A history lesson: CTV W5's "Campus Giveaway"

helloman · 发表于 2012-6-25 23:11

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CS-PBKXJbhs
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MR8M-haYfPk&feature=relmfu
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W-5’s WTF!? … 30 years later
Thirty years ago one documentary awoke a silent community
Some Chinese-Canadians who saw Campus Giveaway never forgot their reaction
By Tom Hawthorn,Globe and Mail, Sep. 23, 2009
The television segment lasted about 11 minutes, an exposé of the takeover of Canadian classrooms by foreign students.
A section of a university lecture hall filled with non-white faces was shown.
The documentary, which aired on television 30 years ago this month, had unintended consequences.
It awoke what had been, until then, a silent community.
A  history of the Chinese in Canada includes such benchmarks as building  the railroad; defending against rioters in 1907; paying the head tax;  enduring the Exclusion Act; bravely contributing to the war effort; gaining the franchise in  1947; and, oddly enough, protesting against a single episode of a  current-events television program.
Some who watched back then have never forgotten their initial reaction.
Victor  Wong was studying science at the University of British Columbia when  Campus Giveaway aired on the popular program W5 (today known as W-Five  ).
“It  touched many of us,” he said Tuesday. “The message was: Because of your  skin colour, or your ethnic heritage, you don’t belong here. You’re  just taking up someone’s space.”
Sid Tan was also studying at UBC in 1979.
“They  were calling a bunch of Canadians foreigners. It was quite disgusting  and quite off the mark,” he said. “I remember it as a galvanizing  experience.”
Anthony Chan, a communications professor born in Victoria, recalls the shock.
“We’re going, ‘Huh?! They’re saying we’re foreigners. They can’t be serious.’ ”
The  report alleged that Canadian students were being prevented from  studying medicine and engineering because foreign students were  occupying their rightful place in university classrooms. Much of the
segment focused on the plight of a student from Ontario who was thwarted  in her aspiration to study pharmacy at the University of Toronto.
Joseph Wong  missed the episode when it originally aired on Sept. 30, 1979. He was  completing a residency at a hospital when he watched Campus Giveaway on a  videotape a few weeks later.
“My  reaction was so vigorous I’ll never forget it,” he said. “How could  this happen in Canada? We’re living in a country without discrimination,  I thought.”
He  had already booked tickets for a flight to Calgary to visit his  mother-in-law. He brought with him the videotape, which he showed at a  meeting on New Year’s Eve, 1979, in Calgary, and on New Year’s Day,
1980, in Edmonton. He then flew to Vancouver for a showing four days later.
The  tape made the rounds to small audiences in Regina, Ottawa, and  Montreal, as well as in smaller Ontario cities such as Waterloo and  Sarnia.
A community known for “not wanting to ruffle any feathers,” in Dr. Wong’s words, formed Ad Hoc Committees of the Council of Chinese Canadians Against W5 in 16 cities, from Victoria to Halifax.
In  late January, four simultaneous protest marches were held. About 2,000  marched on CTV’s offices. “Red, brown, black, yellow and white,” they  chanted, “all Canadians must unite.”
The protesters were told Canadian universities had only 85 foreign medical students, 66 of them from the United States.
As  well, university officials disputed W5 ’s numbers, stating the number  of foreign and visa students had been multiplied by a factor of five.
Even 30 years later, Dr. Wong is baffled by the airing of footage in which any Asian face was presumed to be non-Canadian.
“All  the yellow-coloured students they showed were [naturalized] Canadians,  landed immigrants or permanent residents, or local-born Chinese  Canadians,” he said.
The committee had identified all of the unnamed students shown in the report. Not one was a foreign student.
W5 aired an on-air apology that tiptoed around the committee’s complaints.
It  was rejected by the committee. Finally, in April, CTV issued a  statement Globe columnist Dick Beddoes described as “a retraction, an  apology, a confession of error, a disorderly retreat.”
Murray  Chercover, the network’s president and managing director, wrote: “Right  after the program was broadcast our critics – particularly  Chinese-Canadians and the universities – criticized the program as racist: they were right,  although it was never our intention to produce a racist program.
“There  is no doubt that the distorted statistics combined with visual  presentation, made the program appear racist in tone and effect.”
With the apology came the offer to fill an 11-minute segment on an upcoming W5 episode.
It  aired in December. A survey of 25 job placement agencies found 17  casually agreeing to send only Caucasian employees, while only three  flatly refused a request violating provincial and federal laws. The segment was titled, White and  Bright .
“It was a beautiful victory,” Dr. Wong said.
Mr.  Chan, who is now a professor at the University of Ontario Institute of  Technology at Oshawa, traces his own family roots in Canada to the  arrival of his grandfather in 1881. His mother was born
in Vancouver, his father, like himself, in Victoria. He devoted a  chapter of his book Gold Mountain (New Star, 1983) to the W5 scandal.
In  retrospect, he sees 1979 as a pivotal year for the Chinese-Canadian  community. Many had been working on the resettlement of the Vietnamese  boat people, most of them ethnic Chinese, at the time Campus Giveaway was aired.
“It was time,” he said. “Things just coalesced. Thank you very much, W5 .”
The  politics have reverberated in the 30 years since, as Chinese-Canadians  won election to Vancouver city council, to the mayoralty of Victoria, to  the Legislature and to Parliament. Some active in the W5 protests have gone on to become  filmmakers, provincial-court judges, and activists in the campaign for  redress of
the hated head tax.
At  the time of the protests, Dr. Wong, a landed immigrant, was identified  in a newspaper story as someone who had “yet to become a Canadian.” He  immediately filled out the requisite paperwork. He looks forward next year to celebrating  30 years as a proud citizen of what he calls “the fairest society on  Earth.”

http://gingerpost.com/?p=615

helloman · 发表于 2012-6-25 23:13

Dr. Joseph Yu Kai Wong, CM is a notable philanthropist in the Chinese Canadiancommunity. He founded The Yee Hong Centre for Geriatric Care in 1987 [1]. He served as the chairman for the United Way of Greater Toronto from 1990 to 1992[2]and has been honorary chair since 1994[3]. He was awarded the Order of Canadain 1984.[4] Dr. Wong is the winner of the 2005 Humanitarian of the Year award, presented to him by former Soviet Union President Mikhail Gorbachev.
Wong came to Canada to study medicine at McGill University, but he studied electrical engineering due to restrictions to foreign students. Wong later studied medicine in New York City and returned to Canada after graduation.
Wong became a social activist after condemning a report by CTV's W5 on foreign student's taking positions at Canadian universities. Wong has fought hard against discrimination to Chinese Canadians and other minorities as well. He fought for redress for head taxes applied on Chinese labourers entering Canada from the late 19th Century to the 1947.
Dr. Wong is the founder of the Association for Learning and Preserving the History of World War II in Asia in Toronto (Toronto ALPHA)

helloman · 发表于 2012-6-27 11:57

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QKSq8iuNHsk&feature=related

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dvNEkHWGweY&feature=related

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eWZhxya3RlY&feature=relmfu

This month is the 30th anniversary of Vincent Chin’s death

On the night of June 19, 1982,
Vincent Chin, a 27-year-old Chinese-American, was beaten to death with a baseball bat by two Detroit autoworkers, who had mistakenly thought that he was Japanese, and in their minds, was responsible for the loss of jobs in the U.S. auto industry.

Chin's killers, Ronald Ebens and Michael Nitz, were originally charged with second-degree murder, but were allowed to plead guilty to a lesser charge of manslaughter. Judge Charles Kaufman, who sentenced them to three years' probation and a $3,000 fine, explained his leniency by saying, "These weren't the kind of men you send to jail."

A history lesson: CTV W5's &quot;Campus Giveaway&quot;

Another history lesson: Vincent Chin‏

A history lesson: CTV W5's "Campus Giveaway"