Susan Eng, a trailblazing civic leader, tireless advocate for human rights, and a fearless lawyer who called power to account, passed away on July 26, 2025, surrounded by her beloved family. She was 72.
Born in Toronto as a daughter of a head-tax payer, Susan saw firsthand the impact of discriminatory government policies on minority groups. Seeing her father sew his Chinese head tax certificate to his undergarment – for fear of getting deported – fueled Susan’s desire to fight against all forms of injustice.
A straight-A student in high school, Susan was told by the school’s guidance counsellor that she should get a job as a secretary after graduation. Undeterred, Susan went to law school and became a lawyer instead. Susan rose through the ranks and eventually became one of a handful Asian Canadians to make partner at a major law firm in Toronto.
Susan’s drive to build a stronger democracy compelled her to leave her legal practice. In 1989, the Ontario Government appointed Susan to the then Metropolitan Toronto Police Services Board [TPSB], making her the first Chinese Canadian – and the only Chinese Canadian woman ever – to receive such an appointment. Susan served as the Chair of TPSB between 1991 and 1995. In that role, Susan pushed for greater police accountability in all aspects of the police operation, from the use of force to budgetary oversight. Under her stewardship, Toronto Police adopted the first ever telephone translation services for 911 calls in over 140 languages, which significantly improved access to police services for diverse cultural and linguistic minority communities. She also pushed for mandatory reporting of each time an officer unholstered their gun. Her commitment to strengthen civilian oversight made her a target of the Toronto police, who conducted illegal eavesdropping on her for several years.
Susan was also deeply involved in the Chinese Canadian community. She joined the Chinese Canadian National Council (CCNC) in 1980 when it was established, after the airing of “Campus Giveaway”, an episode on CTV W5 in which Chinese Canadians were portrayed as foreigners who took away the seats of Canadian students in professional faculties in universities.
In the mid 1980s, CCNC launched its campaign to seek redress for the racist Chinese Head Tax and Exclusion Act. After the class action lawsuit brought forward by head tax payers and their families was dismissed by the Ontario Court of Appeal in the early 2000s, Susan reinvigorated the campaign by co-founding the Ontario Coalition of Head Tax Payers and Families and became its co-chair. One of her most spectacular contributions was persuading VIA Rail to donate over 100 rides, the “Redress Express”, so that head tax payers, families, and supporters from across Canada could travel to Ottawa to lobby Parliament. On June 22, 2006, Prime Minister Stephen Harper delivered a formal apology in the House of Commons for the sixty-two years of legislated racism. Susan’s leadership in bringing about this historic apology cannot be overstated.
In 2019, Susan co-founded the Chinese Canadian National Council for Social Justice (CCNC-SJ). Susan played a critical role in steering CCNC-SJ through the pandemic that saw Chinese Canadians under attack due to brazen anti-Asian hate. Initiated by Susan, CCNC-SJ conducted a national poll in 2020 revealing pervasive and deeply troubling anti-Chinese views among Canadians, thus drawing national attention to the rise of anti-Asian racism in Canada.
Susan’s advocacy extended beyond race and ethnicity. As Vice President of Advocacy for the Canadian Association of Retired Persons (CARP) for eight years, she transformed the organization into a more inclusive voice for older adults. Under her leadership, CARP expanded its focus beyond the needs of affluent retirees to speak out for racialized, low-income, and otherwise marginalized seniors. Her strategic and passionate approach bolstered CARP’s public presence, cementing its role as a national advocate for seniors.
Susan’s commitment to amplifying the voices of seniors dated back to the 1990s when she supported Dr. Joseph Wong in establishing Yee Hong Centre for Geriatric Care, the first nursing home for Chinese Canadian seniors. Susan’s contributions to Yee Hong’s fundraising initiatives and in securing bed licenses were immeasurable. She was instrumental in helping Yee Hong obtain its charitable status in record breaking time. Susan subsequently served as the board chair of Yee Hong Centre and oversaw the center’s expansion from the initial 155 beds to 835 beds. After her time as a board member, Susan continued to support Yee Hong as a member of the Board of Governors.
Susan was also an outspoken ally of the LGBTQ+ community. In the 1990s, she worked with the Coalition Against Homophobia and later contributed to training initiatives with the Community Alliance for Accessible Treatment (CAAT), a coalition promoting the health care access and well-being of racialized and newcomer people living with HIV.
Susan also served on the boards and governing bodies of groups such as Canadian Civil Liberties Association, Urban Alliance on Race Relations, and YWCA of Greater Toronto. She sat for three successive terms on the governing council of the University of Toronto and received the Arbor Award for her voluntary services to the university. Susan also received the YWCA Women of Distinction Award.
Susan’s work and dedication to the community continued even as her health began to deteriorate within the past year. Just days before she passed, Susan was still providing her input on how to document the important advocacy work within the Chinese Canadian community through the creation of archives.
With all her outstanding accomplishments, Susan remained, till the very end, a loving and devoted daughter to her mother, a caring yet awe-inspiring big sister to her three younger siblings, and a proud and doting aunt to all her nieces and nephews.
To her friends, Susan will be remembered for her sense of humour, her passion for food, and her no-nonsense approach to life.
Susan’s passing represents a great loss not only to her family and to the Chinese Canadian community, but to all of Canada. Her legacy lives on in the institutions she helped shape, the policies she influenced, and the generations of advocates she mentored and inspired. Those who knew and admired her hope to honor that legacy through the continued collection and preservation of Chinese Canadian community archives—an enduring tribute to her vision and lifelong dedication.
Social justice advocate Susan Eng fought for equity in Canadian policing
Ms. Eng was the first Chinese Canadian to head the Metropolitan Toronto Police Services Board. She was a co-founder of the Chinese Canadian National Council for Social Justice. And she was the vice-president of advocacy for the Canadian Association of Retired Persons (CARP) where, for eight years, she spoke out on behalf of racialized and low-income seniors and pressed the government for changes to the Canada Pension Plan that have helped all Canadians.
Ms. Eng was born in Toronto on Aug. 24, 1952, and attended Jarvis Collegiate, where she was an excellent student. She went on to obtain a law degree from Osgoode Hall, specializing in the complex field of taxation, and was one of the few Asian Canadian lawyers of her generation to make partner at a major Toronto law firm.
In 1984, she ran for a seat on Toronto’s City Council. At one of the all-candidates’ meetings, fellow candidate and lawyer Peter Maloney was asked about his stance on abortion. He replied that, as a male and as a gay man, he was unlikely ever to be required to make decisions about the procedure. Ms. Eng “came up to me after that meeting and said, ‘I really like that answer that you gave,’ and we discussed it,” Mr. Maloney says. Neither of them won the council seat but they became long-time close friends.
“She was a powerful intellect,” Mr. Maloney says. “She was an empath, always concerned about her effect on other people but not shy of perhaps rubbing someone the wrong way.”
That fearlessness was on public display after her appointment, in 1989, to sit on what was then called the Metropolitan Toronto Police Services Board. At her swearing-in ceremony, Ms. Eng refused to pledge an oath to the Queen, and instead promised to be loyal to Canadians.
She was named chair of the police board in 1991 and served in that position until 1995, earning praise for her work to increase public oversight and expand the cultural and linguistic diversity of police services. But she also made some powerful enemies on the force who did not appreciate the change that was being demanded of them. Ms. Eng was believed to be the target of unauthorized eavesdropping by police for several years.
At one point, Mr. Maloney learned his own phones were being wiretapped, ostensibly because one of his clients was facing drug charges. He let Ms. Eng know about the surveillance and the two ended telephone communication for several months until Mr. Maloney was informed that the taps on his lines had been lifted.
“The suspicion always existed that one of the benefits of wiretapping me, using that as an excuse, is they wanted to listen to our conversations,” Mr. Maloney says. “Apparently, we were followed constantly when we were having lunch together or dinner together.”
When Ms. Eng was head of Toronto’s police services board, the force adopted the first-ever telephone translation services for 911 calls in over 140 languages. She also pushed for mandatory reporting of each time an officer unholstered their gun.
“I believe Susan became the template for today’s civilian governance of police in Ontario and, dare I say, across Canada,” Hamlin Grange, a diversity and inclusion strategist and the founder of DiversiPro, said in a tribute posted after Ms. Eng’s death. “She inspired generations of civic leaders and activists who sought reforms in policing. Her tenure was defined by her insistence on accountability, transparency and equity. She was one of the earliest public officials in Canada to speak openly about systemic racism in policing and the need for reforms to address the disproportionate impact on racialized communities.”
Ms. Eng was an outspoken member and advocate for social-justice organizations including the Canadian Civil Liberties Association, the Urban Alliance on Race Relations and the YWCA of Greater Toronto. She worked with the Coalition Against Homophobia in the 1990s and helped to promote access to health care for racialized people and newcomers to Canada who were living with HIV.
Throughout her life, Ms. Eng was deeply committed to the Chinese community. In the 1990s, she helped Dr. Joseph Wong establish the Yee Hong Centre for Geriatric Care, the first nursing home for Chinese Canadian seniors, which now has multiple locations across the Greater Toronto Area.
She joined the Chinese Canadian National Council (CCNC) in 1980 after a documentary on the CTV news magazine program W5 portrayed Canadian-born Chinese students as unfairly taking away prized placements from non-Chinese Canadians in professional university courses like medicine and dentistry.
The CCNC brought a class-action suit in the 1980s seeking redress for the Chinese Head Tax and Exclusion Act. The case was dismissed but the anger of people like Ms. Eng, whose family had been so deeply affected by the racist policy, continued to simmer.
In an opinion piece titled Tell It To My Father, which she wrote for The Globe and Mail in 2002, Ms. Eng said: “No amount of apology will remove my pain on discovering his head-tax certificate after his death. He had kept it folded in his wallet for more than 50 years because the stamp on the back read: ‘It is necessary that this certificate be carefully preserved as it is of value as a means of identification.’ No one told him that there was now a Charter of Rights and Freedoms, that he could not be stopped on the street and asked to justify his right to remain in Canada.”
Ms. Eng revitalized the movement for head-tax redress in the early 2000s, and six months after the event at Toronto City Hall, Prime Minister Stephen Harper delivered a formal apology in Parliament.
Carol Bream, another long-time friend, recalls a visit she and her husband paid to Ms. Eng’s home in Toronto. “At one point she showed me the head-tax certificate,” Ms. Bream says. “And both of us started to cry, because that was just such an unbelievable thing that the people had to suffer through.”
Ms. Eng’s work on behalf of the Chinese community continued to her final days. From her hospital bed, she was in discussions with Ms. Go about documenting the history of Chinese activism in Canada.
Part of a close-knit family, she also organized weekly dinners for her siblings and their children at her mother’s house in Toronto. To the end, says Mr. Maloney, she minimized her own suffering from cancer to soothe the anxieties of family members and friends.
James Lockyer, the Toronto lawyer and prominent social justice advocate who was a close friend of Ms. Eng’s for more than a decade, calls her a pioneer. “Her time as chair of the Toronto police services board was fearless and unprecedented in the face of huge opposition from police chiefs and the police union, and she should always be seen as the role model for police accountability,” Mr. Lockyer says. “She was a magnificent advocate who always achieved her cause. … We will miss her making it a better world for us all.”
Ms. Eng leaves her mother, two brothers and sister, and her cherished nieces and nephews.
Expression of Condolence for Susan Eng by the Toronto City Council
Moved by: Mayor Olivia Chow | Seconded by: Councillor Shelley Carroll
The Mayor and Members of Toronto City Council are deeply saddened to learn of the passing of Susan Eng, former Chair of the Toronto Police Services Board, who passed away on July 26, 2025, at the age of 72.
Susan Eng was a trail-blazing civic leader, a tireless advocate for human rights and a lawyer who was among the first group of Asian Canadians to make partner at a major law firm. She was appointed to the Toronto Police Services Board, formerly known as Metropolitan Toronto Police Services Board by the Province of Ontario in 1989, becoming the first Chinese Canadian and only Chinese Canadian woman to receive such an appointment. She later served as Chair of the Toronto Police Services Board from 1991 to 1995, where she pushed for greater police accountability and transparency in all aspects of police operations.
In 2019, Ms. Eng co-founded the Chinese Canadian National Council for Social Justice. She was an instrumental part of the campaign seeking redress for the Chinese Head Tax and Exclusion Act, Chinese Immigration Act, 1923, which had impacted her father. After a class action lawsuit by head taxpayers and their families was dismissed, she revitalized the campaign by co-founding and co-chairing the Ontario Coalition of Head Taxpayers and Families that highlighted the plight of the impacted families. Her dedicated efforts led to Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s formal apology to Chinese Canadians for the head tax in 2006.
Ms. Eng also championed the rights of older adults and seniors. She served as Vice President of the Canadian Association of Retired Persons and amplified the voices of seniors when she supported Doctor Joseph Wong in establishing the Yee Hong Centre for Geriatric Care. She also stood up for the rights of LGBTQ and racialized communities.
Ms. Eng served on the boards for the University of Toronto, the Canadian Civil Liberties Association, the Urban Alliance on Race Relations and the Young Women’s Christian Association of Greater Toronto. She will be remembered for her lifelong commitment to 2 advocacy, her many contributions to social justice and for helping advance equality for residents in our city and country.