Even the populations of Canada's smaller cities have been shaped by the history of Asians in the country as a whole. The story of the Chinese and Japanese populations of Lethbridge, Alta, takes a page from the larger history. The Chinese presence in Lethbridge dates to the end of the building of the transcontinental railway, when Chinese labourers came to the cities looking for work. The 80-year-old Chinatown, established between First and Third avenues, went into decline after the 1960s. Today, only a few original buildings on Second Avenue remain.
The first Japanese to settle near Lethbridge were those who came to work nearby mines in 1910. When mining petered out, they turned to farming, living amicably alongside white neighbours. During the Second World War, the whites here had little antagonism towards the Japanese; it was the Chinese who were strongly anti-Japanese because of Japanese atrocities in war-torn China. Upon the influx into southern Alberta of Japanese internees from British Columbia who were relocated and sent to work the sugar beet farms, Lethbridge was one of the town councils that prohibited newly arriving Japanese from living within its city limits. The Japanese population in the city really only developed after the 1960s, when less restrictive Canadian immigration laws brought in an influx of new faces. In 1966, the city's Nikka Yuko Japanese Garden was opened as a tribute to friendship between Japan and Canada.
Lethbridge
Total population 74,637
Visible minority population 5,065
Chinese 920
South Asian 575
Black 410
Filipino 350
Latin American 705
Southeast Asian 305
Arab 30
West Asian 200
Korean 125
Japanese 1,315
Source: Statistics Canada, 2006 Census
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Nikka Yuko Japanese Garden