Chan Tep

Childhood

Chan Tep was born in Mongkol Borey on the evening of a full moon, at the end of the Cambodian genocide perpetrated by the Communist dictatorship, and the war between Vietnam and Cambodia. Her first name is Chan — which means "moon" in Khmer — in honour of her older sister Sichan Tep, who died after eating a poisonous frog during the famine. Chan Tep’s life began as her family was fleeing their country under extremely dangerous conditions. They encountered bandits, landmines and ambushes before finally arriving in a refugee camp in Thailand. There the Tep family met Cardinal Paul-Émile Léger, who was on a humanitarian mission. He nominated them to come to Canada as refugees. (See also Cambodian or Khmer Canadians.)

On 19 December 1979 the family of 10-month-old Chan Tep arrived in Varennes. Sponsored by Yoland and Michel Côté, they adapted to their new life in Quebec. Her father found work as a parts dispatcher at Pratt & Whitney Canada. Her mother was hired as a school custodian. Part of their salary went to reimbursing the costs of relocating to Quebec.

Young Tep grew up in a predominantly white neighbourhood and was subjected to racism throughout her childhood. (See also Anti-Asian Racism in Canada). She was insulted and, on one occasion, even spat on. Like many refugee parents, her parents worked hard to support their family. As a result, Tep was often home alone and spent many hours in front of the television. She noticed that very few people looked like her in the media. To alleviate the problem, when she was 14, she applied to the youth television show Watatatow and told her father that she wanted to become an actress. Aware of the precarious nature of the industry, her father refused.

Education and Career

Chan Tep graduated from Concordia University in 2003 with a Bachelor of Fine Arts. She then started a career in marketing and communications at IKEA Canada. At 25 years old, she was diagnosed with a rare type of ovarian cancer (see Cancer). This illness profoundly changed her life. Close to death, the young woman reflected on the acts of racism she had faced and the lack of diversity in the media. She realised that she wanted to change this and decided to change careers. She returned to school and graduated from the Conservatoire Lassalle in 2010 with an Attestation of College Studies in Communications and Media. (See also Collège d’enseignement général et professionnel (CEGEP) in Quebec.) As a recent graduate she participated in a career event for diverse talent organized by VOX (now MAtv). At this event, director Jean-François Drapeau noticed her. He offered Tep a position as a researcher on Scène municipale. After several months she was promoted to journalist for the same program. (See also Journalism.) From 2011 to 2015, she was a researcher for Sans filtre on Vox, cultural columnist for CIBL Radio-Montréal, columnist for Radio-Canada, researcher for 98.5 FM and she founded her own production company C+ Créative Productions. However, her desire to address diversity issues often made her colleagues uncomfortable. Some even told her that she should not tackle these issues, since she herself was part of this diversity.

Tep was tired that she could not do the type of work she wanted to do, so she created her own television program. In 2015, Mosaïque en lumière was first broadcast on MAtv. It focused on Montreal’s cultural communities. Tep wrote and produced the entire program. She hired a team entirely made up of people from diverse backgrounds who worked both in front of and behind the camera, which was not the norm at the time. Mosaïque en lumière was one of Quebec’s first francophone programs to address issues of intersectionality. Tep examined themes such as homosexuality in racialized communities, the rights of immigrant women and the realities of immigrants on temporary work visas. (See also Rights Revolution in Canada; Canada’s Temporary Foreign Worker Programs.) The show was aired until 2017.

From 2019 to 2022 Tep was a researcher for TVA and Bell Media, journalist and columnist for Radio-Canada and columnist for HuffPost Québec. In her columns, she tackled social issues and intersectional diversity. In 2021, she became part of the first group of multiplatform journalists at Noovo Info. Since 2022, Tep has been the Diversity and Inclusion Advisor of Strategic and Operational Planning at Radio Canada. Her mandate is to recruit and promote talent from under-represented communities within the media’s programming. In this role, she has created paid internship programs for people from diverse backgrounds and several partnerships with cultural communities. She also organized networking events to bring together managers and talent from diverse backgrounds.

In May 2024, for Asian Heritage Month, she was featured among Canadian Heritage’s Noteworthy Canadians of Asian heritage. (See also Celebrating Asian Heritage in Canada.)

Personal Life

Chan Tep has two daughters.

Her mother’s death in 2019 had a profound impact on her life. She became even more aware of the need to leave a legacy to her family, aware that migration interrupted this chain of intergenerational transmission.

Every year on 19 December, the Tep family celebrates their arrival in Canada in 1979.