The Chinese Head Tax/Winter Exhibition

The Chinese Head Tax was a dark, yet important, part of Canadian history that needs to be acknowledged. It began when the first major wave of Chinese immigration came to British Columbia when the Fraser gold rush took off in 1858. The world was racing to Canada in hopes of striking it rich.

The Canadian government would make a series of bad choices and sanctions that would ultimately lead to riots, and protests. The first of many mistakes was when in 1885 after the completion of the railroad, the Canadian government imposed a tax of $10 to any Chinese person over the age of 14 wanting to immigrate to Canada. In time this increased to $50. At a time when the Chinese community were the lowest paid members of society and had essentially built our railway, this tax was beyond the reach of those wanting to come to Canada or bring their families here. The Canadian government was pressured to get Chinese people out of their country. This ultimately encouraged the government to rush the entire process. A sort of domino effect would soon take place, with riots, segregation, and racism. Racism was becoming very prominent in Canada, not only by its citizens, but by the Canadian government. 

Ultimately, between 2006 – 2010, Prime Minister Stephen Harper would recognize that racism and would make a formal apology to the Chinese Community. Finally this would put an end to the drama in hopes of providing reconciliation to those affected.  Even though we can never truly get rid of racism, this event helped suppress racism during the time. Some would say this event helped reduce racism in the modern world. 

As you can already tell, our last project in PLP Humanities was about the Chinese Head Tax; more importantly it was generally about racism. Our project was titled: Ology of Apology. As you read above, that was my opening statement regarding the Chinese Head tax. Let’s move onto the specifics of our project.

Beginning Stages:

At the start of our project, we watched a few movies, some documentaries, but more importantly all of the videos were about some sort of racism in Canada. We were also introduced to the driving question which was “How can we keep apologies for past wrongs alive so they are remembered – and not repeated – today?” My main question at the time was “Why are we learning this?” After we learned of how racism affected Canada, we were introduced to groups.

Middle Stages:

As you know already, the group I was assigned to was focused on the Chinese Head Tax. For the middle stages, we were assigned to create a fully original keynote, consisting of sources that would back up our ethical judgment on our topic. For the first version of our keynote we were to lay down the groundwork; put as much information and sources as we could into the document and work on the wording.

End/Exhibition: 

Finally the end, the end is less about our Keynote and more about the upcoming exhibition. For the exhibition I was assigned into a group of 3. My teammates were Noah, and Max. For our exhibition we decided it would make most sense to go with the topic of Japanese internment as Noah and Max both had focused on that in their research. For our exhibition we needed to create a fully original monument representing our topic. To represent Japanese internment, my team and I thought it would be best to design the monument in a program called Tinkercad. Here is our model:

 

 

After we had our model, we thought about 3D printing it, as I had a 3D printer at my house. We contemplated doing this though, because 3D printing is very hard to get right, so we thought it might be best to just build it out of cardboard. But to make sure the print wouldn’t fail, I printed a test model and thankfully it all came out well. In the end we 3D printed it, which not only was really cool, but it also separated us from the rest of the monuments. Overall, I am extremely proud of how it turned out, I don’t think it could have been any better. 

 

Regarding the resolution of the Chinese head tax project, we had to make an ethical judgment regarding our chosen topic. You can read my judgment here:

 

 

Finally we had to present our monument to the hundreds of lovely PLP parents. All of the parents seemed to take more interest in the 3D printing than the actual story, which is understandable because 3D printing is really really cool. Overall, our presentation went really well and I am very proud of our team as we did an amazing job at executing our presentation. 

 

Conclusion:

Overall, the Chinese Head Tax research and our exhibition went very well. I am really happy with both end products, and I personally really enjoyed this project as it taught me a lot about Canada’s shady past.

Keynote:

Driving Question:

Now for the answer to our driving question: “How can we keep apologies for past wrongs alive so they are remembered – and not repeated – today?” Instead of hiding our past, we should learn from it by creating more monuments or museums that shed light on past wrongdoings. This way we can not only shed light on the subject, but we can also learn from our mistakes and prevent it from repeating again.