S1E7: The Last Asians in the NHL Playoffs, Miye D’Oench, & the Chin Brothers — with Debbie Jiang

[00:00:01] You're listening to... Whoa! Potluck! Potluck! Potluck! Welcome back to the Asians in Hockey Podcast. Once again, I'm your host, Nate Nakao. And before we dive into today's episode, I do have a quick request to ask of you.

[00:00:25] If you've enjoyed the series thus far, I would love it if you could post a quick five-star review on Apple Podcasts or Spotify. This is honestly the best way to get the word out about the show and to help us cultivate our audience. So thank you in advance for your support. Now, as usual, we have three periods of hockey talk featuring a look at the Asian players still in the Stanley Cup playoffs, a profile of one of the pioneers of professional women's hockey in the U.S.,

[00:00:54] and a conversation with Debbie Jiang, writer and historian, who captured one of the most fascinating stories in Asian-Canadian hockey history. All of that is coming up right after this. Hello, I'm Phil Yu, and I'm the host of All the Asians on Star Trek,

[00:01:21] the podcast in which I interview all the Asians on Star Trek. I'm talking to actors, writers, directors, stunt people, background extras. You know, all the Asians on Star Trek. Find out more at alltheasiansonstartrek.com, part of the Potluck Podcast Collective. Live long and prosper. All right, let's drop the puck on today's episode.

[00:01:48] Our first period today will be extremely short, as we have just one team with Asian players left in the mix, and unfortunately, it's not looking great for them. So there's still no word on Matt Dumba of the Dallas Stars. He has yet to make any appearances in the playoffs, and it's highly unlikely he'll do so now. So let's move on to his teammate, Cody Cece.

[00:02:15] Through four games this series, Cece has averaged 20 minutes of ice time per game. His defensive presence, while a bit muted, is still felt with three hits and four blocked shots in the first four games of the series. No points, though, for Cody Cece. The Stars' backs are up against the wall, as they are down three games to one against Edmonton.

[00:02:41] The team will need some big moments from their forwards, including Jason Robertson, our other Asian on the Dallas Stars, who is doing his part, despite not reaching what many believe he's truly capable of. While his ice time has diminished, he's still putting up some numbers, notching two goals and an assist for three points this series. Still, he is nowhere near his best,

[00:03:07] and that is evident given the way things are going for the team. Let's hope the Stars can keep the series alive. As of the time of this recording, they have yet to play game five, and if they can eke out a win, they stay alive. But if they lose their next game, they pack up and head home. Well, that's it for our very short first period. I am curious, though. What do you folks think I should do

[00:03:36] for the rest of this first season of the podcast? With Dallas likely to be eliminated soon, I won't have any more current Asian players to keep up with in the NHL. So, what should I talk about next? Should I talk about some hockey movies? Or how about some Asian prospects? Or should we just change the format up a bit and do away with the three periods format for a little while? Let me know what you think

[00:04:05] by sending me a DM on Instagram at Asians in Hockey or via email at AsiansinHockey at gmail.com. I look forward to hearing from you. After the break, we'll take a look at the career of one of the pioneers of professional women's hockey, Mie Dench. Don't go anywhere. Welcome to the second period of today's episode.

[00:04:35] Mie Dench able to take it first away from Jones. The puck worked down low out in front. Quick shot! They score! Alexa Grusha falling! And she knocked it in just under the crossbar. For fans of the early days of professional women's hockey in the U.S., few players embody the heart and hustle of the NWHL era quite like Mie Dench.

[00:05:04] A Yonsei woman, a relentless forward, a Harvard standout, and a champion with the Metropolitan Riveters, Dench carved out a legacy on the ice and then left the sport on her own terms to pursue justice off the ice. Now, I'll admit it right here. I was a big fan of the Metropolitan Riveters. They were scrappy, smart, and completely magnetic to watch. And I'll never forget being in the stands during that unforgettable

[00:05:32] 2018 Isabel Cup final when Dench assisted on Alexa Grushau's game-winning goal. The crowd exploded. And it wasn't just about the win. It was about what it meant that players like Mie Dench, who played with grit, intelligence, and grace, were writing new chapters in hockey history right there in front of us. Honestly, some of my favorite hockey memories were formed during those years

[00:06:01] as a Riveters season ticket holder. I watched women's hockey grow through grassroots efforts. I coached alongside some of those Riveters players. And I even drank beer out of the Isabel Cup. But this isn't about my excitement and relationship to the game. This is about one of the great two-way forwards in professional women's hockey. Mie Dench was born on January 26, 1994, in New York City. She grew up in an environment where hockey wasn't

[00:06:30] the most common path, but that didn't stop her. She began skating and playing on boys' teams because there were few local opportunities for girls at the time. Her mother's support was crucial, driving her across state lines to access girls' programs in Connecticut and right here in New Jersey so she could continue growing in the game. That drive paid off when Dench caught the attention of recruiters from Harvard University, one of the most storied programs

[00:06:59] in NCAA women's hockey. There, she would begin to make her mark. From 2012 to 2016, Dench played for the Harvard Crimson and was a consistent force on the ice. In 135 NCAA games, she tallied 122 points, making her only the 24th player in the university's history to reach 100 points. Her final season was her most commanding. She led Harvard

[00:07:28] with 37 points, earned All-ECAC hockey second team honors, and was named to the All-Ivy League second team. She wasn't just a scorer, she was a playmaker, a leader, and someone who could change the momentum of a game with a single shift. In the 2015 NWHL draft, Dench was selected 15th overall by the Boston Pride, but in a move that would define her professional legacy, her rights were traded in 2016 to the New York Riveters,

[00:07:58] a fitting homecoming. Over three seasons with the Riveters, Dench played in 36 regular season games, notching 13 goals and 21 assists for 34 points. But stats only tell part of the story. On a team filled with personality and passion, Mie stood out as a reliable two-way forward who elevated everyone around her. In October 2017, she was named NWHL Player of the Week, a testament to her early season performance

[00:08:27] and her growing leadership role. The 2017-18 season wasn't all smooth sailing, though. Dench missed a large chunk of the season due to an ankle injury. But in a storybook comeback, she returned just in time for a dramatic postseason. The Riveters made it to the Isabel Cup final that year against the Buffalo Buttes. And it was there, in a packed arena, buzzing with energy,

[00:08:57] that I watched something unforgettable unfold. Early in the game, Dench grabbed the puck in the neutral zone, battled through the Buffalo defense toward the crease, fed a pass to Alexa Grushow, who buried the puck as she was tripped and was falling through the air for what would become the cup-winning goal. That moment, Grushow's goal, Dench's assist, the roar of the Barnabas Health hockey house crowd, is etched into my memory as one of the most exciting moments I've ever witnessed

[00:09:27] live in any rink. The goal came early in the first period, and the Riveters had to play two and a half grueling periods holding on to that tenuous lead. But they did it. And in 2018, the Riveters became champions. And Mie Dench was a critical part of that story. Now, before her professional success, Dench had already made her mark internationally. In 2012, she represented

[00:09:56] the United States at the IHF U18 Women's World Championship, scoring two goals in five games and helping Team USA capture silver against their arch-rivals, Canada. In March 2019, Dench retired from hockey, not because she had to, but because she had another calling. She enrolled in Stanford Law School, where she brought the same determination and intellect that made her a force on the ice. At Stanford, she worked in the Immigrants' Rights Clinic, served as a member editor

[00:10:25] of the Stanford Law Review, and won Best Overall Team in the prestigious Kirkland Moot Court competition. She also interned with organizations, including the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, the Mexican-American Legal Defense and Education Fund, or MALDEF, and the New York Attorney General's Civil Rights Bureau. Following graduation, she clerked for two federal judges, the Honorable Cynthia Bichant, U.S. District Court, Southern District of California, and the Honorable M. Margaret McCown, U.S. Court of Appeals, Ninth Circuit.

[00:10:55] She now works in public interest law, continuing her fight for justice, equity, and human rights. In a 2017 interview with journalist Erika Ayala, Mie Dench opened up about the challenges of discussing politics within the hockey community, especially following the 2016 U.S. presidential election. She recounted the difficulty of that election night, noting, election night was difficult for me. We had practice

[00:11:24] and it was early, thank God. I don't know what I would have done had it been any later in the night. The locker room, comprising teammates with diverse political views, became a space where she learned to balance her personal convictions with team unity. She reflected, hockey has helped me, has forced me to be more empathetic to people who don't agree with me politically, because, you know, it's not fun to not like your teammates.

[00:11:54] This experience underscored the importance of empathy and understanding in team dynamics, teaching her to engage with differing perspectives constructively. Her time working on Amy McGrath's congressional campaign in Kentucky further honed these skills, providing her with repeated opportunities to practice empathetic conversations with individuals holding opposing views. Dench also delved into her cultural identity during the interview, sharing,

[00:12:23] I'm half Japanese. My mom is third generation Japanese American. So that would make me a fourth generation Japanese American, my brother and I. She expressed pride in her mixed heritage, stating, I am very proud to be Hoppe, and I'm proud of my dad's family history and my mom's family history, and it's all important to me. Exploring her family's history further, Dench revealed that both her grandparents were incarcerated during World War II,

[00:12:52] a chapter of American history that deeply impacts her. She and her brother embarked on writing a movie script about Japanese incarceration, aiming to shed light on this period of history. Reflecting on their research, she noted, I'm very struck by, in considering the current political climate, how acutely aware these authors were that their reason for writing, for putting in so much work to write these works, was because they were really aware that because it happened once

[00:13:21] does not mean that it won't happen again. This endeavor underscores her commitment to storytelling as a means of education and remembrance. Mie Dench represents a rare kind of athlete, one who strives not just in competition, but in community. Her journey from the rinks of New York and Harvard and New Jersey to the professional stage with the Riveters and now in the legal world

[00:13:50] is a powerful reminder that the game of hockey can be a launching pad, not a limit. As an Asian American woman, she helped carve out space in a sport that's still finding its way toward diversity and inclusion. And for those of us who watched her in person, especially that night in 2018, her impact goes far beyond any stat sheet. As a pioneering professional hockey player, she played with purpose. And now, as a young attorney,

[00:14:21] she lives with purpose. Stay tuned for our conversation with Debbie Jiang right after this. Hey, do you enjoy reading or are you thinking about getting back into reading? Do you want to diversify and decolonize your bookshelf? And are you interested in exploring exciting stories from Asian and Asian American voices? Then you should check out Books and Boba, a book club and podcast dedicated to books by Asian and Asian American authors. Each month

[00:14:50] on Books and Boba, we pick a book by an Asian author to read and discuss on the show. We read a variety of genres, including contemporary and historical fiction, sci-fi and fantasy, romance and cozy mysteries, and so much more. Our past book club picks have included Pachinko by Min Jin Lee, Patron Saints of Nothing by Randy Ribeye, Yellow Face by R.F. Kuang, and The Fortunes of Jaded Women by Carolyn Quinn. We also chat with some amazing Asian authors on the podcast, as well as reveal the latest publishing news in Asian American literature. Listen to us now

[00:15:19] on Apple, Spotify, and wherever you listen to podcasts, or learn more by looking us up at booksandboba.com. Part of the Potluck Podcast Collective. All right, welcome back to the show. It's the third period, and as is often the case, the third period, I usually have somebody join me for a conversation about hockey or something related to hockey, and today is no exception.

[00:15:49] In this episode, I am joined by Debbie Jiang, who is an educator, writer, community historian, and advocate for Chinese and Japanese Canadian history. She is a hockey enthusiast and fellow Habs fan, born in Montreal, raised in Ottawa and Vancouver, and her interest in hockey actually led her to writing a six-page feature titled From Head Tax to Hockey Heroes about the Chin Brothers

[00:16:18] from Lucknow, Ontario, and that was published in Canada's History Magazine, which I will throw a link to that piece in the show notes. Debbie, welcome to Asians in Hockey. Well, thank you so much, Nate. Thanks for having me. Absolutely. Thanks for joining us. So tell us a little bit about your own background as it connects to hockey and just sort of your enthusiasm for the sport, and also maybe even just going back a little bit into your origin story a bit further if you'd like.

[00:16:48] For sure. Well, I have been a hockey fan for as long as I can remember. I think it stemmed from my jealousy of my classmates at school who played minor hockey and played shinny and learned to skate when they were very young, and I was stuck in Chinese school on the weekends. And so I think it just made me feel that I needed to love the sport even more from the sidelines, and so I've always watched hockey, followed a lot of Stanley Cup finals in my childhood.

[00:17:17] I remember the year that Montreal won the 1993 Cup, the last time they won it. I clipped out all the newspaper clippings I could find in the Vancouver Sun, and I made a scrapbook out of it. I still have that somewhere. And so all through my childhood, yeah, because growing up in eastern Canada, hockey's a very big deal, and even when the Senators expansion team came, I wasn't really interested in the Ottawa Senators because I was at heart a Montreal Canadiens fan. Always wore the red, white, and blue growing up. My first snowsuit

[00:17:47] had the big Habs logo right in the center, so I think it was part of my identity. I think it was forged into a Habs hockey fan from my childhood. Very cool. So that's then your origin with your love for hockey, and then you, so you moved out to Vancouver, and what then kind of prompted you to dive into some of this, the story that sort of led you to looking into

[00:18:17] the Chin Brothers, and could you actually even maybe intro that a little bit for our listeners who haven't had a chance to check out your article, which I do want them to read, so if you give us a little tease about who the Chin Brothers were and why you decided to dive into this story. Well, I'll backtrack a little bit to how I started writing, and before the Chin story was discovered, I was, I have a background

[00:18:46] in teaching, and so a long time ago, I'm dating myself, maybe over 20 years ago when I was teaching primary school here in Richmond, BC, I had subscribed to a history magazine for kids that I thought would be helpful in my teaching, and so this magazine is called Kayak, and it is the children's version of the main magazine now called Canada's History. It used to be called The Beaver Magazine, and so I've been a long time fan of history. I have a background in French and history,

[00:19:15] so although my teaching subject was mostly French, I've always been interested in Canadian history and just do a lot of my own reading and researching. So fast forward to when I'm now a homeschool mom, my son is in grade nine, and we've been homeschooling him for the last eight years. I've been out of the classroom for a while, but I still subscribe to this magazine, and in fact, I renewed it when my son was around grade three or four, and so Kayak magazines start coming to her house again, and every issue, we just, it's a four times a year issue magazine,

[00:19:45] and I just loved reading little articles and little stories, and one day I remembered that, whoa, back when I was teaching, the Kayak magazine invited content contributors, and sometimes they invited teachers to write up articles. So I looked on their website, and I couldn't find the button anymore that, you know, invited people to contribute articles, so I just emailed the editor and said who I was and how much I loved the magazine, and I said I would really love to see, and so the email became a Zoom call, and the Zoom call was great because

[00:20:15] I could tell the editor the content that I've been reading all these 20 years, I love it, but I would love to see more stories about women and First Nations and visible minorities, and so that's kind of how I got my first chance into writing a script for a comic, because at the end of their magazine there's always a six-page comic, and I wrote about a Japanese-Canadian photographer, and a little mishap in a real true story, and the editor loved my script, hired an artist to go with the comic,

[00:20:44] and it was successful, so she asked me if I was interested in contributing again for the kayak magazine, and she listed some of the topics coming up, and that the September issue of 2023 was going to be all focused around Chinese-Canadians, and because it was the anniversary of the Exclusion Act of 1923, and she asked, would I be interested in writing some articles for the magazine, and so one thing led to another, and she asked me if I would consider becoming the guest editor of that issue,

[00:21:13] so I said yes, and as I say, the rest is history because I was able to put all my, you know, thoughts and ideas into this little magazine that's, you know, 32 pages, it was published to be sent out to schools across Canada, 180,000 copies in English went out, and so it had national attention, and it was just such a thrill that my writing was seen by so many eyeballs and ended up in a lot of teachers'

[00:21:43] classrooms, and students read it, and so one of the pages was dedicated to Chinese-Canadians in hockey, and I really wanted to make sure that that got highlighted, and so of course Larry Kwong from the New York Rangers was a prominent feature on page 13 of my magazine, and I thought, well, there's got to be more hockey players of Chinese origin than Larry Kwong, so as I started digging through old newspapers, I used

[00:22:12] a subscription called newspapers.com, and sure enough, I discovered some names that I never heard of before, and the Chin brothers were among the names that I found who had played hockey around the same time as Larry Kwong. They were around the same age, except Larry went on to play for the Rovers, the farm team of the New York Rangers at that time, and the Chin brothers only made it as far as tryouts at their training camp in 1944 for the Quantum Maple Leafs, and so I thought

[00:22:42] this is a great story. Yeah, so at that time, I was just excited that I had discovered the Chin brothers. That's really quite incredible, and what I find fascinating too is, both fascinating and a little bit discouraging, is just how much digging has to be done to find these, you know, for lack of a better term, sort of legends and, you know, icons of the sport without ever having

[00:23:11] made it to that status of being icons. They were pioneers for so many of our communities, but we never have the opportunity to learn about their histories until people like you discover things, start uncovering these stories, writing them up, and sharing them for us to learn and grow, and I love that. I think that's so fascinating.

[00:23:42] One thing that you had mentioned actually on our call prior to us hitting record was the fact that when you go back into some of these histories, there's a little bit of dispute in people's memories. Was the fact that they didn't achieve the greatness that they could have achieved were we in different times? Was that a product of racism

[00:24:10] or was that simply because of their stature, their size on the ice or, you know, physical prowess or was it a lack of talent, lack of skill, lack of whatever? Did you find as you were talking to people and researching this story that there's a bit of a conflict in people's recollections about how race plays into these sorts of stories?

[00:24:41] Yes. In fact, when I was interviewing George Chin, so he and his two older brothers were the famous Chin line from their local hockey team. They grew up in a small town in southwestern Ontario called Lucknow. And we did talk about racism and if that ever played into you know, dashing their hopes for a future in the NHL. And even George did say to me they didn't really blatantly feel racism in the town that they were growing up in. They were a very loved family. Their father owned one of the local

[00:25:11] restaurants and they were just super popular among their classmates because they were athletic and they were good at school. They just blended into the community. They joined Girl Guides and Boy Scouts. They were part of the church youth group and you know, they were just like any other kid in town. So George told me that when they went on road games his brothers of course and himself would get you know, the razzing the teasing the name calling you know. And so they said that they just tried to ignore those comments

[00:25:40] and racial slurs as best they could by just being faster and scoring more goals and winning games. And so I think what came down to when they did notice some, you know, direct racism was when they were teenagers and they wanted to start dating and white families drew the line there and the father said no, you cannot date my daughter because you're Chinese. But they did say for the most part they grew up under a normal childhood with the exception of these you know,

[00:26:10] but even that he had to say there were these few times you know, led me to believe that it wasn't all rosy. You know, their childhood was probably idyllic for them and they didn't see themselves as any different. They were born in Canada and so when you ask this question yeah, it's interesting to wonder in that time you know, that era this is we're talking about the 1940s here and the Chinese Exclusion Act had not yet been repealed until 1947. So there was no such thing

[00:26:40] as a Canadian citizen for Chinese immigrants. They did not have the right to vote and so they were you know, this was the reality for many Chinese Canadian families and of course when that Exclusion Act was put in place in 1923 it basically barred family reunification and separated fathers from their wives and fathers from their children who were stuck in China. They could not come anymore. There was not even a head tax to pay anymore because the government of Canada

[00:27:10] just put this ban on all immigration. There was no chance even of you know, paying a tax to get in anymore. So 1923 was a very detrimental year for all Chinese Canadians and it lasted 24 years and so you think about, you know, that's two generations and a bit of not knowing you're a dad or not knowing your grandfather and, you know, the family unit was broken up. So the Chin brothers grew up during that era and I would

[00:27:40] like to also say, you know, going back a little bit when I was researching Larry Kwong, it was a thrill because I found lots of clippings about him and, but then I had to dig a lot and like you were saying, it's too bad that I needed to do this deep dive to find other legends and pioneers in the sport and although the reporters of the day, you know, did sprinkle their names here and there because they were phenomenal. They were, you know, basically dominating all the statistics and when you read some of the lopsided scores from,

[00:28:10] you know, their team beating another team like 18 to 2, 34 to 1, and you just realize that these kids were exceptional players of the game and their coaches knew it and their town knew it and so they were a little bit like the celebrities of the town. People would line up at their dad's restaurant to get autographs and so as the boys got older, like 15, 16, 17, scouts started showing up and so there were some clippings that I found that,

[00:28:40] you know, when I dug deep enough, mostly the Lucknow Sentinel is their local newspaper, lots of reports about them because the town loved them but then I looked into, you know, the Toronto Star and the Detroit paper, some of the larger papers, they did report on them as well but if I didn't know the Chin name I wouldn't have known to go look for them because now, 80, 90 years later, you know, the only mention I've seen of them is a handful of online articles, there was someone in the 1990s who wrote the first

[00:29:10] story about the Chin Brothers and then Silence of 30 Years and then another author, I found an article about them maybe 15 years ago and then most recently the Toronto Maple Leaf organization gave them credit for Asian Heritage Month which is now, right now, the month of May, Canada's Asian Heritage Month, they recognized the Chin Brothers by putting together a short, like two minute, three minute video, it's an animation about who the Chin Brothers were and it was done by the Toronto Maple Leafs organization. So they played it

[00:29:39] at the Maple Leaf Gardens, their new name is not Maple Leaf Gardens but where they play hockey and they celebrated the Chin Brothers and I thought that was great because, you know, just to give them a little bit of limelight that they missed out because they never made it to the NHL but they were a big deal because they were the first Asian, Chinese, Canadian hockey players to don the blue and white jersey. They actually got to wear the Toronto Maple Leafs logo because they went

[00:30:09] to training camp. So they were there with the team that went on to win a series of Stanley Cups in the late 40s and early 50s and Ted Kennedy, the future captain of the Maple Leafs for a whole, you know, dynasty, he was just a 19-year-old kid playing on the blue side and the Chin Brothers were playing on the white side so those blue and white games were like their exhibition games at the end of the inning and the newspapers reported on the blue and white games and all the stars

[00:30:38] of the Toronto Maple Leafs like, you know, Sweeney Shriner, the ones that, Babe Pratt, you know, names that you now go, oh, these are Hall of Famers and here, the Chin Brothers shared a sheet of ice with these guys, right, who were 19 plus but some were, you know, and here, George Chin's 15 years old, right, and speaking with his idols. So he was pretty thrilled when I interviewed him he said that it was like a dream come true

[00:31:08] getting to go to Owen Sound for this training camp but also they were toured around Toronto and they did see the gardens and the thing that impressed them the most was walking by the equipment room. They had never seen so many sticks and so many, you know, a lot of gear in there that they'd never seen before and, you know, these are kids who came from small town Ontario and to, you know, make it to that stage was just amazing. It was just exceptional. Wow. Let's back up just a little bit so that we get some definitions because I think

[00:31:38] that our listeners might not be familiar. So you were mentioning earlier a head tax. Could you define that really quickly? Yeah, sure. So at the beginning of Canadian history the railroad just like in the United States also was the connector between because we're such a vast country, right? And so when the Canadian Pacific Railway was proposed as a means to which British Columbia the province of British Columbia could connect they needed

[00:32:07] they needed laborers to come and build the railway and so cheap labor would come from China and so 17,000 or so Chinese laborers were brought into British Columbia to work on the Canadian Pacific Railway. This would have been in 1885. The completion of the railway was between was 1885 so it was like a four-year project. So when the Chinese Canadians came they were just a labor force and nobody expected them to stay or actually nobody wanted them to stay

[00:32:37] because of the anti-Asian climate of the day and some of the contractors reneged on their contract promises that after the completion of the railway each Chinese laborer would receive a boat ticket back to China and so when they were stranded in British Columbia and nowhere to go then they could only collect on the fringes of society and they couldn't live in the places where white people lived so that was the beginning of Chinatowns in Canada and so when this happened

[00:33:06] the greater population was not happy that all these Chinese laborers were still hanging around after the completion of the railway and they started devising ideas of how to get rid of Chinese people in Canada and so the head tax was first proposed as a $10 levy or they were thinking of like an entry tax so like in Australia they had a poll tax it was the same idea so you would have to be you would be charged a fee to enter the country and no other

[00:33:35] ethnic minority group in Canada was ever faced with attacks like this only Chinese Canadians and so at the beginning it was $50 in 1885 as a deterrent so that no more would come because the British Columbia was already you know in the words of the white politicians like overrun invaded by Chinese people and so $50 was supposed to be a deterrent and when that wasn't enough it was increased to $100 in 1901 and then it was increased yet again in 1904 to $500

[00:34:04] which is the equivalent of $17,000 Canadian nowadays so it was a very prohibitive tax it was meant to bar people from coming and yet the labourers were able to earn the money borrow the money and so even $500 was not enough to keep them out so the government of Canada finally said that's it we've tried the head tax since 1885 we are now it's 1923 and they now said we are going to impose a ban it was a federal law and banned all Chinese communities from entering

[00:34:34] the country and that lasted until after the Second World War ended and in 1947 it was finally repealed and so that in a nutshell it was the head tax so it was a deliberate fee that was imposed on Chinese immigrants only with the intention of keeping them out okay okay so interestingly so to kind of draw a little bit of a parallel to US history we had our own Chinese Exclusion Act here

[00:35:03] that was put into effect in 1882 there was no head tax there was just the exclusion and that ban was in effect all the way up until 1943 as a result of the fact that the US saw China as an ally against Japan during the war so naturally if you've got an ally you can't really ban them from coming to your country so yeah yeah so let's go back to hockey a little bit in talking

[00:35:33] about the Chinle they were incredibly talented they were their scoring numbers like you were saying putting up incredible goal numbers for their team what happened happened why can you speculate is there anything that you came across in your research that leads you to perhaps some theories maybe hypothesis as to why they never made it past you know broke into the NHL

[00:36:02] well yeah there's a lot of speculation and when I interviewed the Chin brothers so there were 14 children in the family and Rose and Charlie raised 11 sons and 3 daughters wow and the surviving children at the time of my interviews was George who was part of the Chin line and his younger brothers and one sister and when I asked them each this question what what held them back from being picked up

[00:36:31] by NHL teams especially when the Chin brothers had had this fantastic invitation to training camp in 1944 what happened and so in the newspapers of the day I couldn't really find any definite answer of course the reporters were saying making comments about their size George was 170 pounds and 5'7 when he was a teenager like when he was he said in his that was his weight going into University of Michigan and so you can speculate when he was

[00:37:01] 15 or 16 would have been a little bit smaller than that but Albert was only 5'2 and all muscle and Bill was probably the tallest of the three George challenged that he said I think I was taller than Bill but they were not you know large people and lightweight but they were quick and they were nimble and they were agile and so the newspapers of the day did you know speculate that oh probably because of their size they would never have survived in the NHL

[00:37:30] right of course they had the skill and talent to probably enter it but people were the naysayers said that they wouldn't you know thrive in an environment when you know heavy hitting and fighting and this is this is the generation of hockey that is opposite of what we see now all finesse and you know soft hands and fancy moves yeah and and like sorry to interject but you've got a guy like Cole Caulfield who 5'8 all of 175 pounds but he is lighting it up right now so

[00:38:01] I love it that the smaller stature players are getting the attention they deserve because it isn't all about brute force or falling right the game has changed so much as well but when the Chin brothers were playing they would have been subject to you know that kind of play they did receive a lot of just you know pushing and shoving because players couldn't keep up with them so there was just a lot of dirty moves and dirty play to stop them George told me that he was so fast on his feet he said speed was

[00:38:30] his secret weapon and he could just turn it up and he would be down in the offensive zone before the defense could even turn around he said he could skate faster backwards than the forwards could go forward and so I think that maybe size was a factor but you know at that time this is still what four years before Larry made the headlines of being the first Asian Canadian American or you know he played for the New York Rangers but he was around the same generation of George and his brothers

[00:39:01] and we know what happened to Larry he gets that one shift right one minute of it in one NHL game and so you know when the Windsor Spitfires they actually had two Chin brothers try out for them so in 1947 the junior team called the Windsor Spitfires they were holding tryouts and George tried out as did Bill George made the cut and so this was the only time in I think four years that the Chin line was broken up back in their home team of Lucknow

[00:39:30] and George went to play in Windsor and of course he led them to you know great statistics and championships and then he ended up getting a hockey scholarship to the University of Michigan and then led the Wolverines to three championships and so you could see that George was he was making it college hockey right he's recognized as being one of the top hockey men in the history of the U of M and so to go back in history and think

[00:39:59] well if George had been you know picked up by an NHL team what a trajectory for his life right that would have gone so differently for him George ended up going to university he earned a degree in geophysics and he earned a master's degree in England and then came back to Canada and you know he didn't play hockey ever well he did play a lot of beer league and he coached and he taught skating but you know as as far as a you know being NHL prospect that that all ended after he

[00:40:29] entered college and you know the closest he got to NHL fame was playing alongside or against Gordie Howe he and Mr. Hockey were friends and of course you know being a U of Michigan hockey player every year they played against the Detroit Red Wings for a friendly game and George said what a thrill it was to see Gordie come shake his hand at the end of these games and have a chat with him so I think George knew his talent

[00:40:59] was quite amazing but they never got any offers the brothers who tried out and of course George was only he was under 16 at the time when he tried out for the Toronto Maple Leafs he knew he wouldn't get an offer but his two older brothers sure were hoping they were the right age they were of that talent and they had gone to the training camp as well but Bill and Albert did not get any offers there were rumors that St. Michael's College at the University of Toronto were going to pick them up or a team in Port Colborne they were going to pick them up

[00:41:29] these were junior teams and they didn't hear from anybody after the tryouts they just resumed hockey life back in Lucknow where they continued to play George that year in Windsor and they played their final the chin line was together one last time in the 1948 season and they won the championship

[00:41:58] that year and by that time Bill had entered school he wanted to become a pharmacist and so he stayed in Lucknow to coach but he didn't play for their hockey because the chin line broke up when Bill went off to school and then by that time also George had won his scholarship to the U of Michigan and so to answer your question it is hard to speculate what the real reasons were that these boys did not end up playing in the NHL and remember this

[00:42:28] is the era when there were only six teams so when the Toronto Maple Leafs were interested in Bill first Detroit actually had sent a scout as well and thought that they had jumped all over the chin brothers first and half day actually clarified saying I actually have signed Bill chin the eldest of the three brothers and the two younger ones said where Bill goes we go and so Detroit had to let go of their claim so it was

[00:42:59] signed them and tried them out maybe they would have gone to a Detroit Red Wing training camp and who knows what happened there so all that is neither here nor there so

[00:43:29] was the way it was and sometimes the sports journalists they took a bit of liberty to add a little racial slur here and there just for fun but some of those comments were very clearly racist and others were off the cuff comments but you could tell that they were poking fun at their racial origins and so it was the research portion of this six page story that I wrote for the magazine it was so fascinating I just

[00:43:59] dove right into the era of the day this is second world war era you can imagine hockey might be the farthest things from people's minds because there's war at hand and a lot of hockey players themselves enlisted in the army or the air force and so hockey during the war I think there was a season or two where there was no hockey there's no Stanley cup right

[00:44:28] because of the world war but it was just so fascinating to follow these three chin brothers hockey career and not to mention their younger brothers who also played very good hockey but they didn't get so many headlines because they were not aligned it was not like the trio so much attention and because of the chemistry they had and they were just so entertaining to watch you know you read what the fans were saying and the journalists were saying they were just such solid entertainment and winning a lot

[00:44:58] yeah yeah wow so Debbie that was incredible to hear I do hope that after hearing this that you folks listening go check out this piece it's it's an incredible is there anything else that you would like to share any other projects that you're working on whether hockey related or not anything that you would want listeners to check out look

[00:45:27] into oh thank you for the opportunity the magazine that I mentioned earlier in the podcast called kayak magazine it's issue number 85 you can find it online as well and if you could

[00:45:56] there was an attempt at segregating Chinese Canadians from public school in Victoria BC so there's a lot of goodies in this issue there's even a story about interracial marriage of Chinese and First Nations in BC and there's a little spread just on my own personal story as well as some Second World War and First World War heroes of Chinese Canadian descent so it's a punchy package and I hope that everyone enjoys reading beyond Gold Mountain and also from head tax

[00:46:26] to hockey heroes I appreciate it so much absolutely thank you again for coming and hanging out with us today this has been a fantastic conversation oh it was my pleasure Nate and go Habs go absolutely well next season okay that does it for today's episode of the Asians in hockey podcast stay tuned for our next episode where I'll be chatting with Chi Yinsi coach and GM of the Tulsa Oilers Junior Hockey Club it was such an enlightening

[00:46:56] conversation so be sure to subscribe so you don't miss out thank you if you like what you heard leave us a five star review on Apple podcasts or Spotify and share this podcast with your friends to keep up with us on socials follow us on Instagram and threads at Asians in hockey and on blue sky at

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