1989: Take a mild-mannered, senior industrial engineer who lives in Montreal West with his wife and children, slowly add a cause that dates back 108 years, hook him up with an established producer, et voila...

While serving as the chair for the Montreal Redress Committee, William Ging Wee Dere calls an old acquaintance, Malcolm Guy, to help produce a video to further the committee's attempts to get retribution for the $23 million paid by Chinese who immigrated to Canada between 1885 and 1923. The 10- to 15-minute piece will briefly describe the Head Tax (money paid for entrance to Canada) and the Exclusion Act, 1923-1947 (which prohibited Chinese immigration), and the effect these immigration policies had on the Chinese people of Canada.

Dere's family history is a story thousands of Chinese people in Canada can claim as their own. Dere was conceived during the last of three visits his father was able to make back to China to see his bride during the 48 years he was in Canada. Dere and his mother arrived in Canada in 1956: he was seven, and had no memory of his father.

Fewer than 50% of the Chinese pioneers' wives, known as the Gold Mountain Widows, ever made it to Canada; because of the Exclusion Act, they couldn't join their husbands. Dere decides to expand his project to feature length.

Spring 1990: The film treatment and outline are completed. With a $175,000 budget, Dere applies to the Canada Council under the Explorations Program and is turned down. He reapplies with co-director Malcolm Guy.

Despite a no-fund situation, Dere fulfills a life-long goal and travels to his native village in Thailand with a Hi-8 video camera. Dere and Guy have spent about $20,000 of their own money.

Summer 1990: Canada Council kicks in $26,000.

Dere's network of volunteer researchers (teams in Vancouver, Ottawa, Montreal and Toronto) have tracked down the remaining men who originally paid the Head Tax. (Fewer than 1,000 men of the original 81,000 are still alive.)

The grant money is immediately spent on film stock and crews to interview these people, "while their stories are still with them and they are still with us," explains Guy. Eight days of filming in Montreal and Toronto. The National Film Board's Program to Assist Filmmakers in the Private Sector grant equivalent to $20,000 is in.

Fall 1990: Dere and Guy prepare a Multiculturalism and Immigration Canada application, and begin to consider approaching sogic and Telefilm Canada for backing.

March 1991: Multiculturalism kicks in $29,730.

April/June 1991: Fourteen days of shooting in Montreal, Toronto and Ottawa.

May 1991: The nfb comes in with an additional $10,000 in services, photo animations, etc. They apply to sogic and Telefilm. sogic says no because there are no broadcast licences in place.

Summer 1991: Fourteen days of shooting in Montreal, Toronto and Ottawa. Dere and Guy search for licences to qualify for grants.

September 1991: Contracts are signed with Vision tv ($25,000), Knowledge Network in b.c. ($2,000), and TV5 ($15,000). Dere books a second trip to Thailand, this time with a crew.