Wong, Claire
Claire Yim Tong Wong was born in Macau in 1942, and lived in Guangdong province (China) and Hong Kong before coming to Canada at age 11. Her father, Allen Jew Wong, moved to Canada from China as a teenager. In his twenties, he traveled back to China to get married. For many years, Allen traveled back and forth between Canada, where he worked, and China, where his family lived. When the communists took power in China in 1949, Allen urged his family to move to Hong Kong, which they did. In 1953, Claire emigrated from Hong Kong with her mother, Lee Ho, and siblings to reunite with her father and settle in Yarmouth, Nova Scotia. There, Claire attended school and helped her family in their restaurant in the evenings. At the time, Yarmouth was home to very few other Chinese immigrants, which made Claire feel more like a curiosity than a target for discrimination. As a teenager, she moved to Montreal and lived with her sister while completing her last year of high school. After high school, she worked for Bell Telephone before getting married and starting a family. A devout Protestant, Claire has attended the Montreal Chinese Presbyterian Church and St. Genevieve’s United Church in Montreal.
This certificate records the arrival of Claire Wong’s uncle, John Men Wong, at Port aux Basques, Newfoundland in October 1928. He is listed on the document as a 25-year-old laundryman who paid the required fee for entry. Starting in 1906, Chinese immigration in Newfoundland was governed by the Act Respecting the Immigration of Chinese Persons. The Act levied a $300 head tax on each Chinese immigrant entering Newfoundland until 1949, when Newfoundland became a province of Canada.
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