Amy Chow has written an article called The Face of Asian Mixed Marriage in BC
http://thetyee.ca/Life/2005/12/27/MixedMarriageBC/ for The Tyee.ca
She tells the story of a nice Canadian boy eloping with a nice Canadian girl because his mother, has always wanted him to marry a girl that would be "more appropriate" for him and the family. It's a familiar story - not a new story... but one that most Canadians could related to and share. In this case, the boy is of Jewish ancestry and the girl is of Chinese ancestry.
I grew up in Vancouver, first meeting people from mixed marriages in the early sixties when I was a child. "Chinnie" was somebody who always was hanging out at my great-grandma's house - one of her best friends. She was white. I have recently bumped into her daughter Evelyn. It's great that we have shared history of our elders.
Mixed race marriages is common place on both sides of my family. On my mother's side, there has been a mixed race marriage in every generation since our elder Rev. Chan Yu Tan arrived in Canada in 1896. There was his son Luke, who became an actor in Hollywood. There were his grandsons Henry and Art. Incidently it was Art who married a First Nations woman, and their daughter Rhonda has become the elected band chief for the Qayqayt Nation (New Westminster), that she singlehandedly resurrected.
My mother's youngest brother married a woman of Scottish-English background, steeped in Ontario Canadian heritage. 9 of my 12 cousins on my mom's side have married caucasians + my brother. And on my father's side, 6 of my 9 cousins married caucasians.
I was the only person out of my maternal cousins that married somebody of Chinese Canadian descent. It should have worked out... our grandparents had known each other, as had our parents, our aunts and uncles, our cousins, and even their children.... but it was not to be. No regrets.
And today, I am spending my 2nd Christmas with my Canadian girlfriend of British ancestry, and her parents. I haven't seen another Asian since I left the Kelowna airport two days ago. There haven't been any racial clashes. We talk about the issues that I am involved in such as the Save Kogawa House campaign and the Chinese Canadian head tax - even with their caucasian friends.
We listened to my friends Joy Kogawa and Ann-Marie Metten on CBC radio yesterday, and we read in the newspaper about my friends Bill Chu and Gabriel Yiu and Thekla Lit who helped organize a Boxing Day press conference on Head Tax redress. And these are just Canadian issues. And the 3 dogs love all the hugs they can get. Race isn't an issue for them.
Todd out walking with dogs in Kalamalka Lake Provincial Park.
