SPECIAL COMMEMORATIVE ISSUE N U M B E R 4 8 ■ SPRING 2016 ■ $ 2 . 0 0 BATTLE OF HONG KONG: 75th ANNIVERSARY THE STORIES & LEGACY OF QUEBEC CITY’S ANGLOPHONE REGIMENT IN ASIA The Morrin Centre is managed by the Literary & Historical Society of Quebec. This issue is funded by the Government of Canada. Quebec Heritage News Subscribe Now! Quebec’s English-language heritage magazine. Popular history – Profiles of remarkable people and events – Contemporary issues in heritage conservation – Book reviews – Insightful commentary – and much more. Individual: $30 for 1 year; $75 for 3 years; $120 for 5 years Institutional: $40 for 1 year; $100 for 3 years; $160 for 5 years To pay by cheque, please mail payment to: QAHN, 400-257 rue Queen, Sherbrooke QC J1M 1K7. or pay by Paypal to: [email protected]. For more information, call (819) 564-9595 Toll free: 1-877-964-0409. EDITING/CONTENT Patrick Donovan Jessica Kelly-Rhéaume LAYOUT Patrick Donovan NUMBER 48 ■ SPRING 2016 PROOFREADING Louisa Blair ■ CONTENTS PUBLISHER Literary & Historical Society of Quebec 44 chaussée des Écossais Quebec, Quebec G1R 4H3 PHONE Letter from the President 1 Sovita Chander 418-694-9147 FAX 418-694-0754 From the Executive Director 1 Barry McCullough GENERAL INQUIRIES [email protected] Transactions: WEBSITE www.morrin.org Hong Kong & the Home Front ■ A Forgotten Tragedy 2 Patrick Donovan LHSQ COUNCIL [email protected] Sovita Chander, President Bloodshed & Broken Hearts 6 Lorraine O’Donnell Barry Holleman, Vice President Gina Farnell, Treasurer Ladd Johnson, Interim Secretary The City That Nearly Forgot 10 Christopher DeWolf Donald Fyson, Honorary Librarian Bruce Laurie, Member at Large Library Pages Peter Black Jack Bryden Katherine Burgess New Acquisitions 15 Diana Cline Arthur Plumpton On the Virtual Shelf 16 Britta Gundersen-Bryden Grant Regalbuto Jacob Stone Hélène Thibault Events & Activities David F. Blair, Ex-Officio ImagiNation Writers’ Festival 17 Tomas Feininger, Ex-Officio Cameron J. MacMillan, Ex-Officio Miscellanea ■ Further Reading 19 Patrick Donovan DIRECTOR Barry McCullough Executive Director Music Review 19 Barry McCullough [email protected] FULL-TIME STAFF Gail Cameron Accounting & Financial Clerk [email protected] Rosemarie Fischer Administrative Assistant LIBRARY HOURS [email protected] Stefanie Johnston Guided Tours Coordinator [email protected] Sunday 12:00PM-4:00PM Jessica Kelly-Rhéaume Library Manager [email protected] Monday CLOSED Caroline Labrie Rentals and Events Coordinator [email protected] Tuesday 12:00PM-8:00PM Elizabeth Perreault Development and Communications Director [email protected] Wednesday 12:00PM-4:00PM Hoffman Wolff Communications and Events Coordinator [email protected] Thursday 12:00PM-8:00PM ■ Friday 12:00PM-4:00PM The mission of the Morrin Centre is to share and foster English-language Saturday 10:00AM-4:00PM culture in the Quebec City region. The Morrin Centre is administered by the Literary & Historical Society of Quebec. ISSN 1913-0732 Front cover: Hong Kong & the Home Front exhibit logo (Kyla Johnson) SOCIETY PAGES LETTER FROM THE PRESIDENT Members, supporters and testament to our work over the past few years to build friends, programming in our three pillars of Heritage, Education and the Arts. On behalf of Council, I would like to again The 192nd Annual General thank RBC for believing in our model and vision. Meeting of the Literary and Historical Society Quebec will Speaking of our Education pillar, I’d like to highlight our be held on Wednesday, March We Are One/Nous Sommes Un project. We Are One 30, 2016, at 7 pm. I strongly brings together four local high schools – Collège encourage all members to François-de-Laval, École Joseph-François-Perrault, St. attend. This is your chance to Patrick’s High School and Quebec High School – to get a recap of the accomplishments of 2015 and meet carry out a common project. The students selected Council and staff. And please stay on for the always their own project: addressing poverty in our society. popular and entertaining magazine auction. The project has been made possible by the Department of Canadian Heritage and Desjardins. We’ve also been We are pleased to be launching our temporary fortunate to be able to count on support from exhibition, Hong Kong and the Home Front. I have a Centraide, Concordia University and Free the Children/ personal connection to this exhibition as my father, We Day. We Are One not only brings students now 80, was a small child during the Japanese together, it draws on the educational heritage of both Occupation of Malaya. The Pacific Theatre, specifically the Literary and Historical Society of Quebec and as relates to Hong Kong, is a part of the Second World Morrin College. It was launched in February and will War that is not well-known in North America, including continue through December. Be sure to follow our the direct connection to Quebec City. I hope to see website and social media for more updates. you at the launch on March 24. Have a wonderful spring, As you may have seen in the newspaper or on our Facebook page, the Royal Bank of Canada was at the Sovita Chander Morrin Centre in January to announce a two-year, $20,000 donation to the Centre. This contribution is a FROM THE EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR Members, friends, partners, We have been busy with a number of non-literary events as well, including our Arts in Action workshops The ImagiNation 2016 lineup series which covered songwriting, elemental theatre, includes a number of fantastic Irish dance, travel writing and more. Your reaction to writers, including Jeffery Deaver, them was overwhelmingly positive and we will do author of The Bone Collector; Anna everything in our power to continue activities like these and Jane McGarrigle discussing in the future. their family history in their book Mountain City Girls; Giller Prize In 2015, we set another new record for total visitors to winner Will Ferguson and so much more. We also the Morrin Centre with 43,000 visitors, compared to added a few literary events with a twist, including 38,000 in 2014. I am confident that with the great Panache sommelier Yann Barrette-Bouchard pairing six activities already planned for 2016 we will again set a fine wines with books being presented at this year’s new high water mark in 2016. I hope to see you soon at festival. Books and Brunch with Douglas Gibson will the Morrin Centre. feature one of Canada’s greatest literary personalities and a full brunch plate served by Classic Traiteur. Be Best regards, sure to check out details in this issue. Barry McCullough PAGE 1 SPRING 2016 TRANSACTIONS A FORGOTTEN TRAGEDY QUEBEC CITY AND THE FALL OF HONG KONG By Patrick Donovan Quebec City’s main English-speaking regiment, the Cameron describes Hong Kong’s early years under Royal Rifles of Canada, took part in what has been British rule as one of the most “unsavory and ignoble called “one of the darkest stories in Canadian military episodes in British mercantile ventures, surpassed only history.” The 963 men in the regiment were sent to by the horrors of the slave trade.” By the 1940s, the defend the British colony of Hong Kong. Compared to colony’s social structure was still morally suspect. the seasoned Japanese troops, they were Hong Kong was unprepared, ill-equipped, essentially founded by and soon outnumbered. British drug dealers, Roughly a third of them who smuggled Indian- did not return. The rest grown opium into faced inhumane China. Because of this, conditions in Japanese there were 12 million POW camps for nearly opium addicts in China four years. At the end of by the 1830s. In 1838, the war, the survivors Chinese government were welcomed as official Lin Zexu wrote heroes, but some to Queen Victoria to harboured bitterness at complain: “Since you do being sent on such an not permit opium to impossible mission. harm your own country, you should certainly not Imperialism and its allow it to be passed on Discontents to other countries.” The Early in 1941, Winston Queen was unfazed. Churchill claimed there Britain justified this was “not the slightest unsavory business chance” of successfully through the principle of defending Hong Kong free trade. When China against the Japanese. finally took military “We must avoid Statue Square in British Hong Kong, 1946. action against British The statue of Queen Victoria, missing from the monument, frittering away our was taken to Tokyo during WWII. It was returned in 1952. smugglers in a troops on untenable (Photo: Hedda Morrison) nineteenth-century positions,” he said. He version of the “war on was later persuaded that there was value in putting up a drugs,” they lost the island of Hong Kong in 1841. fight, and that it would provide strong stimulus to the garrison and the colony. Britain requested Over the next century, Hong Kong grew from a series reinforcements from Canada. Few of Canada’s English- of small fishing towns to a large commercial port with speaking population were likely to question the British over 1.5 million people. It was a place where, as crown at the time. historian Philip Snow puts it, “everyone did their best, seemingly, to look down upon anyone different.” In hindsight, we may see this loyalty to imperial Britain Colonial Hong Kong was deeply unequal and racist, with as misguided. Defending the British imperial legacy in a whiff of apartheid thrown in. Although the Chinese Hong Kong certainly seems questionable when judged outnumbered Europeans, they were second-class from a 21st century moral standpoint. Historian Nigel citizens forbidden from living in certain parts of town. PAGE 2 SOCIETY PAGES TRANSACTIONS Enterprising Chinese with the right British connections earning meagre wages as a “soda jerk” at the Citadel could make fortunes in Hong Kong, but the Chinese Cigar Store near Quebec City’s Clarendon Hotel when were grossly underrepresented in government and the he signed up: “Walking home I passed a recruiting sign public service.