A Vancouver man has attributed the death of his mother to the Chinese head tax. But he won't be among those receiving federal compensation because his parents died before Prime Minister Stephen Harper announced that $20,000 payments will go to surviving head-tax payers and their spouses.

Harvey Lee, a retiree, told his tale to the Georgia Straight shortly before attending an October 10 dinner at Floata restaurant in Chinatown. “There are a lot of descendants who suffered just as much as their parents did due to the head tax and the exclusion act,” Lee said. “Myself, I was separated from my family for years. I was a teenager before I got to see my father.”

At the dinner, Prime Minister Stephen Harper spoke of his pride about issuing an apology for the head tax, which he described as “a moral blemish on our country's soul”. Harper also emphasized how “especially important and satisfying” it was to him that his government will make payments to survivors.

Beginning in 1885, the Canadian government imposed a $50 fee on Chinese immigrants, which was raised to $100 in 1900 and to $500 in 1903. Vancouver East NDP MP Libby Davies told Parliament that this would be the equivalent of about $30,000 in 2005 dollars. In 1923, the government passed a law, which wasn't lifted until 1947, banning almost all Chinese immigration.

Lee said that his father paid the $500 head tax when he came to Canada in 1910. His mother paid the $500 fee when she arrived nine years later. He said his mother eventually took the family back to China because of all the racism in Canada, and Lee was born in Hong Kong in 1939. His father stayed in Canada, eventually operating a restaurant in Souris, Manitoba.

When war broke out in the Far East, the family was separated. Lee said that his mother could have avoided the hostilities and legally returned to Canada because she had already paid the head tax. However, Lee said, she remained in China because she didn't want to leave him as a little baby with relatives. Canadian law at the time banned the children of head-tax payers from entering the country, so Lee wouldn't have been permitted into Canada with his mother.

In 1943, Lee said, his mother was killed by Japanese invaders while she was trying to flee with her family. He was only four years old at the time. “She sacrificed her life,” Lee said, wiping a tear from his eye. “She died because she couldn't bring me over.”

He then apologized, saying that he gets emotional every time he tells this story. “My grandmother brought me up until after the war. Then my dad sent for us, and then my brother and I came over.”

Lee said he arrived in Canada in 1951 when he was 12 years old. He eventually went on to a career in management, but expressed regret that he never got to know his father very well. “We never really bonded,” he said. “That was another problem with the separation.”

When asked how he feels about Harper's handling of the head-tax issue, Lee replied, “Initially, he started well. He kept his promise of the apology. But the redress has fallen a little bit short. It's a little bit more politics there than it is redress.”

At a demonstration outside the event, Sid Tan, president of the Association of Chinese Canadians for Equality and Solidarity, said that only 0.6 percent of head-tax families will be redressed because the vast majority of head-tax payers and their spouses died before Harper issued a federal apology last June. “We want the other 99.4 percent of head-tax families to be redressed,” Tan shouted.

Moments later, the crowd joined him in a chant, “Head tax, redress, head tax, redress...”