Chapter 33 - 1938 - The Dr. Heng Chih Toa Tour

In April, 1938, Dr. Heng Chih Toa was able to return to Canada and began an extensive tour of Alberta with my father. Dad recalls:

“Another speaker we brought at the time was a Chinese scholar Dr. Heng Chih Tao. He was a poet.  He had books of poetry in China.  He was a most unusual speaker.  He would get up before an audience and say, “I’m going to speak to you but I’m also going to sing to you” and he would start to sing songs in Chinese.  The songs of a farmer hoeing – this farmer singing this song through the motions of hoeing.  He would explain that this was hoeing out the weeds of imperialism.  He made comments like that as he went on. It was interesting, hoeing out the weeds of imperialism.  I travelled all over the province with him.  He was quite interested in Alberta because he said parts of Alberta were like parts in China.  Drumheller Valley and places like that..  He was always surprised in this country at the long horizon that went on. We’d be driving along the highway and he’d see a town in the distance and I’d say, “How far away do you thing that town is?” And he’d say it was about two or three miles.  Well it was about twelve miles.  He couldn’t get over the clearness of the air and the long horizon, the view that you get at this high clear altitude.”

On April 10, 1938, Dr. Toa addressed a large audience at a peace rally held in the Grand Theatre in Calgary. The RCMP provides this account:

1/A mass meeting was held under the joint auspices of The League for Peace and Democracy and the Chinese Benevolent Association on Sunday April 10^th at 2.30 p.m. About one thousand people attended in the Grand Theater. The Rev. Robert Paton was chairman.

2/Mr. Frank Ho Lem spoke briefly and read a letter from Nanking, telling of the torturing of Chinese citizens by Japanese soldiers, he also spoke on the terrible conditions in China, and the suffering of the Chinese people in the districts controlled by the Japanese.

3/Dr. Heng Chih Toa, visitor, spoke on Peace. He said it is not enough that to say “Britons will not be slaves they should say “Briton will not make slaves”. He stated that “In Canada, I notice your peace forces don’t cooperate very well, that the Conservatives and the Radicals suspect each other and that isolates the forces of democracy. In China we ask just one question, “Are you for resisting Japanese aggression?, Yes or No? And they join together in resisting Japanese aggression, one party, all for one and one for all.”

4/Dr. Toa also sang Chinese songs and said the titles of them were “Workers of the World Unite” and “The Dancing of the Hoe”.  These songs were sung by the Chinese workers, making new roads to the Russian frontier and to Indo-China, so that munitions and supplies could be brought in other ways than through the Port of Hong-Kong. He asked for the Canadian People’s sympathy and financial help for China in her war against Japanese aggression. (Note: The last sentence of this paragraph is blanked out, meaning it is still censored after all these years.)