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.
‘[I]f they married someone that is good to them and they could become attached or to love at the end, it’s good. But some people did not have that luxury. They married someone that’s not good, someone who came over here and never bothered thinking about home.’
Claire Wong’s parents experienced a period of regular separation, which Claire recognizes must have been difficult for her mother. She believes, however, that Chinese women grew up expecting that sort of relationship with their husbands.
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