3.1 Assignment

At the beginning of this section you were told that you would be looking at the following question: 


Which historically significant events in Chinese Canadian history indicate progress towards, or decline away from, equity for Chinese Canadians?

Throughout this section you have been reading about significant events in Chinese Canadian history.  You have been working on several exercises in your learning guide. 

To get started on this section assignment, you will first need to be able to explain the difference between equity and equality (you might want to go back to the beginning of the book for this section to review them).

Consider the questions below:

What does equality look like in a multicultural society?

BC’s Multiculturalism Act states that its purpose is to “recognize that the diversity  of British Columbians as regards race, cultural heritage, religion, ethnicity, ancestry, and place of origin is a fundamental characteristic of the society of BC that enriches the lives of all British Columbians.”
What roles do equity and equality play in that recognition?

Step 1

Open the worksheet "Significant Events"  by clicking on either pdf or rtf. You will need to follow the instructions on the sheet.

To do this exercise properly, you will need a good grasp of the idea of equity.  Here you will need to develop a sense of events that lead groups towards equity of away from equity. For example, when a group is given the right to vote, they are stepping towards greater equity, but when it is taken away, as it was with the Chinese, they are stepping away from equity.

This assignment will require you to go back to the readings to select various events.

Step 2

Once you have filled in the sheet above and have rated a total of 13 events, you will now plot those events on the chart which you will find here named "Equity." You will need to use key words on the chart, such as "craftsmen arrive," and "gold rush." You will also need to keep track of the dates on the timeline at the bottom.

You should see a pattern form. 

Step 3

Break your graph down into the following four sections:

  • early immigration
  • head tax period
  • exclusion period
  • post WWII

Try to determine a major turning point for each period. A turning point, in this case, would be a sharp increase towards equity or a sharp decline away from it.

Now, write a paragraph in which you do your best to explain the pattern of movements towards equity as shown on your chart. Explain what factors surrounded the major turning points for each period. End your paragraph by stating where you think we are now as a province. Is Canada inclusive now?

When you have finished, hand in your assignment. This will be marked out of 16 according to the rubric below.