I Refuse to Disappear: Racialized Women Fighting for Space in Canada

Season 3 Episode 5

I Refuse to Disappear: Racialized Women Fighting for Space in Canada

In this episode of She They Us, host Andrea Reimer continues the series exploring how women and gender-diverse people create belonging in housing systems that were never designed for them. Building on the previous episode’s conversation with four Black women, Andrea traces the deeper roots of Canada’s housing inequities, roots grounded not in a neutral “free market,” but in policy choices about who was permitted to belong. In this episode, she turns to the histories of Chinese immigration in the late 1800s and early 1900s, and then those racialized women who came from the 1960s onward after decades of exclusion in Canadian immigration policy. Their experiences  as Chinese, Indo-Caribbean and Palestinian women reveal how exclusion, displacement, and segregation shaped not only neighbourhoods, but generations of families seeking safety, stability, and home.

Andrea speaks first with Catherine Clement, a community historian whose work on Chinese-Canadian memory awakened her own connection to a heritage she had long pushed aside. Catherine walks us through the stark realities of the Chinese Exclusion Act and head tax era: a bachelor society of nearly 50,000 men and just over 1,300 women, forced family separation, and housing conditions so grim that many preferred the street to the overcrowded rooms where up to four men shared a single bed. She reveals how the effects of those laws continued long after repeal, through lingering prejudice, restricted mobility, and the silence families carried as they tried to build new lives in a country that had kept them at the margins.

The episode then shifts to Toronto, where Ceta Ramkhalawansingh, an immigrant from Trinidad, describes how she became an “accidental housing activist” in 1971 when her student co-op discovered that their entire block was slated for redevelopment. What followed was a years-long organizing effort; students, newcomers, draft dodgers, and working-class tenants pushing back against absentee landlords, neglected repairs, and powerful landowners. Ceta’s story is ultimately one of community power: how ordinary neighbours challenged a system designed to erase them, and in doing so, transformed the landscape of housing rights in Canada’s largest city.

Andrea also sits down with Adeem Younis, an architect from Gaza whose journey to Canada began as a temporary fellowship abroad and turned into an unexpected flight from war with nothing but the clothes she was wearing. Landing in a country where she knew no one, Adeem ran a gauntlet of homelessness, unsafe rentals, and months of bed-bug-infested rooms before finally securing a small apartment she has since transformed into a vibrant, colourful home filled with plants, memories of Palestine, and the scent of food that reminds her she is still alive, still rooted. Today, she works with newcomers, refugees, and asylum seekers—many of them women fleeing violence, war, and impossible choices—offering the support she once longed for. Adeem’s story brings the episode into the present, revealing how displacement, dignity, and the search for safety continue to shape the lives of women arriving in Canada right now, and how courage becomes its own form of belonging.

Guests

• Catherine Clement is a community historian, author, and curator whose work excavates Chinese-Canadian memory and history. A former Vancouver Foundation executive and communications leader, she’s now bringing the untold stories of Chinese-Canadians to life through exhibitions and books.
• Ceta Ramkhalawansingh is an Indo-Caribbean city builder, feminist, and housing activist. She spent 30 years at Toronto City Hall introducing groundbreaking equity and human rights policies, served as Toronto City Councillor, and continues organizing for social housing and community power in her neighborhood
• Adeem Younis is a Palestinian architect, community developer, and settlement worker. Originally from Gaza, she now supports refugees and asylum seekers—particularly women fleeing violence—as they navigate housing, integration, and rebuilding lives with dignity in British Columbia.

Music by: Reid Jamieson & CVM, from The Pigeon & The Dove, an original folk opera about housing insecurity and the many roads you can take to end up on the street.  https://linktr.ee/reidjamieson

Organizations Mentioned in the Podcast

• Pan-Canadian Voice for Women’s Housing — https://pcvwh.ca
• The Paper Trail to the 1923 Chinese E