Cultural Centre to host première of film about former businessman Gale Chow

After over three years of production, the National Film Board is releasing a documentary about the experiences of Chinese people in Moose Jaw as told through the eyes of retired businessman Gale Chow.

The Moose Jaw Cultural Centre will host the world première of the 16-minute short film “A Passage Beyond Fortunate” on Wednesday, May 24, at 7 p.m. The documentary will be in English and Cantonese.

While residents are encouraged to RSVP through the centre’s website for catering purposes, this is a free community screening that will be followed by a Q&A with the director and family.

The documentary follows the Chows — and incorporates archival family material — as they reflect on the “popular but untrue myths” surrounding Moose Jaw’s underground tunnels. Filmmaker Weiye Su also offers a homage to the “culturally significant but buried history” of Chinese Canadians in Canada’s Most Notorious City.

Besides the public screening here, the NFB will make the film available starting May 22 for streaming on its website to mark Asian History Month.

An NFB film crew visited Moose Jaw in February 2020 to shoot footage of Gale Chow during a Chinese New Year celebration. After a delay because of the pandemic, the crew returned in October 2021 to shoot more film of the Chows packing — Gale and his wife Myrna moved to Regina to live with their son Kyle — and some of the businesses Gale either worked at or owned.

“When the tunnels started, they never talked to the Chinese community,” Gale recounts in the film. “They say Chinese people lived in (the tunnels) and hid in here… not that I know of!”

According to the film’s synopsis, the Chows reflect on the harmful myth about the tunnels and the entanglement of their family’s overlapping roots in Moose Jaw — dating back to the 1880s — while surrounded by old, framed photographs and documents.

“Within the city’s warm sepia landscape, the Chows share the experiences that have shaped their lives and the way anti-Chinese immigration policies fractured their family’s settlement in Moose Jaw,” the synopsis continued.

“As they (prepared) for an inner province move, Gale and Myrna (packed) up the visual lineage of their family: dense photo albums, heirloom ceramics, a beloved erhu played by Gale for 20 years — the evidence of a deep sense of identity still maintained in their family.”

Myrna and Gale’s warm laughter echoes throughout “A Passage Beyond Fortune” as they display photographs of their younger years and participation in local activities, exchanging networks of care through regular volleyball games and celebrations of Chinese New Year.

“‘A Passage Beyond Fortune’ is not only an homage to the Chows’ fortune of stories,” the synopsis added. “It’s a tender archive containing the buried and blurred histories of those whose lasting cultural imprints have offered new ways of connecting with ourselves and our communities.”

As the film’s tagline says, “A city’s fortune is only as rich as its stories.”