Lum, Raymond
Raymond Lum is a photographer who resides in Vancouver, British Columbia. His father, Ming Lum (also known as ‘Tommy’), immigrated to Canada in 1922 from China. When Ming returned to China to visit in 1929, his family arranged for him to marry Irene Lum (née Tseng Yook Lahn) who came from a neighbouring village. The couple were separated for a decade during the Exclusion Period (1923-1947), while Irene lived with her in-laws in China. Raymond describes this period of separation as ‘awful’ because Irene was treated poorly by her mother-in-law and was not permitted to see her own family. In 1940, Irene came to Canada as a ‘paper daughter’, taking on the identity of a deceased woman in order to join her husband. She departed on one of the last boats leaving Hong Kong harbour before the Japanese captured the city. Ming and Irene worked side-by-side at Canada Produce, a busy grocery store on Granville Street in Vancouver. The Lums raised Raymond in an apartment above the store, and Irene had little time for socializing because she was, in Raymond’s words, ‘bound to the store.’ Raymond describes growing up in Vancouver, caught between the traditional expectations of his parents’ generation and his own aspirations as a Canadian-born youth.
Irene Lum stands for a full-length portrait in a fur coat, which would have been borrowed or rented for the purposes of the photograph. Irene was the fourth child born to a doctor and his first wife. In the 1920s, the family moved to Vietnam to live with Irene’s eldest brother, a successful businessman. As a teenager, Irene returned to China and was tutored by Ming Lum’s sister-in-law. This connection led to her arranged marriage to Ming Lum.
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