One of Canada’s oldest women, Foon Hay Lum, who was separated from her husband for more than 30 years by the Chinese immigration ban and later helped secure a formal apology and compensation for all Chinese Canadians who paid the head tax, has died. She was 111.

Lum died Friday evening after being diagnosed with COVID-19 at the Mon Sheong Homes for the Aged, where dozens of residents have tested positive and 26 have passed away. The home, which has lost 80 per cent of its staff during the outbreak, started receiving reinforcements from Mount Sinai hospital on Friday.

Because of the ban on visitors to long-term-care homes, Lum died without being able to visit with her family — one last case of the forced separation she had to cope with throughout her life.

Described by her friends as a fighter who was ahead of her time, Lum inspired a generation of Chinese Canadians to speak out about racism and discrimination.

“Many people felt embarrassed and ashamed and didn’t want to talk about racism. But this was never a problem for her,” said Amy Go, the former national president of the Chinese Canadian National Council (CCNC), an organization that Lum helped establish.

“You have to remember what generation she was a part of,” said Go. “That strength she had to name something that was wrong and to take action, that for me was amazing courage.”

After more than 20 years of activism, Lum was personally on hand to witness then Prime Minister Stephen Harper apologize in the House of Commons on June 22, 2006.

The first of four children, Foon Hay Chiu was born on July 26, 1908 in Xinhui, Guangdong, China, to a schoolteacher father who insisted she receive the same education as boys. As a result, Lum learned to read and write.

Lum’s first period of forced separation started shortly after a Chinese Canadian immigrant, Nam Jack Lum returned home to look for a bride. They married when she was 18, but her husband had to return to Canada immediately to keep his immigration status, and Lum couldn’t follow him due to the Chinese Exclusion Act, which prohibited most immigration from China from 1923 to 1947.

“That legislated racism separated her from her husband and made it impossible for her to have a normal family,” said Lum’s granddaughter, Helen Lee.

Nam Jack, who worked in a laundry in Toronto, saved for seven years before he could return to see Lum in China. His second visit lasted three years, and the couple had two children together before he was forced to once again return to Canada alone.

The family would not reunite for 33 years.

Lee credits Lum’s education and Nam Jack’s hard work for helping the couple stay together while separated for so long. Regular letters went back and forth, accompanied by money, canned goods and the Sear’s catalogue, in which Lum would circle the items she wanted and send the pages back to Canada for Nam Jack to order.

The outbreak of World War Two meant this postal link was severed for more than five years and Lum was able to survive by growing food on a small parcel of land she had bought with her remittances.

After the war, the Chinese immigration ban was lifted because it was inconsistent with the UN Declaration of Human Rights, paving the way for Lum and her children to come to Canada.

After her son, Seek Sam, and daughter, Har Ying, came to Toronto, it was Lum’s turn in 1959. The family purchased a house together in Parkdale, where Lam would live until 2016.

Twelve years after her arrival in Canada, Nam Jack passed away, capping the longest period the couple was together in 45 years of marriage.

As a widower in her 60s, Lum began a new life as an activist, where she helped establish the CCNC to advocate for the rights of Chinese Canadians.

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Lum was outraged by a television report in the 1980s that alleged Chinese people were taking spots in medical school away from Canadians, because the students in the program were Canadian citizens.

“They were Canadians!” said Lee. “The program pushed the Chinese community to finally say that is wrong. That is racism.”

The group was able to secure an apology from CTV, according to CCNC’s website.

“After that, we realized that lobbying was powerful,” said Lee.

Along with CCNC chapters across the country, Lum began lobbying the federal government for redress for the Chinese Exclusion Act and the $500 Head Tax levied on 81,000 Chinese immigrants between 1885 and 1923.

Lum found her husband’s old head tax certificate and started a campaign to get members of the Chinese community to register their certificates with the CCNC. It would take more than 20 years of speaking to seniors in community centres, to politicians and to the media before Lum was able to board the Redress Train at Union Station. Later she would sit with four generations of her family in the House of Commons to witness the historic apology in person.

Lum lived independently in her three-storey Parkdale house until she was 107, cleaning, doing her own laundry and growing bumper crops of melons in her backyard.

“Grandmother should be people’s model,” said Lee. “It’s possible for seniors to live independently for a long time.”

Lum spent the last four years in a long-term-care home, one of the many that have suffered staffing and protective equipment shortages during the coronavirus outbreak.

“With the pandemic, there’s a refocus on what’s important and really meaningful,” said Lee. “We need more resources for our long-term care. We can’t just be warehousing our seniors.”

Lum leavesa large family in the GTA including her daughter, five grandchildren and nine great grandchildren.