They set out from Vancouver on Friday morning last week, on a train they dubbed the Redress Express. Aboard were a handful of the 20 surviving Chinese-Canadians who had been singled out and forced to pay a head tax to enter Canada. They were accompanied by their sons, daughters and grandchildren, and by the widows and relatives of the other Chinese-Canadians who, between 1885 and 1923, were compelled to pay a fee of up to C$500 ($3,480) to enter the country.
They rode the train all weekend, stopping in cities along the way to pick up more families who had been split up or impoverished because of the head tax. They rode on tracks built on the sweat and bones of thousands of Chinese labourers who were imported to link the country by rail from the Atlantic to the Pacific. After the last spike was driven in 1885, the Canadian government decided it no longer needed Chinese immigrants, and attempted to deter them with a burdensome head tax.
And when that tax was abolished in 1923, the Canadian government passed the Chinese Exclusion Act, which effectively curtailed all Chinese immigration to Canada until 1947, when it was finally repealed. No other immigrant group was ever obliged to pay a head tax, or excluded by specific legislation.
When the train arrived in Toronto, it was greeted by Pauline Lee, whose husband, Koo Lee, had arrived in Canada in 1923 at the age of 10. Koo Lee and his brother spent their first month in Canada in detention, while their father worked desperately to raise C$1,000 for their head tax. Koo Lee died in the 1990s, but never forgot his treatment and the hunger he experienced while in detention. His wife hopped aboard for the final leg of the journey to Ottawa.
In Ottawa, the passengers and hundreds of other Chinese-Canadians gathered on Parliament Hill and were admitted to the visitors' gallery in the House of Commons. There, on a muggy Thursday afternoon, Prime Minister Stephen Harper - speaking in English, French and Mandarin - asked them to forgive the Canadian government and people for the shameful policies that had discriminated against them. Mr Harper also promised a symbolic C$20,000 payment for each surviving head-tax payer or spouse. And he promised a C$34 million fund for community and education programmes that will make Canadians aware of past discriminatory policies.
The apology is the culmination of a long campaign by Chinese-Canadians for financial redress and for public recognition of the discrimination they endured. It seems such a small and overdue gesture for policies that remain an indelible stain on the conscience of a country that prides itself on its openness and tolerance.