VICTORIA, British Columbia—The renovation of one of Victoria’s oldest hotels has brought to life the history of its original owner, a civil rights activist and well-connected businessman who fought for the rights of the city’s early Chinese settlers.
Lim Bang was born in 1880 on Vancouver Island to parents of Chinese descent. In his lifetime, he got rid of segregation in Victoria’s schools and built and owned several businesses in the province including a rice factory, a brick plant, general stores, and greenhouses.
He also built a heritage building at the corner of Pandora and Douglas that, now fully renovated, will celebrate its grand re-opening as the Hotel Rialto on June 23.
A champion of democracy in China, Mr. Lim was a key financial supporter and strategizer at the highest levels of the Kuomintang, the Chinese Nationalist Party. While remaining in Canada, he aided the overthrow of the last Chinese dynasty and supported Dr. Sun Yat-Sen to become the country’s first president.
It was only in early 2009 that the hotel’s owners, Danilo and Jane Danzo, learned that its founder had left behind such an extraordinary legacy.
“I didn’t really know all the history until my husband decided to totally renovate the building. It was extremely serendipitous,” Mrs. Danzo said.
Around the time he built the hotel, Mr. Lim was also the manager of the Bank of B.C., the first person of Chinese origin to manage a bank in Canada.
Fred Yuen, a close family friend, said Mr. Lim “was one of the forward thinking people at the time, I would imagine beyond the concept of what a person could do at that particular period. He was one of the first to own an automobile in Victoria. He showed me his driver’s license number. It was # 4 for all of B.C.”
Racial Discrimination
Describing the extent of the discrimination in those days, Mr Yuen, who owned and operated a laundry service in Victoria until the 1980s, said that even in the 1950s, some Vancouver companies refused to sell him any laundry equipment because he was Chinese.
“As late as 1944 in Victoria, I had to go to a segregated school. In fact when I applied for classes at Victoria College, a forerunner of the University of Victoria, they warned me not to pursue courses that would lead to professions like a pharmacist, etc., since all these professions were closed to people of Chinese descent born in Canada.”
Twice in the first quarter of the 20th century, the Chinese community in Victoria had to battle racial segregation by the Victoria School Board in order for their children to obtain the same education as all Canadians.
“My grandfather, Lim Bang, was a well respected businessman in Victoria. In fact, he was designated as the unofficial Mayor of Chinatown,” said Betty Klepp, a resident of Saskatchewan, who visited her grandparents in Victoria each summer as a child.
For a period of time, she said, “my mother and her siblings were not allowed to attend the English schools. He and another of the parents started the Chinese school which my mother attended.”
That same school, built in Oriental architectural style, is still in use today.
‘Chinese democracy pioneer’
The Kuomintang rose in China in the early 1900s after the country had been successively conquered by a series of developed nations in the West and by Japan. The party aimed to replace China’s then-corrupted last dynasty, Qing, which was seen as the main barrier to modernization in China.
Secret meetings were held in Victoria where Lim Bang discussed what was to be the beginning of the Republic of China with Kuomintang leader Sun Yat-Sen.
It seems that Lim primarily helped raise funds for the cause and did not participate in military and political strategy discussions that took place in the island city.
China’s first president thanked Lim Bang for his support in a personal letter which now rests as a provincial treasure in the Royal B.C. Museum. Mr. Lim spent his retirement in his native Victoria. He lived to be 94.
‘My grandfather would be very honoured’
Lim Bang is not prominent in Canadian textbooks, said Mrs. Klepp, “but he should be.” She also doubts if many in the Chinese-Canadian community could recall him today.
“If you walk down the streets of Victoria, I’m not sure anyone would remember him.”It was only when Mrs. Klepp’s husband walked into the hotel one day as Mr. and Mrs. Danzo were finishing the renovations that the couple learned the true significance of who the original owner was.
The 100-year-old building was first known simply as the Lim Bang Building, then it became the Prince George Hotel and finally the Douglas Hotel.
The re-opening will feature the presentation of a plaque commemorating Mr. Lim’s achievements. The Rialto’s lower lobby is decorated in a Chinese theme in honour of the almost forgotten historic figure.
“I think that my grandfather would be very honoured and I’m very honoured that Jane and her husband have chosen to recognize the fact the he was the original builder of the hotel,” said Mrs Klepp.
“They could have just glossed over it and forgotten it. Their generosity is wonderful and I congratulate them on that.”
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