LOST YEARS: A People's Struggle for Justice

LOST YEARS is an epic documentary touching upon 150 years of the Chinese diaspora in Canada, USA, New Zealand and Australia, covering four generations of racism as revealed through the journey and family story of Kenda Gee. Kenda, a Chinese Canadian, travels with his father to China to retrace the steps of his great-grandfather, exactly a century ago, and grandfather, who sailed to Canada in the summer of 1921. For thousands of Chinese immigrants that year, it was a journey of hope that turned into a nightmare when they were confronted with racism and the head tax, depriving them of their rights as citizens. Kenda’s journey takes him across Canada, tracing the experiences of those immigrants and their descendants and the long struggle for redress to right the wrongs of the past. The stories of Larry Kwong, the first hockey player of colour to break the barrier in the NHL, and Gim Wong, an RCAF Officer who fought to join Canada’s military in the Second World War, help document enormous obstacles that had to be overcome for Chinese to become citizens in their own country of birth. The genesis and continuing fight for redress by the Chinese Canadian community is depicted in the stories told by Normie Kwong, a Canadian sports icon and statesman, and May Chiu, a legal activist and Montreal mother who ran against former Canadian Prime Minister Paul Martin to advance the redress cause. The apology of the Canadian government in 2006 only opens new questions about what impact redress in Canada has on individuals and communities at home and abroad. To find answers, Kenda travels to the USA, New Zealand and Australia where racist immigration policies destroyed as many lives there as in Canada. He discovers that the fight for human rights knows no borders, that the spark struck by the fight for justice of Chinese Canadians has lit a flame that burns around the world.