Chinese community in Vancouver marks Remembrance Day for Chinese-Canadian WWII soldiers

The Chinese community here in Canada staged Remembrance Day ceremony Wednesday to mark the contributions those Chinese-Canadian soldiers and the Chinese community had made to the country during World War II.

The ceremony took place in Chinatown. Seventeen Chinese-Canadian veterans and dozens of Chinese community leaders gathered in front of a monument to commemorate the achievements of the Chinese-Canadians, on the opposite side of which stand two bronze statues of a Chinese railway laborer and a Chinese-Canadian WWII soldier.

Some of the veterans are survivors of WWII, who had just attended the annual Remembrance Day service in downtown run by the city of Vancouver earlier.

The ceremony featured the wreath layings by representatives of the Canadian federal government, the provincial government of British Columbia and the municipal government of Vancouver. Vancouver Mayor Gregor Robertson told Xinhua that he came "to celebrate and thank the Chinese pioneers and all those who served and sacrificed for our country."

During the WWII, some 600 Chinese-Canadian soldiers served the country on its soil as well as in European and Asia-Pacific battlefields, to prove that they were as worthy as anyone else and by doing so, earn the right to citizenship, a statement at the ceremony said.

After the war was over, mostly because of the bravery and services of these Chinese-Canadian soldiers, the Canadian government gave ethnic Chinese rights to vote and repealed the notorious Exclusion Act aimed at frustrating the Chinese migration to Canada. The right to vote changed forever the social landscape of the Chinese community.

Chinese-Canadian veteran Frank Wong, 90, who was a clerk store man for the Canadian army during the WWII and spent four years in European battleground, was among the forces of driving the dramatic change.

"I'm very proud that I had played a part in bringing this privilege which we now have," he said.


Source: Xinhua