See the Then Is Now project
Listen to the documentary
Julia Hune-Brown is a theatre artist, educator and storyteller. In 2019, she produced a documentary for CBC Radio about her grandmother, Gar Yin Hune, a Cantonese opera singer who became one of the very few people of Chinese origin to immigrate to Canada during the Exclusion Act years. During the pandemic, Julia and fellow artist Keira Loughran collaborated on a storytelling project entitled "Then Is Now," focusing on the experiences of Toronto Chinatown's female elders.
"For me, it’s looking at patterns, like with migrant workers now and with undocumented folks. I look at my grandmother's history, the fact that she had four kids in Canada, but was still not legally supposed to be here. And that history is repeating itself. We can forget quickly that this happened in your family. We are Chinese Canadian, but there are paper sons and paper daughters within our family realm. For me, it was humbling to look at my family history. And also to acknowledge that Canada hasn’t magically resolved many of the racist immigration and legal [issues] we have."
Julia Hune-Brown
