A fter more than a year of sequestering herself in a church to avoid deportation, Lucy Lu is once again able to walk outside. The victory has been marred, however, by the war wounds of her battle to stay in Canada. The story is riddled with uncertainties that make it necessary to focus only on the facts concerning her past, victorious present, and undetermined future in order to come out of this tale with any semblance of understanding.
Murder in the Details
On 13 March, 1985, He Zhang Zhao was hacked to death with a meat cleaver in his downtown Toronto walk-up and dragged outside to die in the snow. The Chinese national had been living with his wife, Kuei Kuan Zhao, alias Kue Fuen Zhao, aka Lucy Lu, and his father. After three mistrials, Lu entered a guilty plea for the murder and was given a 10-year sentence. However, Lucy claims the story was “concocted by the lawyer” and she signed only under “a great deal of pressure.” Since she was not a Canadian citizen at the time of her conviction, Canadian law labels her as “unwanted” and stipulates that when her sentence is over, she must be sent back to China.
Lu went to jail with the threat of deportation hanging over her. While in prison, she met a shoe-store owner and his wife who were doing Christian outreach at Lucy’s penitentiary, the Kingston Prison for Women. According to Lu, she found Jesus while incarcerated and formed a deep bond both with Christ and the couple from Kingston. After serving approximately two years, Lu was released and decided to settle in Kingston and build a life for herself. She claims she had nothing to go back to in Toronto, since she has not spoken to her former father-in-law since the trial and does not care to see her friends again. In Kingston, on the other hand, she was able to find a job in the couple’s shoe store, a new life and a new husband who has stood by her through every tribulation of her trial. Then it all crashed down again when she received notice that the long-awaited date of her deportation had arrived, and was scheduled just 30 days after her wedding.
Blessed Sanctuary
Upon receiving her deportation order, Lu naturally tried to fight it. She applied for refugee status, but that failed. Then she appealed on humanitarian and compassionate grounds, but this was also rejected.
After 11 lawyers and many fruitless attempts, Lu and her new husband Darryl Gellner had almost given up.
As a last-ditch attempt to remain in Canada, Lu sought sanctuary in the church where she had remarried and attended services she remained there for over a year. Interestingly, Lu claims that the idea to seek sanctuary in the Calvary Bible Church did not come from her or her husband, but from their spiritual leader, who died before the plan was undertaken. The couple cannot remember the names of any of the others who helped them persuade the church, but are adamant that the members of the church board, along with the greater Kingston community, were “100 per cent behind this.”
Her life in the church was mundane—playing board games, talking to the neighbourhood women and bathing herself in a large basin.
Her husband, meanwhile, took up the crusade and contacted as many influential Ontarians and media sources as he could.
Together with sympathetic public figures who wrote articles, spoke on call-in radio shows and wrote letters, Gellner managed to solicit somewhere between 10,000 and 100,000 letters of support (the exact figures are contested). In conversation, Gellner refers to constructive comments and promises of support from such figures as Peter Milliken, the speaker of the House of Commons, and famed Toronto lawyer Mendel Greene (who were both unavailable for comment on her case).
He also speaks with adoration of “the phenomenal support” from local news reporter Annette Phillips and other writers who rallied to Lucy’s cause, one even comparing her journey to that of Christ in a recent Globe and Mail op-ed.
The Latest Developments
Gellner claims this immense public pressure forced the government to finally back down from the stalemate to which the opposing groups had been reduced. Earlier, Rejean Cantlon, spokesman for the Ministry of Immigration, had articulated his ministry’s official stance, stating that it had to “respect the sanctity of the church” and would wait until Lucy enacted “effective removal from the church on her own.” When asked why it took over five years for Lu to receive her deportation order, Cantlon says “women have different waiting periods than men,” and China was slow in sending her travelling papers. These assertions raise some tricky questions for the government, one of the more pressing being if the ancient law of sanctuary should still be followed in these multicultural and multi-religious times. Now, the government appears to have altered its stance slightly, offering Lu a three-year stay, a change that has coincided with the arrival of the new Immigration Minister, Denis Coderre. Ministry spokesman Cantlon is now referring all queries on Lu to Milliken, who has remained difficult to track down. What is available, however, is written proof, in the actual deportation order, that the government waited until the most intense scrutiny of the media storm had passed before backing down. Gellner says the three-year stay of deportation is the work of Coderre and Lu’s “support in Ottawa.” Gellner also points to the upcoming election and speculates, “The Liberal government was worried about losing Kingston in the next election.” If all this is true, why was Lu given only a temporary reprieve and not a complete pardon? In any case, Darryl and Lucy are ecstatic about her release from the church. They have won this round of what Gellner calls his wife’s “waiting game.” Gellner also says he is restricted by his own morals, as well as the advice of his lawyers, from mentioning what the particular nature of these politics is, since his accusations implicate a sitting judge on the Ontario circuit. Lucy has resumed her job at the shoe store and they have moved into Darryl’s apartment.
The Implications of the Lu Case
Lucy Lu’s fight to stay in Canada continues to provoke controversy and polarize opinions. Her supporters assert that Lu has paid her debt to society and should not be forced to return to a country she claims will try her again for the same crime; others say that if exceptions are made for one woman, claimants in the future may turn to the Lu case as a precedent. This possibility would undermine the vested authority of the laws.
While these are several of the troubling consequences of this case, they in no way cover all of the moral and ethical implications Lu’s plight raises. It is quite possible that even three years from now, we will still be waiting for the real answer to the question, “Whatever happened to Lucy Lu?”
Special thanks to Prof. Joanne Bargman.
