In the 1870’s the federal Canadian government took part in developing and administrating residential schools. The objectives of these schools were to remove and isolate aboriginal children from the influence of their homes, families, traditions and cultures, and to assimilate them into the dominant culture. However as demonstrated in the TRC it was made clear to me that the treatment of these children was completely unfair to the point in which it became almost surreal and completely unbelievable. It was believed the mission of the residential schools was “to kill the Indian in the child.” In Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s statement of apology from 2008 in which he apologized for the mistreatment of former students of Indian residential schools he says that it “is a sad chapter in our history.”

However even after the 1870’s it would seem as though the federal Canadian government never really seemed to have changed as I have noticed whilst conducting my own research of the Chung collection from the UBC archives under the rare books and special collections. When the Chinese started to emigrate over from China their lives were never peachy, they were actually rather grim. They weren’t treated fairly, they had to deal with completely unreasonable situations, such include the head tax they were obliged to pay. Also like the residential schools the aboriginal children were forced to attend, in school the Chinese were also forced to be put through a western way of learning as I noted from my research from the archives. From my research I noted that not only were the children being taught but it was almost as though the goal of the schools was to kill the Chinese in the child. However this being said in the children’s workbooks their was a lot of evidence showing that the students were trying to maintain their identity by writing certain words in Chinese. However this was minimal which highlights the strong desire for the schools to change and westernize the students. Like the aboriginals this event should also be classified as a sad chapter in Canadian history.

According to the Oxford dictionary the term ancestry is defined as “one’s family or ethnic descent.” In Fred Wah’s biotext Diamond Grill ancestry is one of the main themes explored throughout the book and he gives ancestry another name that is not as simple as the definition provided by many dictionaries. However the Wah family is not introduced at the beginning of the book or in a certain chapter of the book like one would be assume. The way in which the Fred Wah discovers his ancestry throughout the novel is similar to the way in which my family has been trying to discover mine, which has been over a long period of time. Because Fred Wah doesn’t introduce his family the way the reader would expect and introduces and introduces them at random times throughout the book makes the discovery of his family history more real and less perfected, like the way in which the way my family’s ancestry has been and still being discovered over the last decade.

Fred Wah uses his biotext as a way of telling his family history. Like the discovery of Fred Wah’s family history mine has been ongoing, cumulative and messy. This has led to their being an incomplete archive like depicted in Diamond Grill where there my family have encountered gaps and silences due to people missing. This highlights that due to the fact that with silences it makes collecting lives as stories somewhat more difficult and in Fred Wah’s case due to the fact that he was trying to understand his relationship with his father better.  Not only does it highlight this but also it highlights that no matter what medium one uses to trace back to their ancestors whether it is doing it on your own or like in my family’s case using someone who specializes in that field or using websites such as ancestry.com there will always be loopholes or better yet known as silences. This also conveys that with the progression and improvement of such areas we can see that sometimes things never change.