Chinese descent born in Canada. After attending high school in New Westminster (the same school as future B.C. premier, Richard McBride), 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 Chinook. Cumyow voted for the first time in 1890 but legislation in 1896 stripped Chinese 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 The Chinese Immigration Act of 1923 also known as the Chinese Exclusion Act, was repealed after World War II in 1947, and he then voted again in the next federal election in 1949 -- making him the only Chinese person to have voted both before and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. (According to some accounts, he was also the first Chinese Canadian to vote in the 1949 federal election. There are archived photos of him voting then.) Active in the Vancouver's Chinese community, he was founder of the Chinese Empire Reform Association, an organization of overseas Chinese in support of the emperor, 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. He married Ye Eva Chan on 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. External Links *Won Cumyow & family in 1901 Canadian Census
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