The Paper Trail

By Catherine Clement

The Paper Trail to the 1923 Chinese Exclusion Act explores a dark yet largely forgotten chapter in Canadian history. The unprecedented law, which targeted only the Chinese community, was in place for a quarter century and remains among the most tragic episodes in the country’s history. Yet this story, that left such profound effects on the individuals and families it touched, has been steeped in silence. Almost nothing about this period was shared by those who lived through it. Consequently, within a single generation, the trauma of exclusion was forgotten.
This is the first book to explore the human experience of exclusion as revealed through the stories of the lives it touched.
The stories in this book reveal haunting tales of tragedy, loss and despair as well as powerful examples of courage, perseverance, and resilience. They chronicle the lives of ordinary people caught in extraordinary times. Many stories are being shared publicly for the first time.
An act of collective remembrance and historical reckoning, this book presents an unflinching look at a monumental and shameful chapter in Canada’s origin story. The pages offer a reminder of how the wreckage wrought by discrimination and exclusion, can be ignored and yet still ripple through the generations.