Social justice advocate Susan Eng fought for equity in Canadian policing

Globe and Mail

10 hours ago

Susan Eng brought a steely resolve to the many campaigns she waged in the fight for social equity.
But her unflinching public demeanour could be cracked by an old and heavily creased piece of paper that spoke to an unjust chapter of her family's history: her father's Chinese head-tax certificate.
In January, 2006, just days before the federal election, Ms. Eng spoke at an event at Toronto's City Hall to demand a parliamentary apology and financial compensation for the tax imposed on Chinese immigrants from 1885 to 1923, and the subsequent ban on Chinese immigration that lasted until 1947. In the audience were many Canadian luminaries who were invited to ensure continuing media interest in redress for the Chinese head tax, which was an election issue.
'Susan was the one who was hosting and also sharing her personal story,' says Amy Go, a prominent Chinese-Canadian activist. Ms. Eng looked out into the crowd, she was overwhelmed by her feelings about her father and paused to regain her composure.
'That was the only time in more than three decades of working with Susan and watching her in public that I have ever seen her get emotional,' says Ms. Go, who was also one of Ms. Eng's close friends. 'She was always able to respond quickly, and she was so quick-witted and so composed. And that was the only time that I saw Susan actually stop – when she talked about her father and when she talked about him having the head-tax certificate sewn to his shirt' for fear of being deported if he was caught without it.
Ms. Eng died on July 26 after a lengthy battle with cancer. She was 72.
She eventually received the national apology she had demanded alongside other Chinese Canadians, including other families who had paid the head tax.
A lawyer and tireless advocate for civil liberties, Ms. Eng directed her passion for social justice to a number of causes over several decades: She increased oversight of the Toronto police, fought relentlessly for the rights of seniors, and stood up for minorities including the LGBTQ and racialized communities.
'Susan was just very cool. … Some people may have thought she was intimidating' but injustices touched her deeply, says Ms. Go, who is president of the Chinese Canadian National Council for Social Justice. She adds that Ms. Eng had 'the ability to connect with others, the ability to see injustice and violations and wanting to do something.'
Ms. Eng was the first Chinese Canadian to head the Metropolitan Toronto Police Services Board. She was a co-founder of the Chinese Canadian National Council for Social Justice. And she was the vice-president of advocacy for the Canadian Association of Retired Persons (CARP) where, for eight years, she spoke out on behalf of racialized and low-income seniors and pressed the government for changes to the Canada Pension Plan that have helped all Canadians.
Ms. Eng was born in Toronto on Aug. 24, 1952, and attended Jarvis Collegiate, where she was an excellent student. She went on to obtain a law degree from Osgoode Hall, specializing in the complex field of taxation, and was one of the few Asian Canadian lawyers of her generation to make partner at a major Toronto law firm.
In 1984, she ran for a seat on Toronto's City Council. At one of the all-candidates' meetings, fellow candidate and lawyer Peter Maloney was asked about his stance on abortion. He replied that, as a male and as a gay man, he was unlikely ever to be required to make decisions about the procedure. Ms. Eng 'came up to me after that meeting and said, 'I really like that answer that you gave,' and we discussed it,' Mr. Maloney says. Neither of them won the council seat but they became long-time close friends.
'She was a powerful intellect,' Mr. Maloney says. 'She was an empath, always concerned about her effect on other people but not shy of perhaps rubbing someone the wrong way.'
That fearlessness was on public display after her appointment, in 1989, to sit on what was then called the Metropolitan Toronto Police Services Board. At her swearing-in ceremony, Ms. Eng refused to pledge an oath to the Queen, and instead promised to be loyal to Canadians.
She was named chair of the police board in 1991 and served in that position until 1995, earning praise for her work to increase public oversight and expand the cultural and linguistic diversity of police services. But she also made some powerful enemies on the force who did not appreciate the change that was being demanded of them. Ms. Eng was believed to be the target of unauthorized eavesdropping by police for several years.
At one point, Mr. Maloney learned his own phones were being wiretapped, ostensibly because one of his clients was facing drug charges. He let Ms. Eng know about the surveillance and the two ended telephone communication for several months until Mr. Maloney was informed that the taps on his lines had been lifted.
'The suspicion always existed that one of the benefits of wiretapping me, using that as an excuse, is they wanted to listen to our conversations,' Mr. Maloney says. 'Apparently, we were followed constantly when we were having lunch together or dinner together.'
When Ms. Eng was head of Toronto's police services board, the force adopted the first-ever telephone translation services for 911 calls in over 140 languages. She also pushed for mandatory reporting of each time an officer unholstered their gun.
'I believe Susan became the template for today's civilian governance of police in Ontario and, dare I say, across Canada,' Hamlin Grange, a diversity and inclusion strategist and the founder of DiversiPro, said in a tribute posted after Ms. Eng's death. 'She inspired generations of civic leaders and activists who sought reforms in policing. Her tenure was defined by her insistence on accountability, transparency and equity. She was one of the earliest public officials in Canada to speak openly about systemic racism in policing and the need for reforms to address the disproportionate impact on racialized communities.'
Ms. Eng was an outspoken member and advocate for social-justice organizations including the Canadian Civil Liberties Association, the Urban Alliance on Race Relations and the YWCA of Greater Toronto. She worked with the Coalition Against Homophobia in the 1990s and helped to promote access to health care for racialized people and newcomers to Canada who were living with HIV.
Throughout her life, Ms. Eng was deeply committed to the Chinese community. In the 1990s, she helped Dr. Joseph Wong establish the Yee Hong Centre for Geriatric Care, the first nursing home for Chinese Canadian seniors, which now has multiple locations across the Greater Toronto Area.
She joined the Chinese Canadian National Council (CCNC) in 1980 after a documentary on the CTV news magazine program W5 portrayed Canadian-born Chinese students as unfairly taking away prized placements from non-Chinese Canadians in professional university courses like medicine and dentistry.
The CCNC brought a class-action suit in the 1980s seeking redress for the Chinese Head Tax and Exclusion Act. The case was dismissed but the anger of people like Ms. Eng, whose family had been so deeply affected by the racist policy, continued to simmer.
In an opinion piece titled Tell It To My Father, which she wrote for The Globe and Mail in 2002, Ms. Eng said: 'No amount of apology will remove my pain on discovering his head-tax certificate after his death. He had kept it folded in his wallet for more than 50 years because the stamp on the back read: 'It is necessary that this certificate be carefully preserved as it is of value as a means of identification.' No one told him that there was now a Charter of Rights and Freedoms, that he could not be stopped on the street and asked to justify his right to remain in Canada.'
Ms. Eng revitalized the movement for head-tax redress in the early 2000s, and six months after the event at Toronto City Hall, Prime Minister Stephen Harper delivered a formal apology in Parliament.
Carol Bream, another long-time friend, recalls a visit she and her husband paid to Ms. Eng's home in Toronto. 'At one point she showed me the head-tax certificate,' Ms. Bream says. 'And both of us started to cry, because that was just such an unbelievable thing that the people had to suffer through.'
Ms. Eng's work on behalf of the Chinese community continued to her final days. From her hospital bed, she was in discussions with Ms. Go about documenting the history of Chinese activism in Canada.
Part of a close-knit family, she also organized weekly dinners for her siblings and their children at her mother's house in Toronto. To the end, says Mr. Maloney, she minimized her own suffering from cancer to soothe the anxieties of family members and friends.
James Lockyer, the Toronto lawyer and prominent social justice advocate who was a close friend of Ms. Eng's for more than a decade, calls her a pioneer. 'Her time as chair of the Toronto police services board was fearless and unprecedented in the face of huge opposition from police chiefs and the police union, and she should always be seen as the role model for police accountability,' Mr. Lockyer says. 'She was a magnificent advocate who always achieved her cause. … We will miss her making it a better world for us all.'
Ms. Eng leaves her mother, two brothers and sister, and her cherished nieces and nephews.
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