(The Toronto Star published the following story by Jim Wilkes on its website on October 4.)
TORONTO — It’s just a small chunk of iron, but it stands for so much to generations of Chinese Canadians.
A rusted railway spike encased in glass and wood is on a journey across Canada to raise awareness about injustices Chinese immigrants faced beginning more than a century ago.
Winxie Tse, an executive with the Chinese Canadian National Council, said the symbolic Last Spike campaign aims to focus attention on the head taxes imposed on Chinese immigrants after the completion of the transcontinental Canadian Pacific Railway in 1885.
Many Chinese immigrants helped build the railway, but once it was finished, growing anti-Chinese sentiment led the federal government to impose a $50 charge on anyone coming to Canada from China, Tse said.
The tax had grown to $500, about two years’ earnings, by 1923, when the government enacted what has come to be known as the Exclusion Act. It barred virtually all persons of Chinese descent from entering Canada until it was finally revoked in 1947.
“It’s part of Canada’s racist legacy,” Tse said. “Although it’s an unpleasant part of our history, it’s important for people to understand.”
The CCNC wants the federal government to compensate all surviving Chinese immigrants who were forced to pay the head tax and issue an apology to all Chinese Canadians for the treatment of immigrants from China.
A class-action lawsuit begun in 2000 seeking similar redress was dismissed without trial, and the Supreme Court of Canada denied leave to appeal the decision in April this year, a month after the death of the lead plaintiff.
The CCNC registered 4,000 surviving head-tax payers in 1984, but Tse said their numbers have dwindled to just a few hundred.
“It’s a very sad reality that many of them have passed away,” she said. “That’s why it’s so urgent that the government do something before they all pass away and not see justice.”
The Last Spike campaign was launched Sept. 12 in Halifax and made a stop this week in Markham. It moves on to Calgary, Banff and Edmonton before returning to Toronto later this month.
Other stops are planned in London, Windsor, Montreal and Ottawa before the spike reaches Vancouver in early November.
“The most important thing for head-tax payers is to be financially compensated for the racism that was imposed on them,” Tse said.
But for 17-year-old Debbie Yam of Toronto, money isn’t the issue.
Hearing the government apologize for abusive treatment of her grandfather is key.
“There have been many campaigns to get redress, but the government has always turned us down,” said Yam, a science student at the University of Western Ontario. “I really don’t understand why…” she said.