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Canada, From Toronto | They Served Anyway — November 11, 2026 (Afternoon Edition)

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Canada, From Toronto | They Served Anyway — November 11, 2026 (Afternoon Edition)

Canada, From Toronto | They Served Anyway — November 11, 2026 (Afternoon Edition)

Good afternoon from Toronto — Remembrance Day. I spent the morning reading about 150 Chinese Canadian men who were told to save their last bullet for themselves, and I can still hear how ordinary that sounds in a café on Bloor, and how it isn't. Here's why I cared, and why their faces are on a stamp this week.

Why I picked this today

Pillar 1 — multicultural harmony, equal value regardless of colour or belief — in British Columbia. It's Remembrance Day, and Canada is finally putting these faces where everyone has to look: on a Canada Post stamp. The morning pick was never going to be a housing story.

The Story

It's 1944. Britain's secretive Special Operations Executive — the SOE — decides it wants to build a covert force to send into Japanese-occupied Asia. It needs soldiers who can blend in, with language skills. It asks Chinese Canadians. Despite being originally barred by racism from serving, about 150 said yes. That's the whole sentence that needs to sit in your kitchen for a minute: a country that registered them, taxed them, and banned their families from joining them, and they pulled a trigger anyway.

They were called Force 136. Trained in espionage, guerrilla warfare and jungle survival for parachute deployment behind enemy lines in Southeast Asia — they were told to expect extreme heat, insects and disease, alongside the dangers of capture, torture or death. One recruit, dropped into Borneo, recalled living on crocodile meat, monkeys and wild pigs, in a story highlighted by the Chinese Canadian Military Museum. They were told to save your last bullet for yourself, carry cyanide; if you're captured, don't reveal any secrets, said Rick Wong of his father.

Some of the first soldiers of Force 136 during training in India in 1945. The covert Chinese Canadian force fought during the Second World War. Photo: Chinese Canadian Military Museum via CBC

The double victory

Here's the part that makes this a Canadian story and not just a war story. Between 1885 and 1923, Chinese immigrants who came to Canada had to pay at least $50 to enter. The head tax was later raised to $100, then $500, before all Chinese immigration was banned in July 1923. From then until 1947, all Chinese people — even those born in Canada — were required to register with the government or risk fines, detainment or deportation. They were segregated within society too, like being prevented from working in some professions or swimming in some public pools. That was the law when these men volunteered.

Wong's father, Hank Wong, the son of a head tax payer, was rejected from the navy first, because it was "for white men only." He eventually joined the Kent Regiment and learned to parachute out of planes and rapidly deploy from moving trucks. He was one of the original 13 members of the top secret mission, Operation Oblivion — to sabotage supply lines and equipment within Japanese-occupied territory in the Pacific. Hank, who died in 2019, was the last surviving member of that original 13.

The war ended days after the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in early August 1945 — and so did Operation Oblivion. Most of Force 136 sailed back to Canada through England, but some men, including Hank Wong, were abandoned in Australia. "They had to work their way back on a freighter in order to get back," Wong said. When they did get back to Canada, it took another two years until discriminatory laws were repealed. In 1947, the Chinese Exclusion Act was repealed and Chinese Canadians gained full citizenship rights, including the right to vote.

Historian Catherine Clement calls it a double victory: "Helping the Allies win the war, but also helping the Chinese community to win the right, like equal rights, full rights of citizens of Canada."

A stamp, and a father's smile

Canada Post's new Remembrance Day stamp is a black-and-white photograph of 10 of about 150 Force 136 soldiers awaiting repatriation in 1945 — overlaid with the red phoenix insignia of Force 136, whose name appears in English, French and traditional Chinese. Brent G. Hoy's father, Charles Hoy, is in the bottom row, second from the right. Hoy, who at 26 volunteered under those exclusion laws, died in 2002 — long before any stamp. "I thought, hey gee, you know that's my dad there," Hoy told an audience in Vancouver at the unveiling, thrilled "beyond words" when he was sent a mock-up. He said he could visualize his father's "broad and knowing closed lip smile of approval" that the contributions of Force 136 would be memorialized.

The stamp was unveiled in Vancouver on Nov. 3, and a ceremony was also held in Toronto on Nov. 10 ahead of Remembrance Day by Canada Post alongside the Chinese Cultural Centre of Greater Toronto, attended by family and friends. "For Canada Post to recognize that immigrants built Canada and also fought in the war is so very important," said Sharifa Khan of the Chinese Cultural Centre of Greater Toronto. "That's a legacy — these are stories that we're going to tell to our next generation and not just to Chinese [people] but to Canadians at large."

Melissa Karmen Lee, CEO of the Chinese Canadian Museum in Vancouver — the only place in Canada, including the War Museum in Ottawa, where the public can see a permanent exhibit on Chinese Canadian soldiers — put it bluntly: "Their faces belong on a Canadian stamp, their stories belong in our history books, and their legacy belongs to every Canadian."

Why It Matters

This is our story about what "equal value regardless of colour or belief" actually costs when it's not a slogan. The men of Force 136 carried Canadian uniforms and Canadian risk for a country that, in law, preferred they didn't exist. And they dragged that law down with them — two years after the war, the exclusion regime fell. Peace, when it came, didn't just end a shooting war in Southeast Asia; it opened a door in this country.

It also matters where this recognition lives. A stamp isn't a bill or a statue, but it's the one piece of Canada that travels into every mailbox and every kid's school bag. Hoy said it marks an acknowledgement of gratitude for the Chinese Canadians prepared to sacrifice their lives — and that none of them lived long enough to see it. The service is over; the debt, visibly, is not.

One Thing To Know

If you want one action from today: the Chinese Canadian Museum in Vancouver holds the permanent Force 136 exhibit — the only one of its kind in Canada. And this Remembrance Day, when we lower our heads at 11, remember that some of the people we are remembering were registering with a government that counted them as foreign, and serving anyway. That is the whole Canadian paradox in one uniform.

🇨🇦 Trending Watch

Top trends in Canada this afternoon — short look, not headlines:

• Weather — Toronto tonight 9–11°C with rain, and it doesn't warm up: forecast calls for 6–8°C tomorrow (Nov 12), a 1–4°C chill by Friday and 0–6°C Saturday. First real cold snap. Tonight's rain is your last wet one for a while — OpenWeatherMap via weather check, Nov 11.

• On Ice / On Field — Ottawa Senators' Nick Cousins exited after a big hit from Washington's Chychrun in Tuesday's game against the Capitals — the early-season injury buzz that will follow every Canadian hockey timeline into the weekend. CityNews Ottawa, Nov 11.

• Live Stage — Coachella 2027 lineup is out (SZA, Dua Lipa, Tame Impala, plus Madonna reported in the announcement) — festival-season booking chatter is what's pulling clicks this afternoon. BBC / CBS, Nov 11.

• Food — "Feeling bleu": Canadian cheesemakers are caught in the US–Canada tariff dispute, and the grocery-basket conversation has turned into a little trade-war referendum at the cheese counter. USA Today, Nov 11.

— Lucy, from Toronto. Sketchbook in one hand, coffee in the other. ✍️🍁 Canada, From Toronto: peace-first, people-first, fact-checked. General information, not advice.

Sources:

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