New releases of C.I.9s for Vancouver and Victoria – 2023

In this post I share the story of how a group of community historians found a big record gap and started a project that will benefit everyone from family historians to academic researchers.

What is a C.I.9?

A Chinese Immigration Certificate no. 9 is a Canadian reentry certificate. C.I.9s are foundational records for Chinese Canadian genealogy. They were official government documents issued to Chinese per the Chinese Immigration Act (1885-1947). Only Chinese, if they wished to leave and return, were required to first apply for permission to reenter. The paperwork involved acquiring a photo and approval from the Chinese Immigration Branch authorities. C.I.9s were single use certificates. Put another way, a person needed a C.I.9 for each trip out of the country (about 1910-1953) and it is therefore possible for frequent travellers to have multiple certificates. See Over 5K new Chinese Canadian records are now online at Héritage Canadiana.

For an in-depth read, see “Mass Capture: Chinese Head Tax and the Making of Non-Citizens,” by Dr. Lily Cho. She said,

The CI9 photographs make up the largest photographic archive of images of Chinese migrants in Canada. Further, the CI9s constitute the first mass use of identification photography in Canada.

Preface p. xii, Mass Capture, by Lily Cho

In the beginning of 2023, about forty-seven thousand C.I.9s were available online. That number is now doubled.

How did we get here?

Earlier this year (my notes suggest March), Genealogy for Asian Canadians group members Allen Mar, Debbie Jiang, and Tack Sis among others, were working on C.I.9 research and wondered: “If all the C.I.9s are really online, then why can’t I find my person when I know he left the country on [specific date]?”

There is nothing like a good set of research questions. Were all the C.I.9s online? Why did we think this? How many C.I.9s were created in the first place?

I went digging at Library and Archives Canada and found “Records of entry and other records” and its finding aid. There, on a single page, an unsung archivist had listed the reels and their contents. Why didn’t I find this before? I can see two important keywords missing: “Chinese” and “immigration.” Find the finding aid here:

Seventeen of the C.I.9 reels were online (about 47.7K records). And up to thirty-seven reels were not (about another 100K records).

Was it possible we were missing a hundred thousand records? Read on.

The C.I.9 Transcription Project

In May, I learned in a webinar presented by Min Hanford and Valerie Casbourn of LAC and the Vancouver Public Library that microfilm reels could be requested for digitization. For free. After further research, the group determined the total number of missing C.I.9 reels from FA-165 was fifteen (42K records). Allen Mar requested two of the reels in August, Betty Tang four more in September, and Robert Louie the remaining nine in October.

That’s when the C.I.9 Transcription Project – the brainchild of Robert Louie and Allen Mar – was born. What if we transcribed the CI9 information? What if we leveraged existing tools? What if we cross-referenced the CI landing certificate numbers? And most importantly, What if we applied quality control to correct mistakes?

Since the summer, a dedicated team of volunteers has spent countless hours building the C.I.9 lookup tool: transcribing, correcting, cross-referencing, and researching the results. The tool is still in draft but already it’s proved its value in helping people find their family records. And this is where I need your help. Come join us to help transcribe the new reels. You’ll learn a LOT about how the Chinese Immigration records fit together, and you’ll probably find records you didn’t know existed.

Where can I find the CI9s?

You can find C.I.9 records online in two places: Collection Search at Library and Archives Canada (LAC), and Héritage Canadiana (HC). Both are free to use.

C.I.9 records at Library and Archives Canada

If the C.I.9 is available in Collection Search (about 42K records), you can use a name or certificate number as the search criteria.

C.I.9 records at Héritage Canadiana

For the remaining fifteen reels on HC, you will need to know i) the year of departure and ii) the microfilm reel number to find the reel. See finding aid here. Each reel holds about 2800 records. Note that HC is not text-searchable (excepting the mikan description). If you know the C.I.9 number (check passenger lists), you can use “Chinese immigration records : Lists of persons to whom C.I.9 and C.I.9A certificates have been issued in Vancouver and Victoria,” available on reel nos. T-6053 and T-6054.

For more on understanding and navigating the two sites, see Don’t overlook free digital records with my Library and Archives Canada / Heritage Canadiana hack, part 1 and Don’t overlook free digital records with my Heritage Canadiana / Library and Archives Canada hack, part 2.

The C.I.9 Lookup Tool

New in 2023: Use the draft C.I.9 Project lookup tool, created by and available in Genealogy for Asian Canadians.

Afterword

We began 2023 with about forty-eight thousand C.I.9s and we end with almost double that number. The questions that come up for me are: Is this it? Do we have all the C.I.9s now?

To be honest, I’m not sure. I think of Donald Rumsfeld, who said,

“Reports that say that something hasn’t happened are always interesting to me, because as we know, there are known knowns; there are things we know we know. We also know there are known unknowns; that is to say we know there are some things we do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns- the ones we don’t know we don’t know.”

Donald Rumsfeld Quotes, Goodreads.com

In the case of missing C.I.9s, we have known unknowns: we know there are things we don’t know. We rely on archivists at LAC to write finding aids and let us know what’s in the archives. After years of research, I have a binder of finding aids but that’s not the same thing as knowing the scope of records. What if there are boxes that haven’t been identified? What if there are roomfuls of these boxes? What if the archivist looking at these boxes wasn’t sure what they were looking at?

Do we have them all? Time – and more research – will tell. In the meantime, come join the fun in my private Facebook group, Genealogy for Asian Canadians. We’d love help with the transcriptions, and we welcome all family historians.

Next week: More about the C.I. 9 project from Robert Louie!

Thank yous

A thousand thousand thanks to Robert Louie and the C.I.9 Transcription Project Group: 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. Also thanks to June Chow, Ken Eng and Debbie Jiang for insights and comments.