Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
cases of David Lam, appointed Lieutenant Governor of British Columbia
from 1988 to 1995, and Adrienne Clarkson, Governor General of Canada
from 1999 to 2005, represent perhaps the most complete inclusion of first
generation Chinese-Canadians. David Lam achieved his status through
multicultural community development and generous philanthropy, dispers-
ing the fortune he accrued from real estate. From these high ranks, citizens
have a capacity to shape civil society itself and David Lam has been active
in encouraging both civic participation as a bridge between immigrants and
the Canadian-born, and also philanthropy as a fundamental sign of immi-
grant commitment and belonging. He has successfully encouraged other
wealthy ethnic Chinese immigrants to join him in philanthropic efforts that
have bestowed gifts on universities, hospitals and religious institutions. The
northwest corner of the campus of the University of British Columbia, for
example, now includes the David Lam Management Research Library, the
Choi Building (Asian Studies), the Sing Tao Building (School of Journalism),
the Liu Institute for Global Issues, and the Chan Centre for the Performing
Arts - all of them built in the past 15 years.
24
Such honorific status locates the immigrant squarely within the bounds
of the Canadian nation state, their source of economic, social and cultural
capital. Not all immigrants are willing to accept such national incorporation
and seek flexibility of movement and association. However, we have seen in
this chapter that mobility can be costly in family life; social and emotional
bonds stretched across space can snap. At the very least family separation
commonly entails some suffering and the weakening of lines of social con-
trol. Moreover, it is not just the absence of physical contact that disorients
family harmony. Because life across the transnational social field requires
engaging geographical difference, not a surface of uniformity, location at
one side or the other of the Pacific Ocean introduces variable spatial effects
upon family members. As men are socialized deeper into the economic and
cultural worlds of East Asia and women and children are drawn into the
institutional and social worlds of Canada, family members are also drawn
apart from each other. Distance can corrode the bonds of even the Chinese
business family; wealth cannot always bridge the costs of separation.
