Ho, Angela
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, Angela Ho discusses her decision to move to Canada, her family life in Canada and her work life.
Angela was born to an upper middle class family in Hong Kong. She was especially close with her father. She decided to move to Canada shortly after her parent’s divorce. Her father had to go overseas to Africa for two years and was unable to bring her with him. She felt that she needed a new beginning.
She was accepted at a public school in Canada and stayed with roommates throughout high school. She picked up English quickly. After completing high school, she moved to Calgary to be closer to her brother and took a course in accounting instead of going to university.
She met her husband during her studies. They were married upon graduation. Both found jobs as accountants and continued to work at the hotel restaurant they had been working at during their studies. Before long, they were able to save enough money to buy a space for their own restaurant business.
Both had little experience running a business but with the help of her father-in-law, they were able to run it smoothly. The restaurant business kept them busy; Angela and her husband had little time for social life. It was difficult to find friends she could confide in or do things with outside of her work and marriage.
Although she had not experienced racial discrimination, she felt that ethnic minorities as a whole had more difficulty in the work place than their white Canadian counterparts. Overall she enjoys her experience in Canada and appreciates all the social freedoms it offers.
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