It's surprising to see how much hand's on work the Privy Council did with regards the lives of ordinary Canadians. Exploring OIC records has given me insights into the thinking of the men at the centre of power: how laws are formulated and how they are managed. It's the paperwork that creates unintended genealogical records. I have a passion for exploring Chinese Canadian history but OIC records included a wide swath of the population, from Armenians to Yugoslavians ..read more

In the next two posts I will explain Order-in-Council records: what they are and how to find them. This post will cover researching at the national archives in Ottawa, Ontario. In the next post, I’ll talk about researching online. In the final post, I’ll talk about a major genealogical find: the Ethnic Index. This is ..read more

The paying of head taxes was front page news but the refunding of head taxes was shrouded in murk. Even today, finding the supporting documentation at the national archives with the friendly assistance of reference archivists and librarians was barely doable ..read more

2023 is roaring to a close. If you’re like me, you’re simultaneously trying to relax while also checking off everything on your to do list. {How’s that working out for you? :-)) I can barely wrap my head around what our community has accomplished this year. We have a new, permanent, dedicated museum. New records ..read more

In this post I am delighted to share an essay by Robert Louie where he talks about the C.I.9 Transcription Project, a project by a group of community historians in my group Genealogy for Asian Canadians ..read more

We began 2023 with about forty-eight thousand C.I.9s and we end with almost double. The questions that come up for me are: Is this it? Do we have all the C.I.9s now ..read more

A love of art has enriched my life in countless and unexpected directions. When I remember those long, slow, frequently wet days spent at galleries, it's with a sense of peace and quietude that is missing from my normal life. Greg's work reminds me of all of it - from gallery to street - and underneath all of that, to my family ..read more

This is the follow up post to "Chinese Immigration Act Case Files: Finding aids at LAC," written exactly three years ago. In that post, I'd hoped to one day acquire a Canadian Chinese Case file. Now I have seen four and they are everything I'd hoped - and feared - they would be. For my community, simultaneously ignored by some systems while being overdocumented in others, it feels right that we reacquire the information collected about us ..read more

In this series, I have focused on one Chinese Case file as the source material and applied an intensive analysis to the correspondence. My advice to all those who have acquired one or more Case Files: Go slowly. Take your time processing. Write a story ..read more

When I reflect on this story about George Sing's ten year battle to bring his sons Gee and Get to Saskatchewan set against the backdrop of the Second Sino-Japanese War where twenty million Chinese died, I'm reminded of another sorry tale in Canadian immigration history. A high-level immigration official, when asked how many Jews should be admitted to Canada during the Second World War, said, “None is too many.” This xenophobic quote has been ascribed to Prime Minister William Lyon MacKenzie King and Immigration Director Frederick Blair and is probably neither but shows the attitude at the high ..read more