Dear Members,
Please attend our 2009 Annual General Meeting on Saturday, January 23, 2010 at the Quon Lung Sai Tong building located 164 East Hastings Street, Vancouver, BC at 11:00 am.
*Reminder - to bring your membership card/ID to register and vote.
More than three years have passed since Prime Minister Stephen Harper issued a parliamentary apology to Chinese Canadians for the Head Tax. As you know, the ex gratia redress payments were made to surviving Head Tax Payers and surviving spouses only. To date, we believe that the redress is still incomplete by not recognizing the impact of the suffering of legalized racial discrimination on the elderly sons and daughters and descendants of Head Tax Families. With the results of the survey conducted last year, indicating strong support, we will continue to seek a just and honourable inclusive redress for Head Tax Families seeking direct redress.
Update on past Events
July 1, Hot Dog Rally was well attended with visitors, volunteers and many members. Please continue to come out this year to show your support.
Fall 2009 - We have met with a representative of the Chinese People’s Republic of China to discuss Head Tax issues. Her name is Consul Mengling Hu, Overseas Chinese Affairs Office. Consul Hu advises us to continue to address our concerns with the Canadian government and the importance of maintaining strong support amongst our members to seek a just and honourable settlement. Consul Hu has also provided our Society with a DVD copy of the “Celebration of the 60th Anniversary of the Founding of the People’s Republic of China”. This DVD is available for viewing to all our members.
In November, HTFSC was approached by a Ms. Kim Taylor, Ph.D of KAIMU Productions in Shanghai China. She was in town to film a documentary on Charlie Quan and Gim Wong. Sid and Mary and Terry Quan (Charlie’s grandson) assisted in arranging videotaped interviews with Charlie Quan and Gim Wong. HTFSC has requested that a copy of the documentary be made
available to our Society.
Upcoming Events
We are honoured to be invited by Jordan Paterson of SFU, to assist and participate with his Social Justice Project. He is the Video Producer-Media Design of SFU and is working on a project to educate the youth and other communities about the social injustices of the Head Tax in Canadian Society. The aim of this project is to raise the awareness of the hardships and consequences incurred by many of our early immigrants. We are looking forward to collaborating with Jordan and his assistant, Denise Fong to developing an informative, educational and meaningful piece of work.
Thank you to all who have contributed their time to this undertaking.
Annual General Meeting
We are pleased to have Dr. Henry Yu of UBC’s History Department give a short presentation of his ongoing research. He has written quite a few articles in our Chinese newspapers on the topic of Chinese Immigration. We hope to include a copy of his article in this newsletter or to be distributed later at our AGM.
Election of Officers
If you would like to help out by volunteering or run for a position on the Board of Directors, please notify Mary Chan at 604 716 6772 or Sid Chow Tan at 604 783 1853. Help support our initiatives to educate Canadians about the history and contributions of Chinese Canadians, so all Canadians will understand that a fair and honourable redress is necessary.
Chinese New Year 2010
Head Tax Families Society will be submitting an application to participate in the Chinatown Spring Festival again. We hope our application will be approved as we believe that many of our members played an important historical role in Vancouver’s Chinatown.
Society Business
The Treasurer’s Report will be posted at the AGM.
The Directors have decided to waive the fee for another year. Instead we have decided to collect $2.00 per member to help defray the costs of mail outs of our newsletters.
Behind each certificate is at least one story. More often than not there are three or more. Join is here and in Behind the certificates pages for some of these stories.