The Vancouver Sun reports the death last month of Charlie Sang Now Quan, who spent his 90s campaigning against two discriminatory immigration policies of the early 20th Century: the $500 head tax he paid on his arrival in Canada from Guangdong in 1923, and the Chinese Exclusion Act of that year, which separated him from his wife and children for almost a quarter of a century.
When the federal government in 2006 issued an official apology and tax redress cheques of $20,000 to survivors and spouses, Quan was among the first to receive his.
“The next day, I went down to visit him and he had this incredibly big smile on his face,” [activist and friend Sid] Tan said. “He came up to me and he said, ‘Sid, I’m not a chink any more. I get my money back.’ ”
