If Charlie Quan had borrowed C$500 (HK$2,898) in 1923, and invested it at 10 per cent per annum, he would be a millionaire today, and his biggest worry would be how to divide the money among his four children, six grandchildren, and six great-grandchildren. But he was not thinking about investments back then. At the age of 15, a skinny boy with big dreams, he needed the money to pay for the right to come and work in Canada. He was desperate to get out of Guangzhou, where people were starving. So he borrowed the money from his uncles, booked a passage, and became a Canadian. Well, not quite a Canadian. The 'head tax' levied only on Chinese immigrants at the time granted them a kind of second-class citizenship. They could not vote, there were restrictions on property ownership, and wages were so low that it often took 10 years or more for them to save enough to repay the debt. But that was okay. Canada, it was felt, would make it up to them somehow, so between 1885 and 1923, more than 82,000 Chinese paid the racist tax. All but a handful are now dead. But Charlie Quan is still very much alive. And he wants his money back. 'It's been a good life in Canada,' the 97-year-old says from his Vancouver home. 'The only thing that I want to see is the government pay back the money they took from me.' A reasonable request, you might think. A recent United Nations draft report called on Ottawa to compensate Chinese and black immigrants for discrimination their ancestors suffered. But Canada's Minister of State for Multiculturalism, Jean Augustine, says the government is not in the habit of redressing history with cash payments. That is not entirely true, however. In 1988, the federal government paid C$291 million to the families of Japanese-Canadians who were interned during the second world war. But that, it seems, was an exception. Complicating Mr Quan's case is the fact that even though there are so few left, many Chinese-Canadians feel that personal compensation is a bad idea. Howard Joe, an 82-year-old engineer in Ontario, says his father paid C$4,500 to bring nine family members over from China. And they all did well in a 'generous Canadian society', he wrote in an article for The Toronto Star. 'We have no need to aggravate our benefactors. We actually owe Canada a great debt of gratitude.' Meanwhile, a coalition of Chinese-Canadian groups is seeking an official apology for the head tax, and an endowment fund, the interest from which could be used to care for the survivors. But that's all too complicated for Mr Quan. He just wants a simple refund, an end to some unfinished business, before he dies.