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The Brunswick Hotel and Quong Sing Restaurant on River Street
1910
River Street, Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan

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Ideas of Chinese depravity played up by moralists had fostered the perceived need to protect white working women from Chinese employers. The test in Moose Jaw came shortly afterwards in the cases of Quong Wing v. Rex and Quong Sing v. Rex, in which the proprietors of the CER Restaurant and the Quong Sing Restaurant were charged with employing white women. Both cases were lost, but, in protest to the stigma that this act carried, several members of the Chinese community financed appeals for the Quong Wing case all the way to the Supreme Court of Canada, where, unfortunately, the case was lost again. The law wasn't repealed until 1969, although enforcement was lax in later years.

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Despite the difficulty the legal system presented, life for Moose Jaw Chinese residents was not completely overcome by discrimination. While still facing some familiar obstacles, Moose Jaw's newness and distance from the existing urban centers also gave the Chinese community a fair chance to succeed.

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Moose Jaw Times Herald article
6 September 1913

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In these communities, the smaller size and the need to work together to overcome the elements resulted in the chance for every individual to play a role. Saskatchewan's promise was greater opportunity for those who would work for it. And so, at the same time that newspapers contained editorials such as, "Chinese a Stagnant Race - The Real Yellow Peril," a full page could be written on "Celestials Who Are Now Citizens of Earthly Moose Jaw," citing Yip Foo, owner of the Yip Foo block and shareholder in the Russell Block, as "Our Leading Chinaman."

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Moose Jaw Times Herald article
6 September 1910

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The idea of a separate Chinatown, proposed in Regina to great opposition, was never copied in nearby Moose Jaw, where the Chinese population would have been large enough to support de facto segregation. Instead, there was "No Chinatown Here, But Great Number of Chinese Live and Work in City."

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Moose Jaw Times Herald article
6 September 1913