Reunification and resilience: TMU alumni on their documentary “Exclusion”

May is Asian Heritage Month, recognizing the impact and stories of Asian communities in Canada. It is timely that two Toronto Metropolitan University (TMU) alumni are showcasing their new film that explores a painful chapter in the country’s history.

Exclusion: Beyond the Silence is a documentary executive produced by Craig Thompson, Journalism ’82, and Justin Poy, RTA School of Media ’93, about the Chinese Immigration Act. Also known as the Chinese Exclusion Act, it barred Chinese from immigrating to Canada from July 1, 1923 to 1947, and separated generations of families well after its repeal.  

“There were less than 50 people who came in during that time, and four of those people were actually my father, my aunt and my grandparents,” said Poy, speaking of his own personal connection to the story.

A hidden story that needed to be told

The idea for Exclusion came to Thompson in May 2020, when he saw a Globe and Mail obituary about a woman named Foon Hay Lum, who was 111 years old when she died from COVID-19. Lum had married her husband in China in 1923 when she was 18, but was separated from him for 35 years due to the Exclusion Act. In 2006, she was part of a contingent of Chinese Canadians who travelled to Ottawa to hear Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s apology for the government’s anti-Chinese legislation. 

A documentarian for more than 30 years, the Stratford, Ontario-based Thompson was struck by the hidden story that needed to be told. “We were going through COVID and there was a lot of anti-Asian racism going on in Canada, and I reached out to Foon Hay’s granddaughter Helen Lee and said we’d like to make a documentary on this.”

Finding synergy

Thompson contacted friend and theatre artist Keira Loughran to see if she would be interested in directing the documentary he’d begun to develop. “What I didn’t realize at the time was that Keira’s grandmother was Jean Lumb, the first Chinese Canadian to earn the Order of Canada, and who was intricately involved in the repeal of the Chinese Exclusion Act and reuniting Canadian families. And it was just this synergy that came together,” he said.

Thompson furthered those synergies by bringing in Poy, whose mother, The Honourable Dr. Vivienne Poy, is a retired Canadian senator who played a significant role in the founding of Asian Heritage Month in 2001. She and Poy’s father, Neville, were bestowed with honorary doctorates from TMU in 2022.

Exclusion follows Keira Loughran and Helen Lee as they travel across Canada and China in the footsteps of their grandmothers and the legacy these determined women left behind. Along the way, the granddaughters meet others impacted by the Chinese Exclusion Act and even find reconnection with long-lost relatives they had not known before.

A universal story

While Exclusion explores Chinese Canadian history, Thompson notes it is a story for all Canadians. “My family were refugees of the Irish famine in the 1850s,” said Thompson. “When they arrived in Toronto, there were signs saying ‘No Irish Allowed.’ So it’s a universal story about inclusion and our history of excluding people.”

Poy adds that Exclusion is also a cautionary tale. “All it would take is for the government to say, ‘We’re announcing a registry.’ It can happen to any community and it can happen at any time. The only way you can avoid repeating bad things from the past is by learning about them.”

Recognizing the importance of this story and to mark Asian Heritage Month, theatre chain Cineplex recently held showings of Exclusion in 31 cities across Canada — remarkable given how rare it is for movie theatres to screen Canadian films, let alone documentaries. 

University as career launchpad

Upon graduating from TMU’s journalism program in 1982, Thompson worked at the Ottawa Citizen and later became the London, U.K. correspondent for CBC Radio and national news correspondent for CTV National News, before establishing his company, Ballinran Entertainment, in 1995. “A lot of the credit for my success is the way the journalism program was structured, because unlike other universities at the time, it was taught by journalists in the field. It was a very practical program and a great launching pad.” 

Poy, who graduated from the RTA School of Media, agrees. “RTA was a program that I had never even seen,” he said. “The way projects were done, it was almost like you were running a small business each time.” In the same year that he graduated — 1993 — he founded his company, The Justin Poy Agency Inc., which has since been at the forefront of advertising and marketing campaigns that reflect the cultural nuances of Canada’s diverse communities.  

Regardless of medium, Thompson and Poy are storytellers, and through determination and perseverance, they are proud to be able to share Exclusion’s intergenerational story with a wide audience.

“It was a heavy lift getting this film onto the screens,” said Thompson. “I’m overjoyed that people think it’s a great film because it’s the toughest film I’ve ever had to make.”