This year marks a major milestone in artist Don Kwan’s family: they will be celebrating their 100th anniversary since settling in Canada back in November of 1922. One of 8 children, Kwan is part of the third generation of his family and a proud descendant of his paternal grandfather who immigrated to Canada at just 11 years of age. Part of the first wave of Chinese immigrants, his grandfather was affected by the discriminatory Chinese Immigration Act that would charge every Chinese newcomer a $50 head tax (an incredible sum in the 1920s). Like so many of that generation, his grandfather would later go back to China to marry and have children there before his family could fully emigrate to Canada after the Second World War.
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