Asian Heritage Month Talk At Toronto Public Library
“The Chinese Head Tax: Untold Stories Mark 140 Years”
Date: May 14, 2025 | 6 pm
Venue: Toronto Reference Library, Toronto Public Library, 789 Yonge Street, Toronto. Map
Speakers: Arlene Chan, Judy Fong Bates, Kwoi Gin, Susan Crean
FREE ADMISSION | Please register here.
To mark the 140th year of the enactment of the Chinese head tax, the Toronto Reference Library will host an In Conversation program with a distinguished roster of speakers, moderated by Chinatown historian Arlene Chan. Judy Fong Bates is an award-winning writer and storyteller. Kwoi Gin is an acclaimed photographer, cinematographer and artist. Susan Crean is a cultural critic, author, and activist whose most recent book, Finding Mr. Wong, was posted in the top 10 list of Best Canadian History books in Canada’s History magazine.
Arlene Chan and Ruby Yuen, Toronto Public Library will curate an exhibition of archival documents from the Chinese Canadian Archive in the Toronto Reference Library to support the presentation commemorating the 140th anniversary of the Chinese head tax.
About Arlene Chan:
Arlene was born, raised and educated in Toronto, Canada. After obtaining an undergraduate degree in English and Psychology at the University of Toronto, she graduated with a master’s degree in library sciences. Her career as a librarian started at the North York Board of Education and ended at the Toronto Public Library where she spent 30 years in progressively advanced positions.
Her seven books about the history, culture, and traditions of the Chinese in Canada have been published over the last twenty years. When she is not researching, writing, speaking to groups, or leading tours, she can be found searching for the best food in Chinatown.
She is currently serving as the President of the Jean Lumb Foundation and advisor of the Toronto Public Library’s Chinese Canadian Archive. Most recently, she was a cultural consultant for the Disney Pixar feature film, Turning Red.
She is honoured to be the recipient of the Queen Elizabeth II Diamond Jubilee Award (2013), Heritage Toronto Special Achievement Award (2017), Woman of Achievement Award, Tri Delta Convention, Dallas, Texas (2018), Chinese Canadian Legend Award (2022), and Queen Elizabeth II Platinum Jubilee Award (2022).
About Judy Fong Bates:
Judy Fong Bates came to Canada from China as a young child and grew up in several small Ontario towns. She is a writer, storyteller and teacher. She taught elementary school in the city of Toronto for over twenty years. While teaching she honed her skills as a storyteller and has told folktales and original stories at schools and festivals throughout southern Ontario. Judy has also taught and mentored students in creative writing through the University of Toronto, Trent University and Diaspora Dialogues.
Midnight at the Dragon Café is the 2011 One Book Community Read for the city of Toronto.
Her stories have been broadcast on CBC radio and published in literary journals and anthologies. She has written for The Globe and Mail and The Washington Post. She is the author of the critically acclaimed short-story collection, China Dog and Other Stories, and the novel, Midnight at the Dragon Café, which was the Everybody Reads selection for Portland, Oregon, and an American Library Association Notable Book for 2006. Her family memoir, The Year of Finding Memory, was published in April, 2010 by Random House of Canada.
About Kwoi Gin:
Toronto filmmaker Kwoi Gin’s father, Suey Kee Gin, arrived in Canada in the early 1950s as a the “paper son” of his own grandfather, who had followed an uncle here to work on the Canadian Pacific Railway. He used false identity documents purchased by his mother in Hong Kong to enter Canada, a common deception used by families to overcome the discrimination of the Chinese Exclusion Act.
“My grandmother was worried that my father might get caught coming through immigration because she thought he might have been too young and they would turn him back,” says Kwoi, who was born in Hong Kong. “She wanted to have that insurance that he would make it through.”
Canada had repealed the Exclusion Act in 1947, but many Chinese Canadian families still lived in legal limbo and found it difficult to reunite. Ironically, Kwoi’s father once had legitimate papers, but they were sold to another family to allow a son to come to Canada under his name. In 1965, Kwoi and his mother were finally able to move from Hong Kong to Toronto, and he met his father for the first time. Then, as a 9-year-old boy, he found Canada to be frightening and alienating.
About Susan Crean:
Susan Crean’s memoir Finding Mr. Wong chronicles her effort to piece together the life of the man she knew as Wong, cook and housekeeper to her Irish Canadian family for two generations. Reminiscing, Crean writes, “I grew up in Mr. Wong’s kitchen …” A Chinese Head Tax payer hired by Crean’s grandfather in 1928, Wong Dong Wong remained on the job following Gordon Crean’s death in 1947. Mr. Wong eventually retired in 1965 and moved to Chinatown. Crean’s homage weaves the various strands of her memories of and discoveries about Mr. Wong during the last 25 years of his life; she travels the streets and histories of Chinatowns in Vancouver and Toronto, Canada, and twice she visits Guangdong, China, where she located his home village, found descendants of his father’s brother, and learned the beginning of his story: orphaned as a newborn, then brought to Canada by his uncle, Wong YeeWoen.
The speakers will engage with the audience in a Q & A after their presentations.
Event co-organizers: Asian Heritage Month—Canadian Foundation for Asian Culture (Central Ontario) Inc.; Toronto Public Library; Asian Institute at the Munk School of Global Affairs and Public Policy, University of Toronto; Richard Charles Lee Canada Hong Kong Library, University of Toronto; Chinese Canadian Photography Society of Toronto; Social Services Network; Cambridge Food and Wine Society
Asian Heritage Month Festival is partially funded by the Government of Canada through the Department of Canadian Heritage and the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council. Asian Canadian Artists in Digital Age is funded by Canada Council for the Arts Digital Strategy Fund.