30. KIM CRAITOR

There are a number of captioned photos of KIM CRAITOR (b. Sept. 1946) on the Niagara Falls Ching Ming Festival website. I had thought about these pictures as a mutually beneficial photo op: enhancing his political popularity and raising the Chinese community profile.

However, that simplistic opinion had been formed before meeting Kim Craitor at the Ching Ming Festival this year.

I still believe the spin-offs from his attendance at the festival as being correct but I also sense something else.

Googling “Kim Craitor”, I note much attention has been devoted to his public face – human resource development, alderman, MPP, and currently, returning alderman – but little about his personal background has been revealed. Incidentally, wife Helen and a son Christopher are mentioned.

When Kim Craitor worked on Bill 33: an act to amend the Children’s Law Reform Act giving grandparents access to their grandchildren, he met with petitioning grandparents. In the provincial legislature, he related his experiences, what they meant to him as well as disclosing he had not been raised by his biological parents:

One personal story – and I think I should share mine. You know, politics is a funny world. People sometimes think we do everything because it's politically what we do. I never knew my parents. I was raised through the children's aid society. Somehow, while I was going through that system, these two elderly people, for whatever reason, took me in, kept me and raised me. They were very elderly. To me, they're my parents, but in fact if you look at their age, they were really grandparents. I often wonder where I would have been in my life and what would have happened to me if those two kind people hadn't taken me in. When these grandparents came to see me and sat with me, some of those personal experiences that you have in your life come forward and you realize the significance of what grandparents mean and the roles they play in their grandchildren's lives. So that is also one of the motivating factors that convinced me that this was the right thing to do.” (Hansard, L033: April 28, 2008)

What I discern from Kim Craitor’s remarks are:
(a) His life may have been an uncertain one; and
(b) He reflects on family relationships.


Connections can be unseen unless they are pointed out. That is what happened for me at this year’s Ching Ming Festival.

The Ching Ming Festival MC introduced Kim Craitor as “our cousin”.

“Interesting,” I had thought at the time.

Kim Craitor began, “For those of you who don’t know me, my heritage is Chinese.”

He elaborated on his title: “And we sort of have this standing joke in Niagara Falls: I have more cousins than anyone else. We never say hello to each other, we say ‘hello, cousin’.”

I’ve been thinking about this explanation.

Having attended the Ching Ming Festival for the past 10 to 12 years, Kim Craitor may have run out of different things to open with before extending his greetings and good wishes, or perhaps, he was clarifying his place: not just to newcomers like me but also to himself.

Why do I suspect this?

When I spoke to the gathering later on, I could name my parents, connect myself to Niagara Falls Chinatown by growing up there, and even speak a bit of Toisan, but in my heart of hearts I knew there was a disconnect.

I didn’t really belong. I had been away from Niagara Falls for decades.

I was still Chinese but westernized. I belonged to neither world wholly.

Addressing the crowd at Ching Ming Festival and writing this blog are my ways of re-connecting with my heritage.

Although I have met Kim Craitor only on this one occasion, I believe, like me, he is trying to understand what being Chinese means.


I applaud his return to Ching Ming Festival year after year and . . . reflect.

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