Kwan, Cheuk C.

• 關卓中

Cheuk Kwan was born in 1950 and grew up in Hong Kong, Singapore and Japan. He earned his Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees in the United States before immigrating to Canada in 1976 and settling in Toronto.

Well-educated, well-traveled and multilingual (English, Japanese, French, and several Chinese dialects), Kwan was engaged in and helped lead the community activism of Chinese Canadians in the late 1970s as the first generation of Chinese born in Canada were coming of age. The Asian American movement had reached its peak over the past decade and inspired development of the Asian Canadian identity needed to affect racial, social and political change in the country.

In 1978, Kwan co-founded (with Tony Chan and Paul Levine) The Asianadian: An Asian Canadian Magazine dedicated to the promotion of Asian Canadian arts, culture and politics. The following year, he helped lead a national fight for equality for Chinese Canadians and their representation in mainstream news media following CTV’s airing of the W5 segment called ‘Campus Giveaway.’ The segment depicted all ethnic Chinese students as foreigners taking up “Canadian” spots at university campuses across the country, regardless of their citizenship status as Chinese nationals or as Chinese Canadians.

Kwan was a member of the ‘ad hoc committee against W5’ championed under the Council for Chinese Canadians in Ontario (CCCO), then served as the organization’s President. The fight started locally and involved a lawsuit against CTV filed by University of Toronto students shown in the segment. The issue grew into a national movement that was successful in soliciting public apology from the national television news network. A major outcome included creation of the Chinese Canadian National Council for Equality (CCNC) in 1980, on which Kwan served as a director in its founding year. The anti-W5 movement has since been recognized as a watershed moment in the development of Chinese Canadian identity and consciousness.

Other significant activism includes Kwan’s long involvement with the Toronto Association for Democracy in China, including as Chair from 1992-2016. Formed in 1989 in response to the June Fourth Incident (六四事件) in Beijing’s Tiananmen Square, the organization is dedicated to memorializing the event annually, and promoting human rights and democracy in China.

In 1998, Kwan undertook filmmaking and film production through establishing Tissa Films. His Chinese Restaurants film series that brings together his love of food, travel and appreciation of Chinese diasporic culture inspired Have You Eaten Yet? published by Douglas & McIntyre in 2022.

He lives in Toronto, Ontario.

Cheuk Kwan fonds, Toronto Public Library Chinese Canadian Archive