Chan, Velma
Over 130 interviews with Chinese Canadian women were conducted for the book Jin Guo: Voices of Chinese Canadian Women. Produced in 1992 by the Women’s Book Committee of the Chinese Canadian National Council, Jin Guo was intended to fill the gap in historical accounts of Chinese Canadian women’s history. Researchers traveled across Canada to interview Chinese Canadian women of various ages and backgrounds. The book’s authors, Amy Go, Winnie Ng, Dora Nipp, Julia Tao, Terry Woo and May Yee, organized the book around themes and patterns that emerged across multiple interviews – feelings of isolation and culture shock upon arrival in Canada, memories of parent-child relationships, the importance of education, the working lives of women, discrimination, cultural identity, marriage and dating, family life, perspectives on aging and retirement, and examples community activism. The interviews conducted for this project are stored at the Multicultural History Society of Ontario’s archives. This collections database includes a large cross-section of interviews conducted for Jin Guo – in English, Cantonese and Mandarin.
In this interview, Velma Chan talks about her experiences growing up as a woman born to Chinese parents in rural British Columbia, employment opportunities and conditions for the Chinese community, and the educational experience of visible minorities. Velma explains that the Chinese community had fewer employment and social opportunities than other Canadians; her father had several businesses and a cobbled together a living in a number ways. As visible minorities, Velma and her siblings felt that their only opportunity to succeed was through excelling at education. By telling stories about her education, migration to Vancouver, British Columbia and work history, Velma describes the nature of inter-generational change, the integration of the Chinese community into Vancouver and how the Chinese communities’ labour patterns changed – particularly for women - between the 1920s and the post-war years.
Velma’s father immigrated to Canada to work on the CPR railroad. Once the railroad was completed he bought cheap farmland in Cook’s Valley, started a family, then moved to the Nickel Valley town of Merritt, British Columbia. Her mother was orphaned in China and taken in by a family who migrated to Canada. She was given to another family that Velma refers to as her grandparents. Velma’s parents had an arranged marriage, and Velma’s father was 20 years her mother’s senior.
Velma recalls her father’s many jobs in Merritt, as owner of a laundry and a café, and farmer. Always with young children to care for, Velma’s mother looked after the laundry and farm work, cooking and child rearing. Velma recalls the social isolation of being the only Chinese family in the community; she recalls having difficulty mixing with the non-Chinese population. She recounts how her family’s manners and clothes were different – Velma’s mother used to make homemade oversized garments ordered from the Eaton’s’ Catalogue, buying bigger sizes for the extra cloth.
Velma also discusses the differences between rural B.C. and Vancouver, noting that she migrated to Vancouver for educational and work opportunities. While she noted that the Chinese population was still effectively segregated, there existed more opportunities for socialization as well as work. However, to Velma the process of becoming “Canadian-ized” led to generational conflicts.
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