Wednesday, May 31, 2006

Interesting Tidbit

I am (preliminary) researching how globalization has affected Chinese immigration to Canada since the 1970s for my POL 3546 class (Canadian Foreign Policy, mais en francais). Anyway, I took a few books out today from the library and I'm currently skimming through them to find any keywords or things that could help me pinpoint a good place to start. Anyway, I was skimming through one of the books, called Chinatown: An Illustrated History of the Chinese Communities of Victoria, Vancouver, Calgary, Winnipeg, Toronto, Ottawa, Montreal and Halifax by Paul Yee. So I'm reading this part about Ottawa, and then this phrase appears:

"Hong Kong Chinese established the Ottawa Chinese Alliance Church in 1973..." and "From 1990 on, the Ottawa Chinese Alliance Church became the largest Chinese religious organization, and it opened three more churches." What?! That's like so cool. Well, I find it really interesting that this book has a part devoted to the creation of religious organizations and churches to describe how most of the immigrants became integrated with Canadian society and how they have help people settle into life in Canada. I just find that really interesting.......Looks like that's how OCAC gets its publicity! LOL.

I haven't read through the section about Toronto. I wonder if they mention the establishment of Toronto Chinese Baptist Church, the mother church of my home church, Scarborough Chinese Baptist Church. If it does, it would be uber cool. UBER COOL.

3 comments:

the UNwise said...

Naw, OCAC is cooler. And we're also probably the more interesting thing to talk about in Ottawa...I mean, there's just so much more in Toronto right? ;)

The history is kinda wonky, but close enough I suppose. We separated to Kanata Chinese Alliance Church (now Emannuel Alliance Church), Ottawa Agape CAC, and Ottawa Mandarin AC. But I think EAC was gone in the 80s? Unless if there's a Church that I forgot about...hehehe...

Anonymous said...

You went to scarborough baptist, so you might know Jonathan Sum??? Anyhow, yeah interesting stuff indeed.

lydia said...

Jonathan Sum doesn't go to SCBC. At least not in the time that I've been there (since like 1990!). The only Jonathan I know that goes to SCBC and is in university/post-secondary has the last name Chan.

Maybe he's the occassional attendee that doesn't go to Sunday School or to fellowship. But anyhoo...even with our church having a membership of over 1,000, the university/post-secondary group knows who is who because we've grown up together in the church and we have a network of contacts.

Sorry to burst your bubble there Al... there's also Scarborough Chinese Alliance, which is quite large as well, but not as big as SCBC!