Holding the last spike,

Canadian Chinese Headtax survivors and their spouses and descendants

stepped on the Headtax Redress Train in Vancouver

for a 7-day journey to Ottawa and for government's formal apology.

This was a long journey. Chinese Headtax payers have fought for more than 20 years to be here. Some of them died before getting redress; most live survivers were just too old to take the cross-Canada train on which the track was built up by them or their family 100 years ago.

To stem immigration from China, the federal government imposed a $50 head tax in 1855--after Chinese labourers were no longer required to toil on the recently completed CPR railway.

The tax was raised to $100 in 1890 and $500 by 1904 [sic]. Immigrants from other countries were not required to pay.

Ottawa collected about $24 million from an estimated 81,000 Chinese immigrants while providing financial incentives for European migrants to settle in the West.

An even harsher federal law was passed on July 1, 1923 at the urging of the B.C. government. The Chinese Immigration Act, known as the exclusion act, all but barred Chinese from entering Canada, creating a bachelor society of male labourers in Chinatowns across the country.