Meredith's Blog

Fred Wah’s novel ‘Diamond Grill’ concerns issues of ethnicity, identity and, as he coins it, ‘living on the hyphen’. Wah gives this no man’s land of belonging a shot of personal reality, relating it to being something lived on rather than in, and implies it occurs in many others in this definition of racial hybridity. In the film ‘Between: Living on the Hyphen’, the issue of  the need for identification of those who were mixed race was made clear time and time again; not only the compulsion to determine their own identities but also the constant interrogation by the public as to these people’s origins.

While the issue of identification is certainly an upcoming and polemic problem with increased globalization and cultural diffusion in this day and age, the issue, at least in British Columbia, can be stemmed back to head taxes. These were put on Chinese immigrants attempting to emigrate to Canada from 1885 to 1923, as the newspaper The Global Times here makes evident. Despite a national apology from the Conservative government in 2006, in an address by Steven Harper, no significant apologetic behaviour has been exhibited by the government concerning the issue until this year. Interestingly, although the British Columbian government is now preparing to issue a public apology of its own, financial redress is not part of its plan of action. The descendants see this as the government being ‘dismissive and arrogant’ as Sid Tan Chow, the former Head Tax Families Society (HTFS) president, argues. It is clear that a financial compensation for the taxes themselves would lead to an improved sense of identity, agency and ultimately a resurgence of hope for the descendants of those Chinese immigrants affected by the head tax and the Exclusionary Act which followed.

The British Columbian government is reaching out to these Chinese descendants for assistance in drafting the most appropriate apology, which seems like a good idea in theory. The members of the  HTFS have not been approached, however, causing further animosity and exacerbating Canadian-Chinese tensions which are more than 100 years old. I cannot help but think of the other recent Canadian apology given, for the Truth and Reconciliation Commission concerning the compulsory Indian Residential Schools in Canada between 1955 and 2002. In these two clear issues where sectors of society have been marginalized by the Canadian government, it seems as though the old Canadian stereotype may be to our benefit now; we have a lot to say sorry for.