十二岁独自上路的少年

The subject of this interview is Mrs. Bik-wan Lee, born in 1948, a native of Taishan, Guangdong. Her husband, Wong Kai-wai (born in 1940, immigrated to Canada in 1952), passed away in 2012; Mrs. Lee — now retired — currently lives with her youngest son.

Crossing into North America Alone at Twelve

Mrs. Bik-wan Lee moved to Hong Kong at the age of twelve, where she finished secondary school; her Chinese was reasonably good and her English passable. In 1970 she married Mr. Wong in Hong Kong and then immigrated to Canada — a process that was relatively smooth and straightforward. Mr. Wong’s earlier path to Canada, however, had been rather more eventful. He came to Canada in 1952. At the time he was living with his father in Hong Kong, while his grandfather in Canada had filed an immigration application on his behalf. But before Mr. Wong could set off, his grandfather died, so once he received his immigration papers he had to begin the journey to North America entirely on his own. He was only twelve. He flew from Hong Kong to San Francisco, where he was held at the airport — the law of the day said that a boy of that age could not travel alone. Because he was merely transiting through the United States, however, after a series of negotiations he was eventually allowed to leave the U.S. and continue on to Canada. His arrival in Canada was awkward, too: his uncle was too busy and simply rented a car and sent someone to meet him at the airport, not even coming himself — and remember, Mr. Wong was only twelve. Fortunately, after all the twists and turns, the bewildered boy did finally make it to Canada. Yet there were advantages to immigrating so young: Mr. Wong was able to receive some formal education from the start in Canada, and he was able to obtain citizenship quickly. The young Wong Kai-wai lived for a few years in Hamilton and then Montreal, attending school while also helping out in the kitchen of his uncle’s restaurant. But later, when that Montreal uncle wound up the restaurant business, Wong had to leave Montreal. As he was planning his route from Montreal to Toronto, his uncle suddenly mentioned that he had another distant uncle working in a restaurant in Kingston and told him to go and seek him out. And so, quite by chance, Wong Kai-wai came to Kingston. He was fifteen at the time — and, unexpectedly, Kingston became the permanent home of the Wong family in Canada, a place they would never leave.

Wong’s Garden, Beside the Bar and the Bingo

Mr. Wong met Mrs. Bik-wan Lee in 1969, when he returned to Hong Kong to look for a wife; it was through an introduction arranged by what was apparently Mr. Wong’s aunt or some other relative that they were matched and married, and after the wedding they came to Kingston in 1970. When Mr. and Mrs. Wong married and returned to Kingston, it was in the 1970s, a time when the Chinese in Kingston mainly worked in service industries such as the restaurant trade. Mr. and Mrs. Wong were no exception — at first they worked in various restaurants, until in 1986 they opened their own restaurant, called Wong’s Garden, serving mainly Western fare for Canadians as well as Chinese food, that is, Canadian-Chinese food. Their restaurant sat on a not especially busy commercial street on the north side of Kingston, near Highway 401, but what mattered was that the street had a bar and a Bingo hall, which brought a great deal of business to their restaurant — especially the Bingo, which ran until midnight every weekend. Most of those who went to the Bingo to pass the time were retired seniors, and since there were no casinos or similar establishments nearby in that era, plenty of customers came for the games. Although the bar drew large crowds and there were occasionally minor scuffles caused by drunken patrons, with the police dropping by from time to time, their restaurant did consistently good business. The restaurant trade was always hard work — at the time they had to work twelve to fourteen hours a day, and theirs was a very typical family-run restaurant. Mr. and Mrs. Wong had three children, two sons and a daughter, and all three of them often helped out in the restaurant kitchen.

Three Children, Three Queen’s Diplomas

Like other Chinese immigrant families, the Wongs’ three children all received a good higher education. They all graduated from Queen’s University, all did well in their studies, and all found good jobs. After graduating, the daughter did administrative work in admissions for a college in Toronto, and later returned to Queen’s to earn an MBA. Of the two sons, one works for the government and the other once worked for the correctional service. The Wongs were able to run this family restaurant successfully, and to raise and educate their children at university, thanks to their thrift and careful planning — for instance, Mr. Wong was very proud that he had set up education funds for the children early on, so that there was no problem covering their university costs and none of them owed any student loans upon graduation.

A Fire That Proved a Blessing in Disguise

Looking back, Mrs. Lee is filled with emotion. In their experience, Kingston was a place very well suited to immigrant life and livelihood, very friendly and tolerant toward newcomers; for example, there were two Canadian couples who were enormously helpful to them — one an English couple, the secondary-school teacher of one of their sons, and the other a Chinese couple, the Szetos — both of whom looked after the Wong family in every way, and especially helped their children integrate quickly into society. After running it for more than twenty years, they sold the restaurant; but over the long years of operating it they had built up a great many connections and friends, and even after they had retired and were no longer running the restaurant, those friends still often came by, gathering for coffee and conversation. The Chinese family who bought the restaurant and carried on running it kept its name, so the restaurant’s clientele endured as well. In the 1990s there was once a fire in their little commercial block — a fire at their neighbour’s spread to their restaurant, causing it heavy damage — but the insurance company not only compensated the losses and rebuilt the restaurant, it also paid out a year and a half of lost business income, so in the end the fire cost them little. It was, in its way, a blessing in disguise during their years running the restaurant.

A Homeland Growing Distant, a Second Home Held in Gratitude

Since Mr. and Mrs. Wong left Hong Kong to immigrate to Canada, neither of them ever returned to Hong Kong, nor to their ancestral home of Taishan, Guangdong. Their children, of course, did go back to Hong Kong and visited relatives still living there, but their ties to the old country and ancestral home have by now grown very thin. Most of Mrs. Lee’s family are no longer in Hong Kong either — her parents later immigrated to the United States — and Mr. Wong’s relatives are largely gone from Hong Kong as well, with only a single, seldom-contacted cousin remaining. This is a fairly typical state of affairs for the older generation of Chinese immigrants and their connection to the old country and homeland.

Mrs. Lee and her family feel a deep bond with Kingston: not only did they build a family here, raise their children, and grow old here, but the country they chose to settle in was very kind to them, allowing them to integrate smoothly into this diverse and harmonious society. And so, like many of the older generation of Chinese immigrants in Kingston, they will always be grateful to Kingston, the immigrant-friendly second home.