{"id":227832,"date":"2021-04-15T22:16:12","date_gmt":"2021-04-15T19:16:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/en.buradabiliyorum.com\/one-young-journalists-experience-writing-obituaries-for-covid-19-victims\/"},"modified":"2021-04-15T22:16:12","modified_gmt":"2021-04-15T19:16:12","slug":"one-young-journalists-experience-writing-obituaries-for-covid-19-victims","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/one-young-journalists-experience-writing-obituaries-for-covid-19-victims\/","title":{"rendered":"#One young journalist’s experience writing obituaries for COVID-19 victims"},"content":{"rendered":"

“#One young journalist’s experience writing obituaries for COVID-19 victims<\/strong>”<\/p>\n

\n Tess Jieun Ha: Reaching out to people who lost loved ones to COVID-19 was a daunting assignment. But having the opportunity to describe the rich lives of Asian Canadians was an honour.\n <\/div>\n
\n Tess Jieun Ha graduated from multimedia<\/a> journalism at\u00a0Seneca College in Toronto. As a Korean Canadian, she wants\u00a0to share stories from Asian Canadian communities.<\/em><\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t think that\u2019s respectful for the family members.\u201d<\/p>\n

This is the first thing I heard from my very traditional parents when I told them I was writing obituaries of people who had passed away from COVID-19. My journalism class at Seneca College in Toronto was participating in the Maclean\u2019s<\/i> They Were Loved project.<\/p>\n

I understood my parents\u2019 concerns. In Korean culture, people perceive death differently than they do in Western cultures. Our funerals, which stretch to three days, are usually very quiet. There\u2019s no eulogy. There are no heartwarming stories about the deceased that family members share. It\u2019s a different kind of respect we show to the deceased. With this in mind, there was undeniable stress for me as I began my work on the obituaries. I kept thinking to myself, \u201cWhat if I\u2019m disturbing their mourning? They are already going through so much.\u201d At the same time, I kept reassuring myself that some people would want to talk about their loved ones.<\/p>\n

When my efforts to reach the family members of those whose names I\u2019d been given didn\u2019t pan out, I saw an opportunity to take the assignment in a unique direction. I\u2019ve always felt there is an under-representation of Asians in Canadian media. It\u2019s very rare to see interviews with non-English speakers, for example, and fewer interviews mean fewer stories. So I decided to search for victims of COVID-19 from Asian communities. In Korean, I googled \u201cpassing,\u201d \u201cKorean\u201d and \u201cCOVID-19.\u201d To my surprise, there was only one publicly known COVID-19 death in the Korean Canadian community.<\/p>\n

\"Kyu-Chin<\/p>\n

Kyu-Chin \u201cJim\u201d Hahn (Courtesy of Bob Hahn)<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

A short obituary for Kyu-Chin \u201cJim\u201d Hahn<\/a> was published in a Korean-language news<\/a>paper called the Korea Times Daily<\/i>. I called the newspaper, and the reporter I spoke with generously reached out to Jim\u2019s son and put the two of us in touch. His son, Bob, called me a few days later. There was no hiding that I was nervous during the phone call, but Bob remained calm and gentle throughout the conversation. We agreed that email would be the best way for us to communicate; I would send him questions and he\u2019d write me long replies talking about his dad\u2019s 90 years of life. I also found an autobiography Jim wrote for the alumni website of Seoul National University\u2019s faculty of agriculture. I learned that he pursued agriculture at a young age with dreams of helping developing countries prosper; he achieved the dream when he became a UN consultant. I learned that he immigrated to Canada because, as a veteran of the Korean War, he didn\u2019t want his children to experience war the way he had. I felt grief for his unfortunate death and I began to feel passionate about sharing people\u2019s stories.<\/p>\n

\"Foon<\/p>\n

Foon Hay Lum (Courtesy of Helen Lee)<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

COVID-19 gave rise to anti-Asian xenophobia in Canada and around the world. It was a scary reality that Asians lived in. Through the president of the Chinese Canadian National Council for Social Justice, Amy Go, I learned about the passing of Foon Hay Lum<\/a>, who died at age 111. I spoke with Foon\u2019s granddaughter Helen Lee, who was already documenting and honouring Foon\u2019s legacy. During our phone call, Helen described her grandma as a resilient fighter who overcame every challenge life threw at her. She raised two children on her own without seeing her husband for decades. She was an exceptional activist in her senior years, representing the lo wah kiu<\/i>, Chinese Canadians who suffered due to Canada\u2019s head tax and the Exclusion Act in the early 20th century. I can\u2019t even fathom what she must have felt when Stephen Harper\u2019s government made a parliamentary apology to the lo wah kiu <\/i>in 2006. I felt honoured to commemorate her life.<\/p>\n

The obituaries in They Were Loved are short, only about 300 words. They are meant to convey something specific and evocative about each person\u2019s life. While writing about Jim and Foon, I focused on their dreams and how they achieved them. To anyone who knew them personally, my obituaries only cover a fraction of their inspiring lives. But I\u2019ve tried my best to echo the difference they made in the world and show the rich lives of Asian Canadians.<\/p>\n\n

They Were Loved is a collaboration between Maclean\u2019s and Carleton University\u2019s Future of Journalism Initiative. The project works with hundreds of journalism students at colleges and universities across Canada to pay tribute to everyone in Canada and every Canadian abroad who dies of COVID-19. If you have lost someone to COVID-19 and would like them to be included in They Were Loved, please tell us about your loved one.<\/p>\n

This article app<\/a>ears in print in the <\/em>Maclean\u2019s 2021 Canadian Universities Guidebook with the headline, \u201cThe chance to share stories.\u201d Order a copy of the issue here. Subscribe to the monthly print magazine here<\/a>.<\/em>
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