By Jen St Denis, on November 01, 2017
Vancouver city council will formally apologize for past municipal bylaws and actions that discriminated against Chinese immigrants up until the middle of the 20th Century.
The apology is planned for April 2018 and will be delivered in Toishanese, a dialect spoken by the early Chinese immigrants to Vancouver, which has mostly fallen out of use but will be used as an homage to their struggles.
Council also voted to adopt other recommendations of a report that detailed the historic wrongs. Those recommendations include applying for UNESCO World Heritage status for Chinatown and making the report accessible to the general public and to public school students.
Speakers told council of the discrimination their parents and grandparents faced. They also expressed concern about the future of Chinatown, an area that has seen soaring land values, the loss of many stores that sold traditional Chinese food and other products, and fewer shoppers as more recent immigrants from China opt to shop elsewhere.
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