We are pleased to announce that the first phase of videos from the Sid Chow Tan fonds have been digitized and are now available in our online database. This project was made possible with support from the BC History Digitization Program.
About Sid Chow Tan
Sidney Ming Fai Chow Tan, 周明輝, familiarly known as Sid Chow Tan (1949-2022), was a Vancouver-based media producer, activist, community organizer, video documentarian, television host, and writer, among many other roles. As the grandson of Head Tax Payers, Tan made Head Tax Redress a critical focus of his professional and personal activism, organizing and documenting interviews with Head Tax Payers and their relatives, public meetings, hearings, rallies, and artistic responses to the movement. He served as both the founding director and co-chair of the Head Tax Families Society of Canada, and the chairman of the Chinese Canadian National Council (CCNC).
Tan worked extensively in community television from 1986 onward, pursuing varying combinations of responsibilities as producer, reporter, host, editor, and the (self-titled) “head of mystic relations” for programs such as Chinatown Today 華埠天地, EarthSeen, Saltwater City Television 鹹水埠電視, and Fearless TV. He served as the founding director and president of the Association of Chinese Canadians for Equality and Solidarity Society (ACCESS) and Executive Producer of ACCESS TV, whose programs aired through Shaw Cable 4 and subsequently on their own dedicated website.
Tan was also deeply involved in the writing, theatre, and arts and culture scenes within Vancouver. He served as president of the Asian Canadian Writers Workshop and regularly participated in Downtown Eastside arts activities through the Firehall Arts Centre and the Heart of the City Festival.
About the Sid Chow Tan Fonds
Sid Chow Tan’s fonds was donated to the Archives in 2023. It contains over 1,200 videocassettes and a small portion of textual records, mainly cue sheets and brief notes. The primary languages spoken in the tapes include English, Cantonese, Taishanese, and Mandarin, with a few videos containing segments in French and Tagalog.
The fonds include videos with episodes of community television programs, extensive documentation of activities related to Chinese Head Tax Redress, and content related to the following: Chinatown and Chinese Canadian experiences; advocacy for democracy and human rights in China; vigils and demonstrations commemorating the events of June 4, 1989 in Tiananmen Square, Beijing; affordable housing and other issues of social, economic, and racial inequality; immigrant stories; environmental activism; arts and culture; and youth programs.
About the Digitization Process
This year we completed the major undertaking of constructing our own video digitization suite, enabling our analogue video holdings to now be transferred in-house, rather than sent out to external vendors for digitization.
Tan’s archives contain a wide variety of video formats that our setup is able accommodate, including Betacam, U-matic, VHS, DV, and MiniDV. From September through December, we digitized 111 videotapes onsite, comprising over 73 hours of content. While we were setting up the station last summer, Western Front digitized 113 tapes, for a total of 224 tapes digitized as part of the first phase of this project.
Next Steps
We hope the BC History Digitization Program will support a second phase of digitization in 2026-2027. In that period, we plan to focus on Tan’s documentation of life and activism in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside, and environmental and anti-globalisation activism in the 1990s.
Please enjoy a few additional stills from the videos preserved in the first phase of this project:
We look forward to sharing these videos with the broad range of communities that Sid Chow Tan was a part of and interacted with throughout his life in Vancouver.
