ACAM Dialogues Episode 08: An Interview with Wendy Yip (Hosted by Isa S. You, feat. Wendy Yip)
Tune in from your device via Anchor.fm!
ISA: The Asian Canadian and Asian Migration Studies Program would like to acknowledge that this podcast was recorded on the traditional, unceded, ancestral homelands of the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam), and Skwxwú7mesh (Squamish), and səl̓ilwətaɁɬ (Tsleil-Waututh) First Nations.
Hello and welcome to the ACAM podcast. We hope that this podcast can be a way to continue building connections between ACAM students, staff, faculty and community partners, while also providing our community members with a platform to share similar work they’ve been doing during this time. I’m your host Isa and we also have a guest host this week, Olivia!
OLIVIA: Hi! My name is Olivia Lim and I’m the Special Projects Coordinator at ACAM.
Our guest this week is Wendy Yip, university ambassador at UBC since 2016. She is also the President of the Pacific Canada Heritage Centre- Museum of Migration, as well as a longtime supporter of ACAM. Alongside her husband, outgoing UBC President Santa Ono, Wendy will be relocating to Michigan, marking the end of her role with UBC. We caught up with Wendy to get her reflections on her work as University Ambassador, her involvement with PCHC, and her experience with community advocacy work. Let’s take a listen:
ISA: Thank you so much for joining us today. Can you introduce yourself to our listeners?
WENDY: It’s a pleasure to be here. I am Wendy Yip, University Ambassador for the University of British Columbia, UBC.
OLIVIA: So as the Asian Canadian and Asian Migration Studies program, we’re always interested in hearing about people’s own experiences of migration. So could you tell me a little bit more about your family and your migration stories?
WENDY: So it’s a little complex. For me. I actually was born in Toronto, Ontario. And I grew up mostly in Montreal. And I’ve spent many years in other places. So my parents were from China originally. And they came in that sort of wave of the 1950s, 60s when immigration opened up, and they both came to study university. My father actually went, you know, during the upheaval after World War Two, their family moved from Shanghai to Hong Kong. Then he went to London, he actually took a one month shipping route through the Suez Canal. Can you imagine that? From Hong Kong all the way over to England like that? And then he goes, he was very proud of China, and he went with the Chinese students’ society over there, and they showed some films and things like that. Then he became suspect. So after he got his first degree at Imperial College in England, he was not renewed. He was supposed to be doing grad studies with a Nobel Laureate, apparently, but he was not renewed, his visa was not renewed. So then he had to go to Canada and he went to Kingston, went to Queen’s University, did his master’s PhD in Toronto. And he met my mother who went from Hong Kong also, they did not know each other. She’s Cantonese. She went to Ottawa for undergraduate, then McGill for medicine. And then they met while she was interning and he did his PhD, in a Chinese Students’ Society party in Montreal, because there weren’t that many numbers. So he came back from Kingston to go there and they met. Then they married and they moved sort of along the Trans Canada Highway between Montreal and Toronto, I was born. Then actually, because they were in grad studies, they sent me off to live with my grandmother. Or my grandmother said, you are not giving my first grandchild to be cared for by strangers. So she came and collected me at the age of eight months, and I basically spent two and a half years in Hong Kong. So my first language is actually Cantonese. And then afterwards, that was my paternal grandmother, my Maa Maa. And then my maternal grandmother, my Po Po brought me back, and she was going to immigrate and settle in Canada. So she brought me back to Canada.
We rejoined with my parents who had settled in Montreal at this point. And she was defeated by the winter and went home. She said, not for me. But we stayed on in Montreal, my father taught at McGill University in engineering, and my mother opened up a pediatric practice. And my sister came along about a year later, and then pretty much we moved on. I basically went to a convent school there. Y’know, a girls convent school, only because the public schools were on strike one year. And then so I went to Sacred Heart School, looks like a dungeon. And my mother only knew about it, because she did a house call on some of the boarders. We’re not very planned. It’s like, Oh, you shouldn’t miss school, therefore, maybe let’s do this one. And then after that, CEGEP, which is the junior college, you know, like grade 12, first year university, and then went to McGill. And did my undergrad in immunology, did an honors program, pre-med route like my mom. But we did all sorts of interesting things. My father really liked to instill in us a love of Chinese culture, because he had had a classical Chinese education as a younger child. And he’d bring us to the McGill Chinese Students’ Society functions, you know, Lunar New Year festivities. When things started opening up, he’d take us to Chinese Beijing opera coming over here. I grew up listening to it, at some point, my grandmother came over and started living with us. So you’d hear the Chinese opera my father would sort of chant it sometimes on long road trips down the 401, you know, slapping his thigh to keep himself awake. And also keep the percussion. So I grew up with this mix of things, you know, which, which I thought was, you know, very standard, but I don’t think so talking to a lot of people in your generation, the younger, that love and that understanding of Chinese culture. I think I was lucky because not just the second generation, you know, born, but still had ties. And my parents could speak both English and Chinese. So you know, they were bridging, they were sort of, they came as 18, 19 year olds, and so they had a foot in each culture. So I really benefited from that, my sister and I did.
Y’know, I didn’t quite get into med school the first time I applied. So then I did a master’s continuing on with my research project from my undergrad. And then I met Santa. Well, actually I met him during my last year because we were in the same research group. His PhD supervisor at McGill was a researcher with me, you know, and then we started dating. Nobody knew because we’re like, oh, we don’t need the gossip. And that was fine, you know, because he would come over and then he would play cello. And I found that interesting. I was doing a little bit of… I played the piano. And so I had a date to do something with a flutist who was in my lab and then I said oh, well, why don’t you join us? So he thought I was hitting on him but anyway, we did this, you know, little trio of music. And that’s sort of what brought us together a little bit science and music. And, you know, the flutist had to go home because she had a child to care for. My parents would say at our wedding. Well, we heard that she was going to be in the trio. But when we got home, it was only a duet. So that’s how it goes and then so… still migrating.
So most of you from UBC know and have heard that Santa was born in Vancouver. And his father was the professor of mathematics here, from Japan through France for themselves, he actually did a fellowship in France, then here. So his eldest brother was born in Japan. He was born in Vancouver. And then his father kept you know, in search of Math Mecca, which was sort of Princeton Advanced Institute, and then he went to the closest university he could, which is University of Pennsylvania, and that’s where his youngest brother was born. So each of the brothers had a different citizenship actually, growing up Japanese, Canadian, and American. And then to find his Canadian roots and Santa decided, you know, after finishing, he did Chicago as an undergraduate, he came up to do his PhD at McGill. That’s how I met him. So then because of that, he said, Look, there’s more money for research, because he does molecular biology and molecular immunology. So I followed him. So the States, so we went to Boston, Baltimore, Boston, London, Atlanta, Cincinnati, and here. And on each move, it was sort of a professional move, because I think in academia, you know, first, he had to do a post doctorate after his PhD, particularly in science, where you just build up more body of work. And then after that, he got his assistant professorship. I got my law degree while he was doing his postdoc, and so then, you know, I moved, you know, but sometimes we were out of sync, sometimes I follow them a couple of months later, right. And then, because you just have to follow where the jobs are, as you’re doing your professional career. So we went up and down the East Coast of the US. And then he went to England, because that was a full professorship and an endowed chair. And then after that, because he’s good with people skills, he ran his own lab, people started coming after him for, for the management level and for administration in the university. And so that’s how we came back to the States and went to Atlanta. But, you know, I think this is very similar for everybody, you know, our parents’ generation and your parents’ generation, that we’re sort of continuing that. You had to sort of follow the economic opportunity. When I started off in life, I thought I’d pretty much live and die in Montreal. But it’s been very interesting. And I call myself a cross pollinator now. Because if I see something here, and I go into a new situation, say, did you know… have you ever tried it this way? They do it this way over there? And it’s actually worked quite well. And we might try it. So I sort of do that. That’s my role that I’ve adopted for myself.
ISA: So what was your involvement with Asian American community work prior to coming to Vancouver?
WENDY: So I was active, I think through my father’s example, you know, I became active in the McGill Chinese Students’ Society, and that was really about connecting to our cultural heritage. And so there were a lot of Hong Kong students, not so many from Taiwan or Mainland China at that time, because we’re talking the 80s. Okay, but a lot of people coming from Hong Kong. And so we would do, you know, cultural shows and, and that was sort of a really good way for me to sort of appreciate and have pride right in the culture that’s not European. And then afterwards, I explored medicine, science. And then I always like to argue with my father. So I went to law school. And actually, that is where I really learned advocacy for, you know, the Asian immigrant community in North America. I was part of a class… I went to Boston University Law School. And before me there were like maybe five Asians in the whole school of about 400 law students. My year was a big entering class of 30. And suddenly it was sort of like, oh, maybe law is an okay thing. Maybe we don’t have to do just math and science and medicine and engineering, right? So it was suddenly like, because there’s a bigger second generation where we’re fluent, we’ve grown up in North America, we felt comfortable doing this. And that’s where I got involved with the Asian American law students. There were meetings of the National Asian American Law Students Association. And it was really very interesting, because that taught at a time when we had these conferences, some people came to speak about the work on the redress, the Japanese American Redress. I have mentors, you know, who I worked with later, who worked on that, you know, as they were young lawyers. And then there was also I remember meeting Fred Korematsu, and he’s one of these leading cases, challenging the constitutionality of the internment in the US. And he came to speak to us students, and it was just this connection with history, you know, and it was lovely to, to get that. He told us how he was just a young guy, and he did not want to go to the internment camps, because he had a white girlfriend, and he stayed in Seattle. He challenged it because of his personal circumstances. But then he had the courage and convictions to step it out. And, you know, later on, it’s only in the last 10 years that they’ve actually overturned his conviction, right? On the books, right.
And I remember the movie came out when I was right in the middle of law school. Who Killed Vincent Chin. Right. And that was made by some Harvard students. And we showed it and we actually, at some point along the way, met the mother of Vincent Chin who came out, you know, in her broken English, we went to Hong Kong, it was her only son, very sad. That was the one where the Chinese American was going out for his bachelor party. And then there were two unemployed, white Detroit auto workers. A man and his son in law, who just were so mad, and then they picked a fight. And then they went after him with a baseball bat, and, you know, killed him the day before his wedding. And so these sorts of things were very impactful, you know, because, I grew up in sort of sheltered, you know, Quebec, we have Anglophone and Francophone issues, but we didn’t have this actual straight up violence, right. And that really energized me. So I always stayed active with the Asian American Lawyers Association, I was on the board of the National Asian American Bar Association. And I’ve kept track of these things. So I use my science, and I did patent law, but I was always interested in these issues. I did, you know, legal services, you know, I helped with a Chinese Vietnamese immigrant to help her get divorced, you know, because I had mentors who had started out like an Asian outreach project in Boston. When you have those people who step out and make a difference in a community, it energizes you and I sort of felt even if I have to make money to pay off my law school dues, I would still engage in help.
There was one year where I was really immersed in this, I actually went and did a legal internship, a legal fellowship at the National Asian Pacific American Legal Consortium, called NAPALC for short. It then became what is now known as AAJC Advancing Equity. So that’s the Asian American Justice Center in DC. All right. It had just been started a few years before, probably around 1994,95, I joined 95, 96. And the person I worked for Karen Narasaki, she was very influential. She had been also at a big law firm before, and then was not happy. She’d gone to Yale Law School. She became the advocate for the Japanese American Citizens League. So she had been active with the Redress movement. And she was a representative advocate for that community in DC. And then she took on the leadership of this after someone, an academic person, really started this consortium. The consortium was really an effort for three centers, there was an Asian American, ALDEF, Asian American Legal Defense and Education Fund based in New York City. And then there was an Asian Law Caucus based in San Francisco. And then there is the Asian Pacific American Legal Center based in LA, but they’re saying we’re working regionally. But a lot of things that are being decided, or where they could get funding is in DC. And so that’s why they created this office so that there would be a voice. And so I came in, in the early years, I had another friend who had been there and I worked actually on affirmative action issues, that was the year because that time was the time when there was the California Civil Rights Initiative and the era where they’re trying to attack all these affirmative actions, trying to get people of color into the universities, right. And of course, they use the new immigrants, the new Asian immigrants, in particularly California, they use this as a wedge issue, tried to divide the community. Because new immigrants don’t understand the history from before. And we probably see that a little bit in Canada too, right? They were saying, Well, you know, you just have to do well, and that’s fine. It’s just marks. But it’s not that because it’s what sort of school system did, you know, you grow up in and who gets to UBC or who gets to any university. It’s not good, if it’s only just marks, if it’s only all, you know, a certain type of person, right. And so that’s, that was really for me a training ground. Because, you know, I sort of came from an immigrant and a sort of science background, you sort of say, it’s, it looks attractive to say it’s a meritocracy, but then you realize it isn’t.
I was learning at what has become the Asian American Justice Center and advancing equity. You know, the importance of fighting back against the narratives that are often given from a very sort of white centric view. They say, Oh, these are the rules, you just have to follow the rules. But who set the rules in the first place? Right. And so I think, learning all these things from the Asian American context, where they really had to fight a lot, because, of course, they had the, you know, segregation was in the race, and that actually been applied to Asians somewhat, you know, we don’t hear about it as much. But, you know, being conscious of that era that you’re the honorary white, right, and that’s how the Asian American, and here Asian Canadian community, is sort of used as a weapon against other minorities that have had different experiences. But we are really human under all this right? Or, you know, if we want to say we’re, we’re actually even 98%, our DNA is similar to chimps. So how can we say that, you know, one group of humans is better than the other? Right? And so it’s really about, you know, how do you balance and make sure that the system is conducive to or is open, so that students and whoever, you know… Okay, in the setting of schools, you know, how can you make the academic institution more responsive, and really do its mission of educating the public, right? This should not be a reward system, it should really be, you know, a communal investment in our future in our younger generation. So how can we do it in such a way as to maximize the potential, for everyone? And so I think you’re in an era post that, where it’s beginning to open up, it’s still not perfect? Because, you know, it’s difficult. There’s always some backsliding, some people say, Well, why isn’t it like the way it used to be? And so they see the campus, they see that it’s, you know, so many Asians there, you know, and they assume they’re foreign students. They’re saying, Why are we letting in so many foreign students? I think that’s when you see that racism is still at play. Right? There’s assumptions we’re foreign. Okay. I look foreign, maybe, yeah, but I’m second generation, you know, my parents were educated in Canada, not just myself. So, and then, you know, Henry Yu and other people, they have like, fourth, fifth generations, right? Who built you know, the fishing and the agricultural industries here in the West Coast. It wasn’t European Americans, they only came later, because of course, Trans Pacific migration was the head of it. So they brought technology here, right. And that’s where I think it’s important for us to tell our stories, right.
And for me, it is definitely that we need to tell more stories of the Asian Canadian population here. But it’s just as important for us to share with other communities. We are all immigrants here, except for our Indigenous hosts who’ve been here 9, 1000 years. You know, it’s shameful, our history, we need to learn with certainly as new immigrants, we need to learn this history. Otherwise, we get sucked into that whole meritocracy argument. And that it does not advance us as a country, right? I think, you know, Canada is one of these liberal democracies. And we’ve had gotten a lot of positive feedback for that when we took in Syrians I remember, when I came here, we came to UBC in 2016, they just opened up and taken a bunch of Syrian refugees. We’re trying to open the gates to the Afghanistani, we could do better on that. We’re opening our doors to Ukrainians. That’s how this country has been built, you know. And we have to take the lessons from our Indigenous hosts where they welcomed, they said, sure, there’s plenty of space, we can be mutually respectful, respect how we use this land, but make space for each other, there’s plenty, we just have to learn how to share. Right. And so I think that for me, it has been the seminal reason for my wanting to engage, you know, I saw that Asian Canadian Asian Migration Studies here is fairly young. I mean, at the first year, I was here, Chris Lee came to talk to me and said, you know, you’d like this course, and I took Al Yoshizawa’s course, you know, on the filmmaking, that’s wonderful, he is a great mentor for students to teach students how to talk to the older generation, and how to get these migration stories and fill in all the missing gaps in our history. And from there, we then can turn around to talk to other people, the newest immigrants, you know, and that’s what I’ve been doing a little bit with the Museum of Migration Society piece, you know, where we are trying to get a lot of stories in from the newest immigrants from the last 50 years. Because it’s not, it’s a living country, history is not static, it keeps evolving. And it’s up to us really to make sure that we give the input into this. So really, that’s sort of my migration history into going from science into, you know, advocacy, social justice history. It’s fascinating, interesting, it’s compelling.
OLIVIA: Looking back at your time at UBC, what was your favorite thing that you were a part of as university ambassador,
WENDY: I have to say it is the Asian Canadian Asian Migration Studies. Since I got involved first and foremost, from that, you know, it’s a little bit too bad that we had the COVID pandemic, because a lot of the community building is best done in person. And there have been so many wonderful events that ACAM has done. A very special one is that we hosted the ACAM fifth anniversary, now with the 10th anniversary. And then there was also that sort of anniversary again of the Day of Justice, where they commemorated how they had given the honorary degrees of justice to the Japanese Canadian students who had been expelled. I think there were like 76, who had been expelled, right. And they did a Degree of Justice, what 2012, and so when we were here, we got to do the sort of that, you know, anniversary celebration. And there was actually one of the students. I’m not sure if he’s alive still, he might still be, he lives in Tapestry Village, right in the retirement community here. So he could actually come here, right, along with Mary and Tosh Kitagawa, who work tirelessly to get those stories and to identify the students. I mean, these are so moving when you see young people working on them. And you see also, the older people who had to go through these difficulties, and then they had to fight for rights. And those rights were what made the system more open to your generation. Right. So I love these events where, you know, you pull together the different generations, you know, and you get to see things working together.
ISA: Let’s talk about your time as the president of the Pacific Canada Heritage Center, can you tell us a bit more about what the PCHC does and your experience with the organization?
WENDY: So the other part of that it’s, it’s also Museum of Migration. So MoM or something. I have stepped in there. It’s at an inflection point. It’s 11 years old now. We have an end goal to have a physical Museum of Migration. Because we do think it’s important to have that sort of visibility on the west coast. There is nothing here. What we have is Pier 21, which is the Museum of Immigration in Halifax. I’ve been there, it’s good. It’s a little static. I mean, the space shows the Pier 21, right, where people stepped off the boats from across the Atlantic to enter and start Canada. It’s an important story. But it’s only half the story, right? And so as an afterthought, because people were a little bit upset that it didn’t tell enough of the stories of the rest of Canada and Trans Pacific migration, they started this society Pacific Canada Heritage Centre-Museum of Migration, PCHC for short. And because of their advocacy, they did get some videos in of some west coast and early immigrants, like Winnie Cheung and Wallace Chung, whose Chung collection is here, and some other people from the west coast and I think it’s up on their website. But if you walk into a physical space, it doesn’t really reflect it right? So we need something here. Because if you look in the US, you’ve got Ellis Island, but you also have Angel Island. So on both coasts, they have places where they celebrate the arrival of immigrants and document their struggles. And you know, the difficulties and, you know, even particularly in the west coast, Angel Island, right? The difficulties for Asian immigrants, right? Who were detained for a long time, right. So we need that sort of place to have that story. Now, we’re not stuck on having a building right now, I think it’s more important that we need to make the case for it. And that’s why we have really focused in during my presidency, using technology to record the stories. I mean, when many of our people come out of ACAM, UBC, you know, Henry has shared his ability, he’s a co-founding member of that, and he’s back on our board. And he’s helped us. And other ACAM students have helped us to teach our members and other people how to just collect the stories, it doesn’t have to be perfect. It doesn’t have to be a chronology. It’s just something that’s meaningful, that documents some part of your life here in Canada as an immigrant, or your or your parents or use this opportunity to talk to your aging grandparents, right. That’s what you’re doing an ACAM.
And that’s what we’re trying to do here, but amongst different communities. And we’re using the YouTube channel to post some of these stories. You know, they’re variable quality. At the first part, it was with Winnie, she did a lot of this food and history, food and culture that she did with international students here at UBC. And she sort of brought that modus operandi over to PCHC. And it is, it is a really good way when you use the food as an entry point, to talk to people. Everybody’s got to eat. And everybody has sort of fond memories of their food, of their culture’s food, right? It doesn’t stop there. But it’s a good entryway. So a lot of in the beginning years, I think they have a lot more events. And then of course, COVID, couldn’t so much. So we got creative. We tried to have webinars, we tried to have discussions. And now as we’re able to come back together, you know, we had a hybrid last year banquet of stories in the past, it was always fully in person never completely recorded. I think they had a couple of like, overviews done by ACAM students. So this time, we’ve recorded a whole thing. We’ve put everything on the YouTube, but we’re also coming back and trying to do you know, more meaningful, little vignettes of it. But that allowed actually hundreds of people from across the country to participate or to listen in after the fact to the stories. We had storytellers, from Syria, from Sudan, from Afghanistan, and from other places to tell about their experiences as refugees coming to Canada. And that sort of thing is important. So we can continue that we’ve gotten some grants to continue more of the story collection to share it. This year, as part of the we got a Fairs and Festival Emergency Recovery Act. So partly to stimulate economy. But this is how, you know, we are adept. And we are trying to use whatever funds are available to keep bringing for the mission, we actually had a story fest out in the Italian cultural center and again, brought people from different communities together to share the stories. But then we also did a road trip and went out to Paldi. And I think we met up with some of the ACAM students out there. Paldi being the one of the first really multicultural cities in Vancouver, it was a South Asian owned lumber mill. And we met somebody who was the daughter in law, who was actually I think, Caucasian Canadian, but married to you know, the son of South Asian descent, so very much representing how we are melding and have a mosaic of different communities living together. And she was saying, it was a lovely community, because everybody felt free and they respected each other. And, you know, of course, it died because the lumber town died, but it was important for us as members to see that story and then to go to Victoria and see, you know, the influence of all many different communities there. So this is how we’re using creative means and different, you know, virtual and meeting in persons and making the case and using technology to record these stories and then down the road. You know, we do hope to have a Museum of Migration physically, maybe we’ll share space because, you know, in the past year or two years, we’ve got the Chinese Canadian Museum coming online, and then we’ve had the Chinese Chinatown Storytelling Center. That was an effort by Carol Lee and some friends just to revitalize Chinatown. So there’s a lot of buildings space that might be come available where we could share. Yes, it’s important to tell the stories of the Chinese Canadian community, but what about how they intersected with others. And so that’s really our mission is to make sure, you know, we represent the stories and make sure we get into the curriculum, try to work out with students and teachers in schools to make sure that they’re aware of these resources.
OLIVIA: Yeah, just jumping off your last point. What have you learned about how to build relationships across different Asian Canadian and non Asian communities? Why is that important? And what are the challenges?
WENDY: So I think the fundamental way of engaging is if you’re willing to listen, right, and you have to go, you know, in a spirit of respect, and curiosity, and open mindedness. And I think, Santa and I were of Japanese and Chinese culture, that was not sort of easy at the first place. My mother, my grandmother was in, you know, China, my mother remembers as a kid, you know, being in World War Two, when the Japanese, you know, had invaded China. So they were not predisposed to like my bringing back home a Japanese, even if it’s the Japanese Canadian boyfriend. Right. But I think he showed respect for them. And, in turn, when I’ve dealt with friends, I think I’d also helped I grew up in Montreal in the Anglophone community, because in Montreal, there’s only 20% of the population are Anglophone or allophone, really meaning from other countries of language altogether. And then 80% of francophone.
So I had a lot of friends growing up of all different cultures, you know, African American to you know, Black Canadian, Greek, Dutch, Korean, Chinese, all of that. So we hung together, and we really enjoyed each other as people, right. And then, when I met others, particularly in the States, I think we had the commonality that we’re all immigrants, and of course, Asian cultures, yes, there are nuances, there have been wars. I mean, that’s a human failing, of course. But that doesn’t necessarily mean that that whole group of people, you know, are not worth knowing. And when you trade stories, you get to understand where your commonalities are, but then you can also see how, you know, a particular region or particular history has influenced, you know, the way they think, or the way they may carry out. When a particular culture might do in that setting, you know, in Korea, or in Hong Kong, or in China, you know, or in India, you know, there are multiple languages and multiple communities, right? It’s really just, it’s partly geographic, right? It’s your comfort zone, you grew up and it becomes bigger, you know, if there’s enough of an institution, a central government, then yeah, maybe you can sort of expand that particular doing things across a greater geographic region, right. But at heart, we are people and I think if we come in that, then we can be willing to learn.
I’ve been lucky to travel, I spent some time living in Hong Kong, I spent two months in Japan with Santa when he did, the only time he did a sabbatical, you know, and I made my way around, tried to learn Japanese, but… And you realize that, yes, people will live slightly differently. But it’s because of the circumstances, the basic principles, the same right, of wanting people to prosper and family’s important and that, you know, you, you protect yourself, but you’re also trying to be polite and generous to other people. But sometimes the boundaries are, are, are, are more defined, you know, in Japan or in England, because you’re seeing they’re island nations. And so there’s not a lot of space, so you just, like, want to be a little bit more polite, but North America has a lot of space, so we’re much more open, right? And we say what we feel and we’re not talking, you know, and it’s partly just the geography of how you’re going up. So I think if you respect that, and you listen, and you ask, without having any judgment in your voice, it’s difficult sometimes you, you know, we’re human beings, we synthesize things, right. And we come and we sort of make assumptions because that’s how we sort of have to operate to make a decision, right? And so you’re gonna have that baggage, but you can understand that that’s based on a limited set of facts. And you may show your bias, but I know this comes because I’ve grown up in this setting, you know, what’s it been like for you? Or, you know, is this because why is that, and I’ve noticed this or you know, and you can have an interesting conversation, just say, just say, Oh, at heart, it’s the same, some of it is different, but then you, when you realize how it came to be, then it’s like, it doesn’t really matter, right? It has value, it may not hold, that the way of doing things, that may not hold always in a different setting, you know, but it had value, and it met the purpose at the time. And some, there’s some parts of the way it was doing, you know, like for Asian immigrants, some of it is still useful now here, you know, in terms of that, the community and the family, extended family. And, you know, it may not be that we want to be exactly, of course, we never want to be exactly like our parents. But if we understand it, then we can be more forgiving and more respectful. And then we can enter and have other people be interested in us and more forgiving, and more, you know, willing to hear what we have to say.
ISA: So how can organizations like PCHC engage more leaders and participants and stakeholders in community work?
WENDY: So I think it’s a challenge, it’s a challenge for many organizations. So you do I think have to have all ages at the table. Because you do have people who are maybe newly retired and they have time, and they have experience, right, and they can do some of the mentoring. And, you know, I think we’re working well, because we are very blessed with some semi-retired older people in their 50s, 60s, 70s, who are willing to engage and give their time. And then we try to draw on students. So we’ve had some students from ACAM, we’ve had some students from the Community Engagement Center for Learning. And they love having the ear of, you know, generous, older mentors who take them out to lunch, or show them a different community, you know, and give them time and advice. And I think that is much more successful, because then we can take the best of what everybody has to offer and synthesize it together, right. At the same time, you need to make sure you have a diverse board, and you have to respect what people’s time commitments are, but also people’s skill sets and comfort levels. And if you can see what they have to bring, and employ and give them a little bit of autonomy, to explore that, that it doesn’t have to be just a certain way, I think it’s stronger for the organization, in the long term, because you’re never going to be able to have one person, that means that organization is not growing, right? You know, and I think because we are not afraid to ask, and that’s the thing is you have to ask. But you can also be willing to have rejection, you know, and not be hurt by it. It’s just, you can’t take anything personally, you know, you try. And if it doesn’t work, then you go on to the next person, you know, or if that person shows different skill sets, didn’t work out, but has these wonderful, then it’s great, you know, then you let that person go with their passion. But then you can find out and say, Okay, what gaps do you need, and let’s talk to people and keep doing it. But you do need to have that investment of time to listen and to have that, you know, willing to tell your mission, you know, not just do but it’s hard. It’s hard work, you know, and it’s taken a lot of pain and sweat and took a lot of work for a couple of people who were willing to stick with it. Because in the early years, you sort of have to rely on the first few people for whom it’s really a passion, right? And they devote and it’s amazing, you know, and that’s why I’m engaged with it, because I see the early people what they’ve done, and I’m like, It’s too important to let this die, you know, and even as we move towards the University of Michigan, I’m sort of like I’m gonna just take a little time. I’ll commute back and forth and not move right away because I want to make sure that we bring it ready to next sage. We’ve got a new exhibition coming in next spring Southeast Asian refugees, which again, it’s brought out of University of Winnipeg, but somebody who heard of our reputation through the museum pier, actually Pier 21 Museum of Immigration, they knew that we were growing and they because of the past work of people, they said, Do you want to be part of this and help to bring it to BC? And so this is you know, but serendipity. It’s a bit work, but it’s respecting what people have done in the past and trying to honor it by pushing it forward.
OLIVIA: what is the role of organizations like PCHC in broader movements for racial justice and reconciliation?
WENDY: So it might not be obvious that the first and I think this is something that came to us as we worked in the last two or three years, you know, of course, it’s important, it’s all stories, because we think we know history should be accurate. But beyond that, we realize actually, the reason, why do we do it, is about, equity, racial equity. And representation means that we have a system, then that’s responsive to everybody. And so I think, if we do our job, right, and we make sure we keep telling stories of other people, and we listen to the stories, and we say, we need to share and, you know, early stages, of course, we focused a little bit more on Chinese, because those sort of people who had time and who were willing to commit, but we’re trying to diversify that. And it’s really important. So we work a lot really hard to try to identify people in different communities and bring some onto the board because it’s not helpful if you have only certain community represented at the table, even if they’re well meaning, right. It’s just because we have limited knowledge, right. And so we and ways of thinking. And so I think what this organization does, is it mirrors how we need to work together. So that that type of principle, and that those stories, and those, you know, commitments to equity, are reflected and taken into other organizations, into government. And if we do our job training, and mentoring and encouraging young people to get involved, we can say you need a voice, we need to hear your voice. And for what it’s worth, this is what we’ve experienced, we, you know, take some of this advice, but you’re gonna find new ways of doing it. But you know, we can be encouraging. We can be mentoring, but we’re not like, okay, you know, you’re a tabula rasa, blank slate, and we’re going to make you this way. No, it’s just you’re evolving, you know, we want to evolve with you. And I think that’s the thing is that intergenerational interaction, you know, that we value a set of core, we tried to do that. And that’s what needs to be done, I think, at every level of society, and government.
ISA: And you’ve been involved in Asian American and Canadian community work for quite some time, how have you seen the conversations shift, especially in recent years with COVID-19, and the rise of anti Asian racism?
WENDY: So the conversations on Asian, Canadian Asian American issues are quite similar. And I would say that it’s now going beyond the actual history of how those played out in each country. And because we have people going back and forth across the border, and as I mentioned before, you know, we have, I have had Asian American friends who came in, like what we do in supporting what we’re doing in Asian Canadian Studies here. It’s that we realize we have to talk together because it’s the same route of, you know, if the system is built, you know, with a bias towards a particular way of thinking and sort of, you know, Eurocentric, even if well, meaning Eurocentric, but it still is, and so not all the voices are at the table, we need to recognize that. And then also not assume that we have exactly the same issues north and south of the border. You know, it is the same, you know, problem of, you know, othering but it may play a little differently and so we do have to have that conversation and understand but also understand that, you know, certain solutions that have come up, come up in the in the American context will not work exactly the same way for the Canadian context, you know, because the the history is still is involved different, but you can look and say what has worked well and the other country and say, Well, why don’t we try some of that, you know, and like, for instance, what was shocking to me, was when I came back and realized there was no data collection, no race specific,, it’s just gender. And, you know, under the law, sort of guise of privacy, oh, there’s not a problem. But it’s actually, that’s how it worked. And I’m not saying it’s going to work exactly the same way. But because there was census data, and because there was in the American system, and you could see, you know, ethnic specific, or, you know, race specific, you could actually show that there was disparate impact, right. Tat was sort of the biggest, you know, way of saying, if you look at the statistics, and you see disparate impact, you know, of existing policies, existing institutions, is to signal to us, there’s something’s wrong here. If the system was perfect, completely equal, why do we have the disparate impact that, so that’s actually useful to say, Now, the solution to that may not be exactly the same, you know, you don’t want to have quota systems and, you know, us try that, and then they’ve, you know, done away with it, because, of course, you can’t do quotas, you know, you’ve got to have that sort of interplay between the individual, you know, solution, and the individuals that are in that situation that meet, but also, you know, looking systemically sort of like what are the barriers and can we lower them and, you know, because the end goal is that we want to educate as many people, you know, as we can in different systems, and then we make sure that whatever educational institutions we have or government entities are socially, you know, are accountable, reflective, responsive, and fully channeling and harnessing all the talents of, you know, everybody living in Canada in the US.
OLIVIA: How can institutions, like universities and nonprofits, better respond to calls for representation and diversity?
WENDY: How can we respond? So I think nonprofits and educational institutions, they can, I think, respond in two ways to the calls for better representation. On the one hand, I think, you know, if they have a fairly diverse student population, they can certainly engage them, if they have a diverse faculty staff, they can identify people who can step up into, you know, maybe positions of power or representation, whether it’s at the government, or whether the advisory councils, I think we can certainly be champions for that. But also, the other part of it is that, regardless of the diversity of the institution, I think we can, we actually do have the responsibility of making sure that we are teaching and representing multiple viewpoints, you know, maybe not necessarily in one course. But overall in the course offerings, and also making sure that our faculty are diverse. Actually diversity everywhere, but particularly, you know, if we’ve got people teaching, we need to make sure that we are representing different viewpoints in the teaching, right? Because how one sees history, or sees language or sociology, or is going to be affected by the culture in which they grew up in right. Even science I would say, yes, it seems deceptively, that it’s, you know, objective criteria. But actually, it’s also how do you choose? What criteria to look at? How do you choose which experiment, you know, and how, you know, particularly healthcare, who’s the test subject, you know, have we had diversity, have we tested. Because you actually see that there is some, you know, differences amongst population in terms of sensitivity, you know, to certain drugs and things like that, you know, an interplay between, you know, or just figuring out treatment modalities, you know, what will work or not work. So, it’s so important, you know, where we, at the educational institution, we’re, and we’re knowledge, you know, economy here. And so we gotta make sure that that knowledge is, you know, comprehensive, and if we do not have all the voices at the table, and looking and experimenting, and teaching or transmitting, then, you know, we are not selling a fully working product. It’s got gaps. So I think that’s the biggest thing, the challenge is to make sure that the universities are trying to meet the gaps. And, you know, being champions, as the graduates go out, but also making sure that, you know, we keep ourselves honest and representative of the wider society.
ISA: Where do you see the future of Asian Canadian community work at the University going?
WENDY: So I think the importance of ACAM, and other committees around the university that are, and departments that are there, invested in community engagement, have to make sure that, again, our house is in order, in that we are actively working on any barriers for internal advancement or representation, you know, glass ceiling issue or bamboo ceiling issues, right. But we’re also sympathetic to other communities, and that as we are working in the community, that we are trying to be a little more intentional, not just seat of your pants, you know, sometimes you have to, that’s just the way it is. And it’s, you know, it’s great that people do it, because, you know, it’s better than not having the work done. But then I think the case needs to be made, it’s gone there a little bit, because now we have the Center for Asian community research and engagement, ACRE, that basically formalizes the importance of having very intentional community engagement work, you know, with Asian Canadian communities. And also with people, you know, of those backgrounds at the university, I think the future will be that there is maybe more support from central administration, because I think there has been a need and understanding and recognition. I mean, partly because Santa has been here, but it’s not just him, it’s, you know, all these little building blocks have come in the fact that there was an Asian Canadian community engagement ad hoc committee from the beginning. And then, you know, then, because of the pandemic, and realizing, oh, there’s still a lot of racism out there and assumption, that, you know, UBC took the lead on doing the National Forum on Asian Canadian, first to ever happen, you know, and virtually made it possible for everybody to participate. But that was the sort of thing that I realized was missing. So I think it’s really important for the universities then, as a public institution, to offer up some of their public resources. Right? It’s from the taxpayer, taxpayers at all of us. And so it’s important that, you know,, we have these resources devoted to empower IBPOC communities to where they’ve been not at a table, you know, and lovely, it will be lovely, when we’re at the day where it’s all equal. That’s the end goal, is that we’re all valued, all making contributions. And the rules are not just been set by white men, you know, from a certain 100 years ago, right? Because, objectively, those are the rules, but who put them in? And why were they in? are they achieving our objective? What are our objectives? Why are we existing? What do we want to achieve? You know, so we just have to make sure that we’re constantly, you know, evolving. And I think that’s the importance of the community engagement from the Asian Canadian and other communities of color, that there is feedback to say, Hey, this is the mission, these are the purposes, this is what needs to be done to fully realize that mission that was, you know, put into place 100 something years ago.
ISA: That’s the end of the questions we have, is there anything you feel like we might have missed that you really want to talk about?
WENDY: well, I’d like to ask you, so. But maybe you can’t. You’re not allowed to. Okay,you know, I would actually think that we should have a podcast, where we talk to students who come through, you know, maybe, as you’re graduating and say, you know, reflecting back, you know, has the ACAM curriculum, have the ACAM activities, you know, made a difference? Have they made a difference? You know, do you think they’ve done their job? Do you think they could do things better? I mean, I think those are conversations that we need to have not just from those who have gone before like back in our day we didn’t have this and now, you know, this is why we did it and isn’t a great what we’re doing. And like Yeah, but maybe the way we’re doing things could be better. So I think every once in a while it’s good to have this sort of you know, self check and sort of saying okay, have we met you know, customer satisfaction right? If there is that sense in the States, and I think it’s actually important, it’s not that it’s, it’s only about customer satisfaction. But you know, if you’re putting out there because you want to make that impact you got to check is that impact going where you want it to. Has it made that impact? And the only way you’re going to do that is if we listen back to you know, those who’ve come through the program and sort of say, yeah, really, you know. I think most of the time, they’ll say, oh, it’s been fantastic and life changing and, you know, empowering you know, that’s what we hope and if it’s, if enough people are saying that then I think you know, you can be happy that you know this program is going the way it is and as doing the right things and making a positive impact in the community, you know, UBC, Vancouver, BC, the world.
ISA: Well, thank you so much for joining us today.
WENDY: Thank you.
ISA: You just heard an interview with Wendy Yip, outgoing university ambassador and president of PCHC-MOM. You can find out more about her and her work in the links in the show notes.
OLIVIA: Thank you for listening to this episode which was made possible by the Chan Family Foundation’s generous support. If you have an idea for an episode of the ACAM podcast, we’d love to hear from you. Send us your ideas by emailing us at acam.program@ubc.ca. To be notified when the next podcast episode is released and to stay up to date on all things ACAM, please follow us on Twitter and Instagram at @UBCACAM and like us on Facebook at Asian Canadian and Asian Migration Studies UBC.