Welcome to the Research Department. Here you will find material I have turned up researching for my book Finding Mr. Wong.
To begin with, two feature articles written for Sing Tao daily about my travels to China in search of Mr. Wong’s story. The first was published just before my departure for Wing Ning, and the second, a follow-up story by Lu Wong was published a year later in 2011.
I am posting neat stuff, too; information I’ve come across which I have found incredibly useful — and think you might as well. There are contributions from two collaborators. Chuck C.C. Wong’s bibliographies, and Howe Chan’s stories about his family’s early years of in Canada. Howe’s first one is about Muin Hahow Goun, the Chan family’s benefactor. You will find it in Chinese followed by the English version.
In Conversation with John Ralston Saul: John Saul’s A Fair Country — Telling Truths about Canada is about buried history. It is one of those books that tells you things you’ve always vaguely suspected. Like the phrase “peace, order and good government” isn’t the real thing. The phrase almost always used in legal and constitutional documents was actually Peace, Welfare and Good Government. Bit of a difference, eh? As I read that section of the book, I could hear myself cheering.
One word makes all the difference. Saul calls it Métis Canada, referring to the informal exchanges between individuals and groups who were ‘just getting along’ even racist laws were on the books and being enforced. Most especially, Saul writes about the influence of Aboriginal communities on the lives and evolving culture of in-coming Europeans, that continues to this day. You can read more in excerpts below from a conversation we had last February. And more about John here.