About the Event
Date: Saturday, May 24, 2025
Time: 6:30 to 8:30 PM
Location: Haven Brews, located at 222 Finch Avenue West, Unit 101, Toronto.
RSVP at: chk.library@utoronto.ca
講座將以廣東話進行
Join us for the first event in the Canada-Hong Kong Library Outreach Series, hosted with our community partner Haven Brews at their location in North York. This inaugural event highlights the impactful legacy of the Parsee-Zoroastrian Ruttonjee family—one of Hong Kong’s most influential names in education, health care, and philanthropy. Based on The Ruttonjees: Industry, Foresight and Charities, the only family-endorsed book on their history, Dr. Carl Lau 劉樹偉will share how the book came to be and offer insights into both Zoroastrianism and the family’s enduring contributions to community service in Hong Kong.
Synopsis
Published in June 2024, The Ruttonjees: Industry, Foresight & Charities talks about the family history of the Ruttonjee family in Hong Kong. Although always small in its headcount, the Parsee-Zoroastrian community in Hong Kong had made magnificent contributions to the establishment and development of the city in different aspects, including education and health care. Some of the well-known Parsees in Hong Kong include Sir Mody and J.H. Ruttonjee.
Speaker Bio
Carl Shu-wai Lau obtained his BA from the University of Toronto (Innis, 2000) and his PhD from the Division of Humanities of the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology under the supervision of Prof. Tik-sang Liu. His research interests include developments traditional social organizations in rural communities in Hong Kong, the history of Parsee-Zoroastrian community in Hong Kong and the global diaspora network of Parsee-Zoroastrians. He worked as a lecturer at the Department of Social Sciences at the Education University of Hong Kong before returning to Toronto. Currently he is working as a teacher at a public high school in Markham, Ontario.