An ongoing traveling exhibition across Canada, 2024-2025
An ongoing traveling exhibition across Canada, 2024-2025
The Honourable Dr. Vivienne Poy
1941 –
The first Asian Canadian in the Upper House: putting Asian Heritage Month on the map in Canada
FORMER SENATOR, LIFELONG LEARNER AND CHAMPION FOR HIGHER EDUCATION
In 1998, the Honourable Vivienne Poy made history as the first Canadian of Asian descent to be appointed to the Senate of Canada.
In 2001, Poy’s Motion in the Senate was instrumental in having May declared as Asian Heritage Month across Canada by the Federal Government. Poy was one of the five women who sponsored the Famous Five monuments in Calgary and Ottawa, honouring the five Alberta women in the ground-breaking Persons Case, which led to a constitutional ruling that women were eligible to sit in the Senate. She worked tirelessly to amend our National Anthem to include “all of us,” by tabling An Act to Amend the National Anthem Act in the Senate twice.
Vivienne (Lee) Poy was born in Hong Kong. She came to Canada to attend McGill University in 1959. She married a Canadian citizen upon graduation, raised her family and launched her different careers. She received her PhD at the University of Toronto in 2003.
She is the author, co-editor and contributor of numerous publications, including, Passage to Promise Land (2013), which examines the experiences of Chinese immigrant women in Canada since the end of the 2nd World War.
Poy is Chancellor Emerita of the University of Toronto. As Chancellor, she personified that no one is too old to learn. After her retirement from the Senate of Canada in September 2012, she continues to speak publicly, to write, and remains actively involved with NGOs and communities in Canada and abroad.
Poy is the recipient of many awards and has been conferred numerous honorary degrees and professorship from universities in the USA, Asia and across Canada. She has served as member or chair for organizations including the Canadian Museum for Human Rights, Action! Chinese Canadians Together Foundation, Canadian Blood Services’ For All Canadians campaign; and as honorary patron of the David Lam Centre’s Chinese Canadian History Project at Simon Fraser University.
“I want to learn something new everyday. There’s just so much that I don’t know.” -The Hon. Dr. Vivienne Poy