Stratford’s Ballinran Entertainment has partnered with Stratford director Keira Loughran to tell the story of the late Chinese-Canadian activist, Foon Hay Lum.
Once a leader in the movement seeking redress for the Canadian government’s discriminatory Chinese head tax and subsequent Chinese Exclusion Act, the late Chinese-Canadian activist Foon Hay Lum is the subject of an upcoming Stratford documentary exploring the lasting impact of past immigration policies on Chinese-Canadian families, their culture and history.
Currently being produced by Stratford’s Ballinran Entertainment and directed by Stratford theatrical director Keira Loughran, the as-of-yet untitled film will look back on the 33-year separation of Lum’s family after her husband, Nam Jack Lum, returned to Canada to work following the birth of their children while Lum was forced by the Chinese Exclusion Act to remain in China and raise their children on her own.
The film will also look at Lum’s immigration to Canada at the age of 50 once the Exclusion Act was lifted, where she found herself in a new country in need of work and living with a husband she hadn’t seen for more than three decades.
“My grandmother? She was a trooper,” said Lum’s granddaughter, Helen Lee, who has partnered with Loughran to tell her grandmother’s story for the screen. “She was way ahead of her time and she was very blessed in many ways. She went through a lot of hardship, but she remained patient and kind, and she kept all the good qualities even though she fought the good fight and it was harsh and hard and long.”
Though she was a newcomer to Canada and a widower in her 60s, Lum proved the old adage that age is nothing but a number by embarking on a nearly three-decadelobbying effort for official government recognition and apology for both the Exclusion Act, which banned most forms of Chinese immigration to Canada between 1923 and 1947, and the $500 Chinese Head Tax levied on 81,000 Chinese immigrants between 1885 and 1923.
“She was separated from her family for decades because of the Canadian policies on Chinese immigrants … and they never really had a family together,” Lee said. “The family was fractured and this is typical of many Chinese-Canadian families in her day.”
Ultimately, Lum and four generations of her family sat in the House of Commons in Ottawa in 2006 to witness then-prime minister Stephen Harper apologize to Chinese-Canadians for the discriminatory immigration policies.
“We talk about the story and the apology that we eventually got, but what we didn’t get was the recognition of how it impacted the descendants,” said Lee, explaining that her family and other Chinese-Canadian families were separated for generations as the men travelled to Canada to work and send money back home while the women remained in China.
Loughran’s ancestors were also separated by these immigration policies, something she said impacted her own understanding of family and how it forms the backbone of Chinese culture, history and society.
“When I read about what (Lum) had done … there was a resonance for me of my family’s story where my grandmother helped to get those immigration laws changed that allowed Foon Hay to come to Canada. … What I see in both of them, and what I think is really striking me now, is the role Chinese women have played for their whole lives to sustain or create family as they understand family to be, which is connected to society. … You talk about Foon Hay becoming an activist later in life … but I see she’s been an activist all her life, the way my grandmother was an activist all her life, to create space for Chinese women in Canadian society and allow families to be together and survive,” the director said.
Though Lum’s own story has ended – she died at the age of 111 from a COVID-19 infection last April – both Lee and Loughran hope to offer audiences a perspective on Chinese-Canadian history, culture, society and activism rarely seen in media that doesn’t gloss over the bits that conflict with Canada’s self-image as a tolerant and welcoming country.
Executive producer Craig Thompson said he is working to get funding and distribution deals for the documentary in place before production can begin in earnest.
“My belief is we need more of these kinds of stories and the timing is right,” he said. “I’m fully confident that we’ll moving ahead with this project as early as the summer.”
Article from: The Beacon Herald
Author: Galen Simmons
