The Paper Daughters of Chinatown

by Heather B. Moore

Miss Culbertson eyed her for a long moment. Faint sounds reached through the closed door. Singing? “You will stay then,” the director said at last, her tone softer than it had been, “despite all that I’ve told you?” Dolly held the older woman’s gaze. She’d thought that stepping off the train had been the turning point in her life. But she’d been wrong. This moment was. The director was more than twice Dolly’s age, and yet, she was living and working here. “Are you staying, Miss Culbertson?” Miss Culbertson’s brown eyes glimmered with surprise, but she gave a small, determined nod. “Of course.” Dolly muffled the rest of her questions. There would be time for them later. “Then I will stay too.”

This conversation between Margaret Culbertson and Donaldina Cameron is almost word-for-word what transpired on the day that Donaldina arrived at the mission home in 1895. Perhaps it was Donaldina's youth and naivete that gave her such courage, or perhaps it was because she didn't know exactly what she was getting herself into, but this moment became pivotal to her future.