| At the turn of the
last century, D’Arcy Island, a remote patch of land off Vancouver
Island, was prison to a handful of Chinese people suffering from
leprosy. They were marooned there to die. Today, the island is a
park, its history buried with the forgotten Chinese men — and one
woman — whose bones lie beneath the feet of its visitors.
When the first case of leprosy
appeared among Chinese railway labourers in the early 1890s, civil
officials panicked. Although medical officials knew that leprosy is not
seriously contagious, the victims were banished to the virtually
"escape-proof" D’Arcy Island.
Their only contact with the
outside world was the visit of a supply ship every three months bringing
food, clothing,
opium and coffins. The dying were to bury the dead themselves.
Although medical officers
condemned the conditions, nothing was done.
The conditions for the Chinese on
D’Arcy Island contrasted starkly with conditions at Canada’s other
lazaretto (leper hospital, named after the Biblical leper, Lazarus) in Tracadie,
N.B., where nuns looked after the patients, a physician was resident
and meals were prepared by a cook.
The connection between these two
lazaretto's is a dark saga in Canadian history. White Canadian
leprosy patients from across the country were sent to Tracadie, but a
leprous Chinese, from anywhere in Canada, would go to D’Arcy Island.
Two Chinese men entered the
United States from Canada and were identified in New York as leprous.
They were literally crated and shipped to Vancouver by rail (a trip that
may have taken weeks) where authorities promptly locked them in a shack
for two months. The men nearly died of dehydration and starvation before
a public outcry forced authorities to release them to D’Arcy Island.
On the eve of their transfer, it was discovered that one of the men did
not have leprosy.
Special leprosy treatment centres
in Canada began to close in 1956 after effective treatment for leprosy
became available.
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