Kwok, Katy
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, Katy Kwok discusses her decision to come to Canada, as well as her education and work life in Canada.
Katy came from a large family of seven including her grandmother. She recalls a good relationship with her parents but spent most of her time with her grandmother and siblings. She did not consciously plan on going to Canada. The thought casually crossed her mind when she found out her cousins were applying to study in Canada. Her efforts to do the test and interview were motivated by the mild curiosity of whether she could get in. To her surprise, she was accepted by the high school in Grand Prairie Alberta. There, she finished high school and applied for university at Red Deer College. After she got her degree in computer science, she went back to Hong Kong to look for a job.
Katy recalls working very hard in Hong Kong, and feeling a great deal of pressure. On her parents’ advice, she returned to Canada to look for work. Though she considered returning to Alberta, she decided to settle in Toronto, Ontario instead.
Though she had some difficulty finding work because of a mild language barrier, she eventually found work at a computer programming company. She describes the differences between working in Hong Kong and Canada; she approves of the better benefits in Canada, but dislikes how unions reward seniority rather than productivity.
Katy reflects on discrimination in Canada, feeling that though she did not experience it personally, she feels discriminatory attitudes still exist. She recalls some examples of stereotypes about Chinese Canadians and negative attitudes toward immigrants.
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