Tam Kung Temple National Historic Site

The Tam Kung Temple was designated as a national historic site in 2025.

Commemorative plaque: no plaque installed^{Footnote 1}

Tam Kung Temple, Victoria, British Columbia

The Tam Kung Temple is an early and rare example of a Chinese temple in Canada. The temple, which originated as a shrine in Victoria in the 1860s, has served as an important religious space for Chinese Canadians, and specifically the Hakka community, on Vancouver Island since the late 19th century. This temple has been in almost continuous use since the Yen Wo Society constructed this building to house the temple on its top floor in 1912, demonstrating the continuity of this religious tradition over time.

The Tam Kung Temple is located on the top floor of the Yen Wo Society Building at 1713 Government Street within Victoria’s Chinatown. In the latter half of the 19th century, Chinese residents of Victoria honoured ancestors and deities by burning incense and lighting oil-burning lamps at altars and shrines located in their homes, stores, meeting places, and theatres. The origins of the Tam Kung Temple can be traced to the gold rush of the 1860s when a Hakka miner placed a statue of the deity Tam Kung in a wooden roadside shrine by the Johnson Street ravine, which divided Chinatown from Victoria’s downtown core to the south. The Hakka, who belong to a distinct Chinese cultural and linguistic group, revered Tam Kung, a sea deity, because he was believed to protect fishermen and seafarers. By the 1870s, the shrine was moved to its current location and developed as a temple. In 1877, Hakka residents of Victoria raised funds to purchase the property where the temple is now located. Around 1887, a larger frame temple was built for Tam Kung. A distinctive one-storey brick temple was built here in 1894.

In 1905, Hakka speakers in Victoria founded their own linguistic association, the Yen Wo Society. In 1911, this society purchased the property on which the brick temple was located and replaced it with a taller brick building designed by architect Wilfrid Lord Watkins Hargreaves (1880–1966). Constructed in 1912, the Yen Wo Society Building is an Edwardian-style building on a narrow lot, with three storeys in addition to a mezzanine above the main floor. The Tam Kung Temple was installed in the top storey of this building because the clients wished for their sacred space to be positioned “closer to heaven.” In the temple is a shrine housing a wooden statue of Tam Kung. There is a dome skylight above three offering tables in the centre of the room, and the front offering table is elaborately decorated with a gilded wood carving. The temple features many embroidered silk banners, donated by worshippers as tokens of gratitude to Tam Kung, and some of the furnishings, such as the censers for burning incense, a cast-iron bell, and a stone receptor for wine offerings, predate the current building. In addition to the shrine to Tam Kung, there are five other altars in this temple.

Despite a movement away from traditional Chinese religion in the early 20th century, the temple remained open and visitors have come to the temple to make offerings and seek advice from Tam Kung on life decisions and curing ailments. After a fire damaged the temple on 11 January 1980, the temple was restored. In 2022, the Tam Kung Temple was the only Chinese temple still in use in Victoria.

“Standing tall since 1876 in Victoria's Historic Chinatown, the Tam Kung Temple is a cherished landmark for Chinese-Canadian history via Trans-Pacific migration. Greatly honoured with a national historic designation by the Government of Canada, our cultural ties and customs are anchored here by the strength and resilience of forebearers. All are welcome within to this place of peace and respite, contemplation and community."

This press backgrounder was prepared at the time of the Ministerial announcement in 2025.

Related links

• National historic designations
• National historic persons
• National historic sites designations
• National historic events
• Submit a nomination
• Victoria's Chinatown National Historic Site
• This Week in History