www.globeandmail.com News Books Careers Mutual Funds Stocks ROB Magazine Technology
Home  |  Business  |  National  |  International  |  Sports  |  Features  |  Forums  |  Subscribe

The Globe and Mail
Saturday, July 31
leaf

Contents
bulletReport on Business
bulletNational
bulletInternational
bulletSports
bulletFeatures
bulletArts & Leisure
bulletCommentary
bulletFocus & Books
bulletClassifieds
bulletBirths & Deaths
bulletTravel
bulletHealth
bulletScience
bulletTechnology

Search

Tips & Other Options

Yellow.ca

News Index
bulletArts & Leisure
 Art
 Books
 Broadcast Week
 Fashion & Design
 Film
 Music
 Television
 Theatre
 TV Listings

bulletBirths & Deaths
bulletClassifieds
 Automotive
 Business Marketplace
 National personals
 Online personals
 Place an Ad
 Real estate rentals
 Real estate sales
 Services & Merchandise

bulletCommentary
 Columns
 Editorials
 Editorial Cartoon
 Letters to the Editor
 Send a letter to the Editor

bulletFeatures
 Amazing Facts
 Century of the Millennium
 Essay
 Fifth Column
 Life Story
 Lives Lived
 Millennium 100
 Social Studies
 Wax and Wane

bulletFocus & Books
 Book news
 Book reviews

bulletHealth
bulletInternational
 Columns
 The Globe Abroad

bulletNational
 Columns
 Issues Forum
 Report

bulletReport on Business
   - Staff Biographies
 Annual Reports
 Enterprise
 Managing
 Money & Markets
 ROB Top 1000
 Smart Numbers
 Special Reports
 1999 Federal Budget

bulletScience
bulletSports
   - Staff Biographies
 Basketball
 Baseball
 Football
 Golf
 Hockey
 Other Sports

bulletTechnology
bulletTravel
Magazines
ROBmagazine.com
Special Interest
Millennium Series
IT Management
 
Search Results

FIFTH COLUMN
Jan Wong offers civics lessons for newcomers

Jan Wong

Friday, July 30, 1999

In China, being detained can lead to unpleasantness, like execution. So what must the 123 Chinese who washed up on our shores last week think of Canada?

We put them up in a beautiful gymnasium, beautiful at least, compared with the hovels they left behind in Fujian province. We provide linens, towels, toothbrushes, toothpaste and soap. Doctors take their blood pressure.

We get them take-out chow mein from a famous Victoria restaurant named Ming's. We provide lawyers to protest that the chow mein is cold. To keep them amused, we also provide local newspapers.

Those Chinese-language newspapers will help them figure out the Canadian Way of Life. If they're going to stay -- as did previous boatloads of Tamils (in 1986) and South Asians (in 1987) -- we want to indoctrinate them as soon as possible.

Civics Lesson 1. DON'T WORK TOO HARD. Poor Leticia Cables made that mistake. Now the Filipina nanny is huddled in an undisclosed church basement in Edmonton, trying to avoid deportation. Ms. Cables claims to have worked only one extra job besides the one permitted by her visa. But a Citizenship and Immigration Canada spokesman said darkly: "We allege she had worked with three employers. We've had information about some more. We only need one (to deport her.)"

Civics Lesson 2. DON'T EVEN WORK AT ALL. Winston Rhule, who missed 203 of 244 works days in one year, was awarded $117,000 for wrongful dismissal. Arbitrators also gave him back his janitor's job in the Toronto subway system. No appeal is planned.

Civics Lesson 3. GET PAID TO STOP BEGGING. Squeegee kids in Toronto will earn $10 an hour for 10 weeks if they get off the streets and take a bicycle repair course. They also get a free bike.

The Chinese who debarked last week reminded me of my own grandfather. Chong Hooie arrived 120 years ago on a coolie ship, not much different from their filthy, leaky trawler. He also ended up at Canadian Forces Base Esquimalt.

But my grandfather was stupid. He came here legally. For that, he got to wash laundry for 15 years.

After Grandfather Chong helped build the Canadian Pacific Railway, he paid a $10 "unemployment tax." That enabled him to stay. He found work, at $1 a month as a houseboy for Colonel Josiah Greenwood Holmes, the deputy adjutant-general of the Canadian West Coast military base in Esquimalt. Back then, CFB Esquimalt was called the Pacific Station, and was under British command.

My grandfather quickly violated Civics Lesson 1. With Colonel Holmes's blessing, Grandfather Chong augmented his houseboy salary by providing a laundry service to the fort's soldiers and, eventually, to citizens in nearby Victoria.

As The Globe's China correspondent, I once went to Changle county on the coast of Fujian, the favourite jumping-off point for Chinese illegals. On a sparkling winter day there in 1992, I cornered a lone fisherman repairing his nets on a white sand beach. He told me the son of a local Communist Party Secretary had recently resurfaced in Japan. "He was smuggled there," the fisherman added, with a grin.

Snakeheads, as the local gangsters are known, charge $50,000 to transport a person to Canada. That's a lifetime's wages for the average Chinese worker, much more for a peasant.

No wonder the latest arrivals have been saving safety pins, tinfoil plates and pens, and hiding them in their bedding. The police called them makeshift weapons. Maybe the Chinese just haven't acclimatized to our culture of wastefulness.

On Wednesday, after just one week here, most of them refused to eat Ming's catered lunch. An RCMP constable reported that the newcomers were "frustrated" with the backed-up hearings.

Welcome to Canada. What better indoctrination into the Canadian Way of Life than months and months and months of government hearings?

 
Noteworthy
· Editorial Cartoon
· Series archive
· What's new

Forums
The hidden danger of peacekeeping
The Canadian army has been accused of tampering with the medical files of soldiers in Croatia who came back to Canada with severe health problems. Is the military covering up its wrongful actions?

Books
Book clubs: Are they enlightening or frightening? Share your book club stories here.

Poetry: Share your poetry.

Careers
"I believe that the IT skills shortage is being hyped by private and public training instituitions who want to cash in on the demand for training." Do you agree?.

Mutual Funds
Aside from past performance, what's the most important criterion you examine when choosing a particular fund for your portfolio? Let us know on globefund.com.

Technology
Compaq has a new CEO, but anaylsts are skeptical he can do the job. What do you think? The new face of Compaq.

Help & Contact Us
Back to the top of this page
Copyright © 1999 The Globe and Mail