Category Archives: Commentaries

Terry Fox: 25 Years of Legacy – television special – behind the scenes…

Terry Fox has a place in the heart of every Canadian.  I also
believe there is room for Terry's mother Betty Fox in our hearts
too.  Just watching her on the tv special, Terry Fox: 25 Years of
Legacy, and at the Terry Fox “hometown” Run in Port Coquitlam. show
confirmed for me, that Betty Fox is a quintessential mother for all
Canadians.

Betty Fox has tirelessly talked at elementary schools, universities and
run sites across our country, and in other countries as well. Her two
sons Fred, and Darrell, had been former directors of the BC Yukon Terry
Fox Run offices.  Darrell is now National Run director.

On Friday, September 16, over one million school children across our
vast country participated in the first-ever Terry Fox National School
Day Run.  From St. John's in NewFound Land, to Victoria on
Vancouver Island in BC.

To have Betty and Rolly Fox interviewed for the tv special while school children ran in the background was very important.
To have live television coverage of this event from different points
across our country was very important.  At now other time in our
nation, have over one million people all participated together in a
single event.

And yet television coverage was almost jeopardized by the CBC
lockout.  Moyra Rodger of Out To See Productions has been working
tirelessly over the past year to produce the tv special that was shown
twice on the weekend.  Over the past year, she filmed footage of
interviews with significant people in Terry's life, as well as events
such as the Canadian Mint coin launch for the $1 Terry Fox coin at
Simon Fraser University.  Because of the CBC lockout, the project
was threatened.  Scaled  back, and switched to an independent
production, it continued on. On the morning of Friday, Sep 16th, Moyra
recieved a 6am phone call that a picket line was blocking the St.
John's camera crew.

I had a heart-felt talk with Moyra on Sunday night.  She had been
the producer for the Gung Haggis Fat Choy television special that aired
in 2004 and 2005, and was nominated for two Leo Awards.  I knew
how much Terry Fox now meant to her.  Both Darrell Fox and I sung
her praises to each other when we chatted at the coin launch. 
Moyra is a compassionate worker, and includes people in the
process.  Both Darrell and I felt that our own stories and
interests were represented and respected by Moyra.  And here she
was, exhausted from a long 2 weeks of filming and editing, getting the
show finished for its 8pm airing just seconds in time.

We talked about how important it was for the country to have the
television special go ahead, and what Terry means to Canadians. 
She herself, had questions about proceeding during the CBC
lockout.  She wouldn't have done it for a hockey game she told
me.  But Terry Fox is special.  I told her that Darrell Fox
had told me at times, “What would Terry do?”  Does this event
raise people's inspiration and connect them to Terry's dream. 
It's important.  period.

more later….

CTV Terry Fox Movie: Sunday Sep 11

Tonight premieres the brand new Terry Fox movie starring Sean Ashton. 

7pm, Sunday Sep 11
CTV

Advance notice on the movie is pretty good, focussing on Terry's
internal journey instead of merely reporting what happened.  We
all are very familiar with the events, but what actually went on in
Terry's head, or the social dynamics with his brother Darrell and best
friend Doug Alward are stories to be revealed.

CBC started a documentary about Terry Fox, produced by my friend Moyra
Rodger (CBC's TV performance special Gung Haggis Fat Choy).  Moyra
was very excited earlier this year when I saw here filming clips during
the Canadian Mint unveiling of the Terry Fox $1 coin.  Darrell Fox
was very up on the production, and we both shared praises of Moyra. 

All that is in jeopardy with the CBC lock-out, that Canadian cultural
expert Max Wyman told me “is such a waste!”  Canadians are
deprived of Canadian culture, and all the support that CBC gives to our
artists and events.

The Fox Family was featured on Shelagh Rogers' Sounds Like Canada for
the anniversary of Terry's dip into the Atlantic Ocean – broadcast live
from New Foundland, as CBC did an incredible job on radio and
television focusing on Terry's achievements, 25 years later.

If you love Terry Fox, and want to see the television documentary, and
hear CBC radio tell more stories about Terry – Call your local MP,
write letters to your newspaper, and to CBC management.  I think
the CBC lockout is a travesty to the trust and legacy of Canadian
culture and artists.  As grateful, as I am to both CBC radio and
television for promoting and documenting Gung Haggis Fat Choy, I know
the difference between the producers, radio hosts and national
management decision makers.

What's in an audience? Alison Krauss bluegrass VS Vancouver Symphony at Deer Lake Park

I went to two different concerts this week:  Alison Krauses and Union
Station at the Orpheum Theatre in Vancouver on Tuesday Aug 9th, and
Vancouver Symphony Orchestra at Deer Lake Park on Friday August 12th.

Alison Krauss specializes in bluegrass music – pure accoustic
mountain-inspired old-fashioned country music.  She has the voice of an
angel, and is one of my favorite singers.  Dan Tyminski, plays guitar
and sings vocals for the band as well, and is more well known for being
the singing voice of George Clooney in the movie “O Brother Where Art
Thou” for the song “I'm A Man of Constant Sorrow.”

The audience was very caucasian… and middle-aged.  Sort of reminded
me of the CBC radio concert for “Madly Off in All Directions.”  It was
a great concert with wonderful music and performances.  On the way to
the concert, I joked to my girlfriend (who is caucasian) that I would
probably be the only Chinese person at the concert.

“Omigod!” she exclaimed.  “You're Chinese!  You didn't tell me that!” 
she joked.  We've only been going out just over two years…

But I did see an Asian person… a technician for the show… then 2
others in the audience as we were walking out.  So, I felt a
secret kindred spirit with these strangers of Asiatic features,
enjoying an exotic cultural musical delicacy.

Compare this to the audience for the Vancouver Symphony at Deer Lake
Park in Burnaby- a Vancouver area tradition.  I would venture that
one
half to one-quarter of the audience was Asian.  And one-tenth of
the
symphony was Asian, including the guest soloist, a 16 year-old Korean
born clarinetist.  In our social picnic group of 13, over half
were Asian…  well one dragon boater was Eurasian… so she
counts in both camps.

What is it about symphony and country music that creates cultural
divides?  while attending the Alison Krauss concert, I felt that I
was
being very culturally proactive, like a fly on the wall, witnessing
the  cultural traditions of a different very white culture. And
yet the Symphony program was all based on dead white composers such as
Bizet, Tchaikovsky, Sibelius – many of whom in my accordion concert
repetoire!  Very interesting…

Hmmm… Bruce Springsteen concert tonight…
one of the first racially integrated bands in the early 1970's.
I can play “Dancing in the Dark” on my guitar, and “Fire” on the piano!

What is Canadian Culture? Todd's definition + Frommer's Guide

“What is Canadian Culture?” a friend asked me the
other day.  “When I think of Japan,” he said, “I think of pagodas,
sushi, samauri… what do we have in Canada? Beavers?  That's not
culture!” He stated.

In Canada, Culture is what you make it.  Culture evolves
according to the people are are active creating it.  I have been
called a cultural engineer because I actively create cultural events
such as my signature event “Gung Haggis Fat Choy: Toddish McWong's
Robbie Burns Chinese New Year Dinner.

But culture lives and breathes and sometimes you have to change it's
diapers.  Today I discussed culture with Michael Dangeli who is a First
nations artist and performer.  We are sitting inside our “carving
tent” with our wood carving projects, and discussing how through time,
cultures get appropriated by individuals, absorbed into societies and
emerge in new forms. 

We have been discussing the origins of dragon boat racing, since we
have a dragon boat on display in front of our visual arts carving tent
just behind the Vancouver Maritime Museum.  We are part of
the Sea Vancouver Festival, as artists and presenters.  Dragon
Boats originated in China, further developed in North America and the rest of the
world, and now has entered a kind of sports metamorphosis.  Dragon
Boats have also been appropriated by Breast Cancer dragon boat teams as
a method of exercise and support groups.

I also told Michael about how “Chop Suey” and “Fortune Cookies” are
not from China
originally – but originated in North America to beome “Chinese
traditions”… at least in North America.  It is an example of how
cultural values and customs
transform in a new land.  Witness how Scottish deep fried bread
called Bannock travelled across Canada and became absorbed into First
Nations cuisine.

Gung Haggis Fat Choy is a cultural fusion.  It is a blend
of cultures.  It is a cultural evolution.  It is
representative of the traditions and values that the immigrating
cultures of Scotland and China brought with them.  And it is
representative of how their descendents adapt to living in this new
land, while trying to retain some sense of ethnic ancestral culture
while living in a present day “Canadian culture”.

Below is a description of Canada's Cultural Mosaic according to Frommer's

http://www.frommers.com/destinations/canada/0216020043.html

Canada's Cultural Mosaic — Canada has sought
“unity through diversity” as a national ideal, and its people are even
more diverse than its scenery. In the eastern province of Québec live 6
million French Canadians, whose motto, Je me souviens (“I
remember”), has kept them “more French than France” through 2 centuries
of Anglo domination. They've transformed Canada into a bilingual
country where everything official — including parking tickets and
airline passes — comes in two tongues.

The English-speaking majority of the populace is a mosaic rather
than a block. Two massive waves of immigration — one before 1914, the
other between 1945 and 1972 — poured 6.5 million assorted Europeans
and Americans into the country, providing muscles and skills, as well
as a kaleidoscope of cultures. The 1990s saw another wave of
immigration — largely from Asia and particularly from Hong Kong —
that has transformed the economics and politics of British Columbia.
Thus, Nova Scotia is as Scottish as haggis and kilts, Vancouver has the
largest Chinese population outside Asia, the plains of Manitoba are
sprinkled with the onion-shaped domes of Ukrainian churches, and
Ontario offers Italian street markets and a theater festival featuring
the works of Shakespeare at, yes, Stratford.

You can attend a native-Canadian tribal assembly, a Chinese New Year
dragon parade, an Inuit spring celebration, a German Bierfest, a
Highland gathering, or a Slavic folk dance. There are group settlements
on the prairies where the working parlance is Danish, Czech, or
Hungarian, and entire villages speak Icelandic.

Canada Day in North Vancouver

I love Canada… Day…

I think it's great how everybody comes out and puts maple leaf tatoos
on their faces, stick Canadian flags in their hats, wear red and
white…

Today I went down to Lonsdale Quay and Waterfront Park.  I
marvelled how I could eat Vietnamese sweet and sour salmon and
lemongrass chicken, alongside fish and chips, gourmet burgers, donairs
and beaver tails.  North Vancouver is much more multicultural now
then when I grew up here in the 1970's.  Farsi, Korean and
Japanese language are now as commonplace as their ethnic counterpart
stores and restaurants.

There was a tent where people were adding clay figures to clay “North
Shore mountains.”  I listened intently as MP Don Bell (former
North Vancouver District Mayor) explained to a South Asian-Canadian
teenager about why he voted for the same-sex marriage bill, even though
both he and his wife are evangelical Christians.  I watched
children of all ages and ethnicities play together in the inflatable
dragon, and in the children's play areas.  I talked with both the
Rotaract Club and North Shore Scouts Canada organizers about setting up
a dragon boat race/festival for the North Shore (typical Todd!)

But on this day, when CBC Radio was playing the highlights of Jian
Gomesi's “50 Canadian Song Tracks” – I don't think I heard one single
Canadian song.  I heard celtic music in the Celtic store and I
heard zydeco music at the Lonsdale Quay mainstage.  Last year I
heard lots of American Rock and Roll music at Canada Place. 

For once, I would love to see some Canadian Music cover bands where the
audience can all sing along to Canadian music classics such as Ian
Tyson's “Four
Strong Winds,”  Stompin' Tom Connors “The Hockey Song,” Gordon
Lightfoot's “Canadian Railroad Trilogy,” Brian Adams' “Summer of
'69”, Joni Mitchell's “The Circle Game,” “Neil Young's “Helpless,” The
Guess Who's “These Eyes,” and Anne Murray's “Snowbird” written by Gene
McLellan.  Okay
contemporary songs by the Bare Naked Ladies, Shania Twain, Jann Arden,
Sara McLachlan, and Alanis Morisette.

Maybe I will have to form my own band for next year… but then I would have to play my accordion!

83-year old Gim Wong rides motorcycle for Chinese Head-Tax Redress

Media Advisory: June 4, 2005
 
GIM WONG’S RIDE FOR REDRESS IN VANCOUVER
JUSTICE NOW FOR RACIST CHINESE
HEAD TAX AND EXCLUSION
 
Victoria, BC – Gim Foon Wong, born in Vancouver’s Strathcona neigbourhood
over 83-years ago and a World War II airforce veteran, is riding his motorcycle
across Canada for Chinese head tax and exclusion redress.  With his son
Jeffrey, Gim left Mile 0 in Victoria’s Beacon Hill Park on June 3.  His
stops will include Calgary, Regina, Winnipeg, Sudbury, Toronto and
Montreal.  He plans to arrive in Ottawa on July 1, 2005 – Canada Day.
 
Canada Day marks a significant anniversary for Chinese Canadians.  It
was on July 1, 1923 that the Canadian Government enacted the Chinese Exclusion
Act and until it was repealed in 1947, the Lo Wah Kiu (old overseas Chinese)
referred to it as Humiliation Day.  On July 1, 2004, Gim made a successful
“shakedown” run to Craigallachie, BC, site of the last spike completing the
trans-Canada railway.
 
DATE:  June 5, 2005
 
TIME:  11:00
 
LOCATION: Departing from Vancouver Chinatown Memorial to
Chinese-Canadian War Veterans and Railway Workers (Keefer & Columbia
Streets)
 

When the Canadian Pacific Railway (CPR) was constructed between 1881
and 1885, Chinese workers were brought in from China as a source of cheap land
reliable labour.  They were also willing to perform the most dangerous
tasks in building the railway.  Due to the racist public sentiment against
more Chinese immigrants arriving in Canada when the CPR was completed in 1885,
the Canadian government imposed a “head tax” on them.  In 1923, the
Canadian government passed the Chinese Immigration Act, which virtually excluded
all persons of Chinese descent from coming to Canada.  This “Chinese
Exclusion Act” was repealed in 1947.  
 
Gim’s father and uncles paid the head tax when they came to Canada as 11
and 12-year olds in the early 1900’s.  Gim Wong’s Ride for Redress is a
pensioner’s call to Canadians of good conscience to join and assist him in this
struggle of almost a quarter century.  Many of the affected seniors are
over ninety and redress will lose much of its meaning if they do not survive to
receive it.
 
The Victoria and Vancouver legs of Gim Wong’s Ride for Redress organised
by
Canadians for Redress and ACCESS Association of Chinese Canadians, an
affiliate of the Chinese Canadian National Council. 
 
-30-
 
For further information contact:
Sid Tan – sidtan@vcn.bc.ca
Home office
604-433-6169    Cell 604-783-1853
———————————–
 
Gim Wong’s Ride for Redress A Call for Justice Now
 
Gim Foon Wong has a dream of riding his motorcycle across Canada. He will
try to fulfil his dream and bring a message to all Canadians about Canada’s
infamous Chinese Head Tax and Exclusion Acts and the devastation they caused
Chinese Canadian families over generations.
 
 “I want to do this ride for the Chinese railway workers and all those
Chinese pioneers. I want to do it for my good friend Charlie Quan, who is a
98-year old head taxpayer living in Vancouver. I want to do it for my
family.”
 
“This is a pensioner’s call on the on the government to quit dragging its
feet. This ride is about respect for the generations of Chinese Canadians who
build this country. It’s time for the government to apologise and make the tax
refund.”
 
Background: History of Racism Towards the Chinese in Canada
 
Chinese workers made a major contribution to the construction of the
Canadian Pacific Railway (CPR).  Chinese labourers were paid about half the
wages of other railway workers, and often performed the most dangerous tasks.
After the CPR was completed in 1885, due to racist public sentiment, the
Canadian government imposed a “head tax” on Chinese immigrants.  In 1923,
the Canadian government passed the Chinese Immigration Act, which virtually
excluded all persons of Chinese descent from coming to Canada.  This
“Chinese Exclusion Act” was not repealed until 1947.
 
The 24 years of Chinese exclusion separated families, condemned generations
of men to a life of isolation and loneliness, and acutely impeded the economic
and political development of Chinese communities in Canada.
 
Those wishing to assist or make a donation to Gim Wong’s Ride for Redress,
can do so by contacting:
 
Chinese Canadian National Council
302 Spadina Street, Suite
507
Toronto, Ontario, Canada  M5T 2E7
Phone: 416.977.9871
Fax:
416.977.1630
Web: www.ccnc.ca/redress
Email: national@ccnc.ca
 

Make cheque payable to “Gim Wong’s Ride for Redress”

Miss Saigon VS Senses and other cultural questions


I went for a walk along South Granville Street last night with my girlfriend, between
Broadway and 15th Ave.
Miss Saigon is playing at the Arts Club's Stanley Theatre. We saw lots
of people walking out the theatre and bumped into some friends who said
they enjoyed it tremendously and it was worth seeing. John Mann (lead
singer of Spirit of the West) apparently steals the show and the
helicopter does fit on stage!

Productions of Miss Saigon have been protested by North American Asian
arts communities
for perpetuating stereotypes and for not giving the
lead role of bi-racial character, “The Engineer”, to an Asian actor. As
I watched the audience walk down Granville St, I was amazed that
everybody was caucasian with the exception of one couple where the
woman was Asian. (I should note that my girlfriend is caucasian, and is
very good at putting up with my racial/cultural ramblings).

What would happen if Miss Saigon was staged by all Asians and the story
and cultural stereotypes were reversed. Would Asians flock to the
theatre then? Would Asians relate to the story of an Asian American
soldier falling in love with an exotic foreign woman? Or would the
situation be like what we saw last night in a television documentary on
Nat King Cole.  Despite his universal success and acceptance, Cole
was not allowed by television censors to sit on the same bench, touch,
hug or kiss a white woman on camera. Why? It would challenge the status
quo!

I have long
thought of staging a production of Bernstein's “West Side Story” and
calling it “East Side Story.” I would set it  in
East Vancouver during the late 1970's with the two predominant ethnic
groups of Vancouver at the time: Chinese and Italians.  That's
what life was like when I grew up back them.  Chinese and Italians
forming gangs, and being wary of their sisters or brothers dating the
other ethnic group.  You did not cross over the line. 
However in movies now, we are seeing more cross-overs of Asian and
Caucasian actors and storylines in the studios efforts for more $$. Jet
Li and Bob Hoskins in “Unleashed” is just the latest example. Why
doesn't this happen in Vancouver's Theatre scene?


The Vancouver Recital Society
and Vancouver Symphony have both
presented Lang Lang, easily one of the world's currently most exciting
pianists. Many people will go see something as long as it is good and a
quality production – no matter what the event's racial or cultural
origin. The problem is often finding out about the event.

Many Asian new immigrants to Vancouver are not yet familiar with all
the histories of Canadas' cultural icons. Japanese immigrants are not
familiar with Japanese-Canadian author Joy Kogawa's “Obasan”, Mainland
Chinese or Taiwanese are not familiar with Wayson Choy's “Jade Peony”
or Denise Chong's “The Concubine's Children”. But they are familar with
the legends, storylines, tradition Western and Asian music that are
featured in Senses, now playing at the Centre in Vancouver for
Performing Arts.


Senses or Miss Saigon? Both feature women in sexy outfits. Both are
productions that offer music, dance and songs. Miss Saigon is created from the Western perspective and Senses from an
Asian perspective. One is lineal, one is impressionistic. Both
productions would like a cross-over audience, but both seem stymied in
marketing by cultural perceptions and limitations. I wonder how
Vancouver's Vietnamese community feels about the perpetuation of
cultural stereoptypes in Miss Saigon. I did write review for Senses.

Senses features excellent dancers from the Dance Academy of Beijing, as
well as dancer Tang Jiang Li – now famous for her modeling for a book
nude photography, which caused a sensation in China, as this is almost
unheard of. If this had been a Western dancer, would the Vancouver
mainstream media been all over the story? But hardly a peep. Is this
cultural bias or cultural ignorance? Or maybe it is simply that we only
write about that which is in our own experience, and write about what
is beyond our experience.

Miss Saigon VS Senses. An excellent opportunity to examine the
cultural contrasts in how our Vancouver audiences and media respond to
cultural challenges and opportunities.

Cross-cultural wedding in Canada – Celebrating our shared heritage.

Weddings… great places for cultural traditions to mix and match, as
more and more Canadians of diverse ethnic and cultural backgrounds
decide to tie the knot.

I attended a wedding reception for the son of one of my older cousins, Joe Wai, the architect of so many buildings in Vancouver's Chinatown and around this city.  Joe recently designed the Millenium Gate,
and previously designed the Chinatown Parkade, the Chinese Cultural
Centre Museum and Archives, as well as being one of the architects of
the Dr. Sun Yat Sen Gardens
I have always counted Joe as one of my early role models for his vast
amount of community work, and ability to blend East and West together.

His son Jonathan had just gotten married.  I had never before met
the bride.  But when I walked into the Fortune Garden
Restaurant at
1475 West Broadway St. this past Saturday, I immediately identified her. 
She was standing, radiantly beautiful, wearing an intricately
embroidered antique Chinese jacket, and skirt emblazoned with dragons and phoenix
in stunning relief.  Calm and serene, she had presence and
dignity.  I was to discover later that the jacket and skirt had originally
belonged to my Auntie Rose and Aunt Lannie and had been given to one of my cousin's
wives recently.  They were loaned to the bride for this very special
occasion. Definitely now a museum-quality piece in all the good ways!

The bride was also wearing, which was to be revealed later, a red
Chinese cheong-sam – the traditional Chinese wedding dress.  Cheongsam
means “long dress.” It is floor length but with a slit on the side up
to the thigh, and it features a mandarin collar. It was featured in the
Spider Man movie worn by actress Kirsten Dunst.
 
What is amazing is that the bride,
is Caucasian, and the groom is Eurasian.  I learned many things
about Lisa Sowden the bride.  She is an actor
and she speaks more Cantonese than my younger cousin Jonathan, who is
now developing his law career.  Our families have always been
ethnically and culturally diverse.  Inter-racial marriage has
generally long been accepted on both sides of my family.  On my
father's side, 6 of my 9 cousins including Joe married
non-Asians.  On my mother's side, 10 of my married cousins
including my brother chose non-asians.

For me, the small Chinese banquet reception (50 guests) seemed so
Canadian. 
More than half of the guests were caucasian, and we dined
on shark's fin soup, prawns, rock cod, crab and lobster, chinese
mushrooms, duck, chicken.  It was truly a grand wedding
banquet. Such gourmet delicacies are usually only ordered for
weddings.  Long Life noodles and Happy Marriage fried race
finished off the meal with Red Bean soup dessert.  As many of the
guests were not familiar with the significance of the menu items. 
My cousin Hayne Wai and I explained things such as the importance of
the head and tail being included in the fish and chicken dishes, to
signify wholeness.  The chinese pronounciation of Fish (Yee) is
similar to coin, the mushroom caps are uncut like large coins. 
The noodles are long to encourage long life. 

I got up briefly to talk with the bride and groom, and imagine my
surprise when I returned to my seat to find the cooked chicken head on
my plate.  Immediately I told the chinese wedding tradition about
putting the chicken head on a string and dangling it in front of the
bridal couple with the instructions to kiss it to bring good
luck.  Of course the person with the string pulls it up at the
last minute, initiating the couple in a kiss.  I think it worked
better in the days of arranged marriages when the couple didn't know
each other, and probably were no strangers to kissing each other.

At our table, I sat next to Lisa's friends Maria
(another actor) and her boyfriend Darren who not too familiar with
Chinese cuisine.  On my other side, Carole jumped right into each
of the dinner courses and enjoyed it tremendously.  While Carole
has a
French-Canadian background, it is her sister Tina, that married Joe's
younger brother Wayne, so… Carole is familiar around many of the
family's Chinese-Canadian activities and dinners.

At the evening's close, I gave a special bottle of Pinot Blanc Special
Late Harvest (-13) desert wine to the bride and groom.  It is Red Rooster Winery's “-13” or Minus Thirteen, created to celebrate the Year of the Rooster
It even has Chinese characters on the label, which is what initially
drew my attention tot he bottle.  Checking their website, I was
surprised to discover an Asian-Canadian winemaker, Richard Kanazawa. Of course I chose this bottle to celebrate the year they got married – Year of the Rooster. 

What does it mean for a Canadian couple of diverse cultural background
getting married in the Year of the Rooster and the Astrological sign of
Gemini?  Many things to many people!  And that's the great
thing about being Canadian, or to quote Bob and Doug Mackenzie, “Beauty, eh?”

BC Election: Chinese Canadian MLA's re-elected, elected for May 17th

BC's May 17th provincial election re-elected Jenny Kwan (Vancouver
Mount Pleasant) by one of the biggest majorities in the election.
Kwan's 43% margin over Liberal opponent Juliet Andalis, a Filipino
nurse, was 3rd only to West Vancouver – Capilano's Ralph Sultan's 52%
and Vancouver Quilchena's Colin Hansen's 47%.

Returning Liberals Ida Chong (Oak Bay-Gordon Head) won by a narrow
margin of 1121 votes (5% victory margin), while Richad Lee (Burnaby
North) won a squeaker by only 339 votes (4% victory margin). Former
minister for Multiculturalism Patrick Wong lost his Vancouver Kensington
seat by 1,295 votes to NDP's David Chudnovshky. Liberal newcomer John
Yap handily won Richmond-Steveston by 4,913 votes.

Burnaby Willingdon was an interesting riding to watch as Chinese media
journalist Gabriel Yiu lost narrowly to the Liberal's John Nuraney by a
5% margin of 595 votes. It might have been speculated that the
Democratic Reform candidate Tony Kuo and independent candidate Tom Tao
would split the Chinese vote. When Kuo and Tao's combined votes of 642
are added to Yiu's 5,243 votes to create a grand total of 5,885. He
then comes ahead of Nuraney's 5,828 by 57 votes.

Does the Chinese ethnic vote make a difference? or are Chinese
Canadians voting for the party and the person. Today on Vaughan
Palmer's BC Reports show on Shaw TV, he interviewed retired MLA's
Christy Clark and Joy McPhail and asked them about the Chinese and
Indo-Canadian communities. Both reported that the ethnic communities
are incredibly diverse and “textured.” I also have heard that many of
the ethnic communities vote Liberal, because it was the Liberals that
changed the immigration rulings that allowed them easier access to
immigrate to Canada.

Do Chinese MLA's make a difference in the legislature?
Jenny Kwan was, I think, the first Chinese Canadian MLA in BC. She has
worked extremely hard to represent both the causes and issues of recent
immigrants and the pionneer history of the Chinese in BC. It all comes
down to representation of experience. Mike Harcourt had an
understanding of Chinese Canadians because he had good friends who were
Chinese such as Shirley Chan, his administrative assistant – but he
didn't carry the issues in his life experience as she did.

I have met Jenny Kwan, Richard Lee and Patrick Wong. I believe that
Kwan best understands the Chinese historical roots that best relate to
me as a 5th generation Vancouverite. The issues in the Chinese
community are diverse and transcend many generations. It is only with a
broader range of Chinese Canadian, Indo-Canadian, Scottish Canadian,
and First Nations peoples, that the BC Legislature can truly be
representative of all Canadians. The histories of all our peoples,
Ukranian, French, Spanish and Japanese are imbedded in our province.

If we ignore our cultural histories, then we ignore our understandings
of ourselves. This is what the province did when they invoked the
racist “Potlatch” law against the Native Peoples of this province in an
effort to systematically weaken First Nations culture and traditions. I
believe that culture matters more than economics in defining who we
are. But it is a strong economy that supports a strong culture. I hope
that all our BC provincial MLA's can embrace our province's cultures,
and that our Chinese Canadian MLA's do their best to represent our
shared heritage and culture.

What is a visible minority? According to Stats Canada…

What is a visible minority?

 

Am I a Visible Minority? – even though I am a born and raised Canadian of 5 generations in the City of Vancouver?

 

Do Visible Minority’s have their own culture, or is it simply the non-culture of the Visible Majority?

 

Is
my cousin a member of the Visible Minority, even though her mother is a
member of the Visible Majority, and she looks more like the Anglo side
of the family, then her sister who looks more like the Asian side of
the family.

 

Is
my mother’s cousin a member of the Double Visible Minority, because her
father was of Chinese ancestry and her mother was of First Nations
ancestry – doubly discriminated against by the Visible Majority on both
sides of the family?

 

Stats
Canada released a report last week that suggested that “Visible
Minorities” will become “Visible Majorities” in Toronto and Vancouver.  This
is all based on statistics that infer that the Visible Minority
population is growing 6 times faster than the Visible Majority.  The report is tracking ethnicities reported in the census.

 

This interpretation raises much debate about how to view and interpret statistics.  A recent letter to the Vancouver Sun suggests that immigration would be a truer gauge of the supposed cultural shift.  This letter was written by Karen Ennyu, a  multi-generational Chinese Canadian like myself.  She writes that “English is my first and only language.”  This
is true for many multigenerational Asian-Canadians, African-Canadians
and First Nations peoples who all love to cheer during the Stanley Cup
playoffs, drink Molson’s beer, singalong to old songs by Gordon
Lightfoot, Anne Murray and even Celine Dion. 

 

 

How do we measure culture?  How do we measure assimilation?  How do we measure interest in one’s cultural ancestry?  It is widely known that I have taken a lively interest in Scottish culture – due mostly to the creation of Gung Haggis Fat Choy.  I
have been thanked repeatedly by many Canadians from racially mixed
families and heritage for representing the kind of world that properly
recreates the way their family looks like.  Well, gee… it sort of looks like mine with all my cousins and an uncle or aunt or two marrying somebody non-Chinese…  That’s just the way love is sometimes, non-discriminating…

 

This
all makes one wonder how did the First Nations people start reacting to
the news from their local shamanic staticians making the announcement
that the Visible Minority of White settlers to the area would soon
outnumber the Visible Majority who had lived along the inlets and banks
of the lands inhabited by the Salish Peoples since the beginning of
time as they knew it?

 

Did they react by saying we have to limit immigration, by imposing a head tax to deter them.  And
if they keep coming, we will raise the head tax repeatedly to an
astronomical sum that will cost them 10 years of wages. And if they
keep coming after that, we will impose an Exclusion Act that will ban
them outright, not based on country of origin but on the colour of
their skin.

 

The colour of their skin.

That’s what being a Visible Minority is about.  It’s about other-ness, and being labled by the people in the Majority.

 


 
 
What
happens when the Romeo’s and the Juliet’s of the different tribes fall
in love, defying their parents’wishes, get married and start having
babies.  Do we define these New Canadians as Half-Visible Majority and Half-Visible Minority?

 
Or do we agree that we become greater than the sum of our parts.
Multiculturalism,
as we know it, helped us to give value to our visible minority cultures
and traditions, rather than to create a negative self-identity that
continues to haunt many of the Canadians born of the many ethnic
ancestries that suffered through the Potlatch Law, Chinese Head Tax and
Exclusion Act, and Japanese Enemy-Alien Re-location camps.

 
Canada to me, is truly One family that shares many cultural heritages from around the world.  It
is just like my family, where my uncles, aunts and cousins have married
people from different nationalities from around the world, including
First Nations. 

 
It is time for Canada to move beyond the colonial language and mentality of Visible Majority / Visible Minority into the 21st Century.  We
can still recognize where are ancestors came from without imposing the
immigrant behavior of Euro-centric or Asian-centric viewpoints into
Canadian society.  Canadians of European,
Asian and African ancestry have been in this country long enough to
evolve our own unique blends of culture and Canadianess where we can
simultaneously embrace where we have come from, and where we are going
on a global scale.