The history of the Chinese community in Toronto is rich with stories drawn from over 150 years of life in Canada.

Sam Ching, a laundryman, is the first Chinese resident recorded in Toronto's city directory of 1878. A few years later, in 1881, there were 10 Chinese and no sign of a Chinatown. Today, with no less than seven Chinatowns and half a million people, Chinese Canadians have become the second-largest visible minority in the Greater Toronto Area.

Stories, photographs, newspaper reports, maps, and charts will bring to life the little-known and dark history of the...