Head tax took its toll on Chinese veterans

By Julie MacLellan,reporter, Nov 6 2002

Tears glint in Gim Wong's eyes as he dons the wool coat he wore nearly 60 years ago. The coat belongs to the uniform that marks him as what he is: a loyal Canadian. It wasn't so very long ago that his government saw things differently.

For Wong, who'll be 80 in two months, the Chinese head tax and the Exclusion Act aren't just a nearly forgotten chapter in Canadian history books. They're part of his past, part of his family's story.

Wong was born in Vancouver's Chinatown. His parents both came from China: his father in 1906 at the age of 15, his mother in about 1921.

She made it into the country in a brief window of time in which men could send home for brides, after the First World War and before the Exclusion Act that prohibited Chinese immigration starting in 1923. NEXT