In this post I am delighted to share an essay by Robert Louie where he talks about the C.I.9 Transcription Project, a project by a group of community historians in my private Facebook group Genealogy for Asian Canadians. After the essay, there is a table of key terms. This is a follow up to last week’s post. If you’d like to read them in order, see New releases of C.I.9s for Vancouver and Victoria – 2023.
Why do we care about the C.I.9s?
Although the original reasons for recording outbound Chinese people were nefarious, we have the ability to use this data to establish the travels of our ancestors. Many travelled back to their home villages to start a family and/or visit family. We knew from the scanned C.I.9 documents prior to 1920 that many contained photographs which our ancestors had taken from their local photo studio and brought to the immigration officer to be attached to the forms. For some ancestors, these were the only photographs that existed during their younger years. A collection of C.I.9 documents for an ancestor making multiple trips provides an interesting collage of their ancestor aging over time.
Finding the C.I.9s at the archives
In general, C.I.9 documents from 1913 to 1953, listed in Finding Aid 76-47, are contained in fifteen reels from T-6038 to 6052 and are currently available online at Library and Archives Canada (LAC) and Héritage Canadiana (HC). Further C.I.9 documents are listed in FA 76-165.
Four C.I.9 reels from Vancouver and Victoria in FA 76-165 are code 32 restricted. However, these are duplicates of reels that are already online.
Timeline of C.I.9 releases
The first reels from FA 76-165 that were released were T-16603 and 16604 in the Feb 2022 time frame, as noted in Linda’s blog. Allen Mar and Ken Eng made the effort to create a PDF index with names against each of the reel’s image numbers in Mar 2023. They did the same in Apr 2023 with T-16609 that was subsequently released. This allowed a person to search for a name, find out the reel’s image number and manually located it in HC’s collection.
Without the index, a user had to flip through each image sequentially on the reel to find the person they were looking for. The index was helpful but the C.I.9 names may not have been what was used in the General Register of Chinese Immigration and other documents. Because only the C.I.9 names were transcribed, one could not confirm that they had located the correct person until they examined the C.I.9 document and confirmed the other C.I. numbers.
In May 2023, Linda posted [in Genealogy for Asian Canadians] that LAC was accepting priority requests for scanning of (open access) T-reels. A few of us made priority requests to scan reels that we were interested in. After some prodding, LAC finally scanned a few of the reels and transferred them to HC for uploading onto their online servers in Aug 2023.
A discussion was started by myself and Allen about creating indexes for these similar to the previous C.I.9 T-reels. I felt that we needed to also transcribe the C.I numbers in order to allow users to zero in on the ancestor they were looking for. Many people were already familiar with finding their ancestor’s C.I. numbers from the General Register and with a C.I. number in hand they would be able to find the C.I.9 document without knowing the exact spelling of their ancestor’s name.
Also, at the end of June 2023, LAC released the entire set of C.I.44 documents online. [Edit: this is the Paper Trail exhibition and archive by Catherine Clement, June Chow, and their team, a community driven endeavour to open, digitize, and make the CI44 collection available to all.] These documents not only have the C.I.44 numbers but also include other C.I. numbers which could be used as a reference to help identify the ancestor. This further supported the need to transcribe the C.I. numbers indicated on the C.I.9 documents.
The beginning of the C.I.9 Transcription Project
The C.I.9 transcription project began mid Aug 2023. The result of the project is a Google Sheets spreadsheet with indexed data from the C.I.9 reels [EDIT: what I call the “C.I.9 Transcription Project.”]
The spreadsheet is searchable using the Google Sheets functionality. Each reel is organized by image with a direct link to a given image. C.I. data have been matched as closely as possible with indexed data from an earlier UBC project that transcribed the General Register. Where different names are used in the General Register they have been added to the Combined Names column to provide a greater success of finding an ancestor by name search. In the future we hope to also provide a link to the ancestor’s C.I.44 document.
The spreadsheet status tab shows what is currently being transcribed and what has been completed. For the Vancouver and Victoria ports a total of 32 reels or 87,137 images are online at HC. We have completed 51,316 images. The remaining 35,821 images were released in the first week in Dec 2023 and are currently being transcribed. Because of source errors the completed data is only about 84-89% error-free.
C.I.9 Transcription Project team members
The project members of the C.I.9 transcription team are:
Alice Lam, Allen Mar, Betty Tang, Grace Marosits, Jamie Fong, Janet Bradley, Jean Yee, Jennifer Jang, Joyanne Ngo, Ken Eng, Marisa Louie, Pat Chan, Sandy Griffith, Robert Louie.
Key Terms
| Term Used | Meaning |
|---|---|
| C.I.9 | Chinese Immigration Certificate no. 9, a reentry certificate regulating Chinese reentry to Canada after a trip out of Canada |
| C.I.44 | Records created by s.18 of the Chinese Immigration Act, 1923, which required all Chinese in Canada to register within a calendar year (1 Jul 1923 – 30 Jun 1924) or face severe penalties |
| code 32 | Records that are restricted. From LAC: “You’re not allowed to view material that contains sensitive information about: national security, other governments, police services, program operations, personal information, medical records, legal records.” |
| FA or Finding Aid | A finding aid is a description of a record collection’s contents, written by an archivist to describe the collection. It should include the history of the collection – why it was created and by whom. It also includes the arrangement – the organization of the collection (with an understanding of how to retrieve it). All collections should have a finding aid. |
| General Register | The General Register of Chinese Immigration, a set of registers held by Ottawa that recorded the original (or later registration) of Chinese in Canada (1885-abt. 1950) See more in Finding Mrs. Yip Sang: a case study of the General Register of Chinese Immigration 1885-1949 (Canada) |
| reels | A microfilm reel; in this case, the reels are from the “T” series |
Afterword
This essay is as written by Robert Louie, with light editing by me, Linda (which included formatting, images, the key terms table, and headlines).
Come join us in Genealogy for Asian Canadians, where we are talking about Chinese genealogy, asking important questions, and helping people find their families. Come join us in the transcription project, where we are transcribing thirteen reels of microfilm (about thirty-six thousand records) that we requested. All are welcome.
Thank yous
I am so very grateful for my group of community historians. Thank you to the C.I.9 Transcription Project team:
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