Wong Foon Sien

Journalist and immigration rights activist

• Born: July 7, 1899 (or 1901 or 1902)
• Birthplace: Guangdong, China
• Died: July 31, 1971
• Place of death: Vancouver, British Columbia

Also known as: Wong Mun Poo

Significance: Wong Foon Sien was a Chinese rights advocate in Canada during the early twentieth century. He successfully lobbied the Canadian government to grant Chinese immigrants the right to vote and to pass the Immigration Act of 1967, which ended explicitly racist immigration policies that had been in place since 1923.

Background

Wong Foon Sien was born in Guangdong, China, on July 7, 1899, and given the name Wong Mun Poo (some sources state his birth year as 1901 or 1902). By 1908, his family had moved to Cumberland, British Columbia, where they started a successful herbal store called the Kwong Mee Lung.

Foon Sien was a studious child and spent time reading the Four Books and the Five Classics of Confucian learning after school each day. At the time, these books were required reading in Imperial China for the civil service examinations. His parents hoped to send their son back to China to obtain a classic education, which would help him establish a successful career there, but Foon Sien chose a different path after visiting with the Chinese activist Dr. Sun Yat-Sen, whose mission was to overthrow the Qing Dynasty. Foon Sien was so impressed with him and their conversation that he decided to become a lawyer. When he finished high school, Foon Sien moved to Vancouver to attend the University of British Columbia to study law. He was one of the first five Chinese students to attend the school. Within a year, he was hired by the attorney general as a court interpreter.

Despite graduating from the university, Foon Sien was unable to practice law. At the time, the professional societies that regulated professions such as law, pharmacology, and accounting required their members to be registered on the national voters’ lists. As a Chinese immigrant, Foon Sien was not allowed to vote. Foon Sien set a goal of changing this law.

Life’s Work

In the late 1930s, strict immigration restrictions in Canada, collectively known as the Chinese Exclusion Act, controlled who was allowed into the country. Chinese people living in Canada could only bring into the country their spouses, unmarried children under the age of twenty-one, a father over the age of sixty-five, and a mother over the age of sixty. This resulted in a depleted Chinese population in Canada consisting mostly of bachelors and elderly Chinese people with few economic prospects. Foon Sien fought to repeal these discriminatory laws.

By 1937, he had taken a stand against the Chinese Exclusion Act when he was appointed to be the publicity agent for the Chinese Benevolent Association. He then founded the Chinese Trade Workers’ Association in 1942 and became more deeply involved in Chinese labor rights. During World War II, he was recruited by the federal government’s Department of National War Services as a censor of mail and telegrams. Following the war, he worked as a journalist for the New Republic Chinese Daily, which garnered him further name recognition.

In 1944, Wong drafted a petition that contained seven points requesting that Chinese Canadians be given the right to vote in elections. This petition was sent to both the provincial and federal governments and was successful in influencing the Canadian government to recognize both the voting rights and the citizenship rights of its Chinese population. Chinese Canadians gained the right to vote in federal elections in 1947, and the Chinese Exclusion Act was repealed that year as well.

However, Foon Sien believed that additional work needed to be done for Chinese immigrants. When he became the president of the Chinese Benevolent Association in 1948, a position he would hold for the next eleven years, he lobbied the federal government in Ottawa to lessen the remaining restrictions on immigration quotas. In 1951, he was still petitioning the government to allow unmarried children of Chinese Canadians between the ages of twenty-one and twenty-five to be able to enter the country. An important victory occurred in 1957 when the government began allowing Chinese men who had lived in Canada for two years to post a $1,000 cash bond for fiancées brought from China (colloquially known as “mail order brides”).

After Foon Sien’s retirement in 1960, he remained an active member in many organizations including the Wong Kung Har Society, the Chinese Canadian Citizens Association, the Chinese Trade Workers Association, and the Vancouver Centre branch of the Liberal Party. He was a founder and board member of the Vancouver Civic Association (the forerunner of the British Columbia Human Rights Council). Because of his active participation in his community, newspapers dubbed him the “unofficial mayor of Chinatown.” Foon Sien died on July 31, 1971. His funeral was one of the most attended in the history of Chinatown.

Impact

Foon Sien’s work as an advocate for the rights of Chinese in Canada was recognized shortly after Foon Sien’s death by Bill Kan, a columnist for the Chinatown News, when he summarized Foon Sien’s accomplishments as restoring Canadian citizenship rights to Chinese Canadian females who had lost these rights through marriage; readmitting the women in this category to Canada along with their husbands and children under the age of twenty-one; giving permission to parents of Chinese Canadians over the age of sixty-five to reside in Canada; and allowing the entry of “mail-order brides” into Canada. As a result of Foon Sien’s efforts to change Canada’s immigration laws, thousands of families were reunited and achieved the ability to participate in their government through enfranchisement.

In 2008, Foon Sien was named a Person of National Historic Significance by the Minister of the Environment. A commemorative plaque was installed in 2011 on East Pender Street in Vancouver describing the significance of his life and work.

Bibliography

Atkin, John. “Top 10 Vancouverites.” Vancouver Sun, 5 Apr. 2011, vancouversun.com/news/top-10-vancouverites. Accessed 25 Jun. 2023.

Baird, Craig. “Wong Foon Sien.” Candian History Ehx Podcast, 23 June 2022, canadaehx.com/2022/07/09/wo/. Accessed 25 June 2023.

Davis, Chuck. “The Life and Times of Foon Sien.” The History of Metropolitan Vancouver website, 6 Jan. 2021, vancouverhistory.ca/people/the-life-and-times-of-foon-sien/. Accessed 25 June 2023.

Mar, Lisa Rose. Brokering Belonging: Chinese in Canada’s Exclusion Era, 1885–1945, Oxford University Press, 2010.

Wong, Larry. “The Life and Times of Foon Sien.” British Columbia History, vol. 38, no. 3, 2005, pp. 6-8. Accessed 25 June 2023.

“Wong Foon Sien National Historic Person (1901–1971).” Official Government of Canada website, 9 June 2023, parks.canada.ca/culture/designation/personnage-person/wong-foon-sien. Accessed 25 June 2023.