Chan, Anthony Bernard

• 陳善昌

• Chan, Tony

• T.T. Mao (pseudonym)

Anthony Bernard Chan was born in Victoria, BC, in 1944, into one of the city's oldest Chinese families dating back to the arrival of his grandfather, Chan Dun, in the late-1800s. The family was well known for owning and operating the Panama Cafe on Government Street.

Chan completed undergraduate studies at the University of Victoria. In 1974, he was one of the first Chinese Canadians to live and study in the People’s Republic of China, obtaining a Diploma in Chinese from the Beijing Language Institute. In Toronto, he co-founded the Asianadian Resource Workshop which published The Asianadian magazine from 1978 to 1985. In 1979, Chan was the Halifax, Nova Scotia delegate in the Ad-hoc Committee Against W5 protesting the CTV broadcast “Campus Giveaway.” He was also a founding member of the Chinese Canadian National Council for Equality that was formed as a result.

Chan earned Master’s degrees from Bowling Green State University (in Ohio) and the University of Arizona before returning to Canada to complete a PhD in modern Chinese history at York University in 1980. Shortly after, he published Arming the Chinese: The Western Armaments Trade in Warlord China, 1920-1928 (1982) and Gold Mountain: The Chinese in the New World (1983).

In 1984, Chan participated in the CBC’s visible minority training program in Toronto, thereafter, becoming one of the first Asian Canadians to have a career as a television journalist and independent filmmaker with a filmography spanning Canada, Hong Kong, and the United States. He first worked as a television reporter with the CBC in Edmonton, Saskatoon, and Calgary, and was a host of The Canadians at CBC Regina. In 1986, he took a job in Hong Kong with TVB as a senior producer, television journalist and anchor where he produced and directed over thirty television documentaries and narrated over a hundred.

Chan remained an independent documentary filmmaker; in Canada, he produced and directed Chinese Cafes in Rural Saskatchewan (1985) and The Panama (1996) on his family's cafe in Victoria. Later, he produced and directed films on Asian Americans and the Vietnam War, and on the Asian diaspora in North America. His teaching career started at California State University in Hayward, CA, as an Associate Professor of Mass Communication where he taught film production, digital journalism and Asian cinema.

At the University of Washington in Seattle, Chan served as Chair of the Bachelor’s and Master’s degree programs in Canadian Studies, Director of the Canadian Studies Center in the Henry M. Jackson School of International Studies, and Associate Professor of Communication and Head of Broadcast Journalism. His final academic position was with the University of Ontario Institute of Technology in Oshawa, Ontario, as Professor and Associate Dean of Communication in the Faculty of Education.

His many writing and publishing credits include historical biographies on Anna May Wong and Li Ka-shing.

Chan died in Toronto in 2018. He was married to Wei DJAO with one daughter together (Lian).

Created by June Chow, March 2026.