Soon, Peggy
Peggy Soon (née Yuen) was born in 1936 on a farm near Vancouver, British Columbia. Her mother Sam Chun Moy (née Leung Sui Gee) was born in China around 1900, the third girl in her family. Because daughters were often less valued than sons in China, an aunt brought her to Canada in 1905 and left her to be raised by a family in Powell River, British Columbia. The ninth of Sam Chun Moy and Jung Chong Yuen’s ten children, Peggy’s job at home was to look after her younger brother. Growing up, Peggy attended English school during the day and Chinese school in the evening. Both of her parents worked long hours and the siblings were often left to care for one another. At various points during high school, most of Peggy’s siblings left school to take care of the other children or help on the farm. Only her youngest brother, Keith, completed high school. In 1955, Peggy married her husband, Ping Sha Soon (Ping Yee). For the first nine years of her marriage, Peggy lived with her mother on the family’s farm and raised her son while her husband worked. Later, she went to work at her sister’s wholesale grocery business before leaving to work for National Spice. Peggy continued to reside in Vancouver at the time of the interview.
‘And you know, when I first met your uncle Ping Yee, I thought they were speaking Japanese. It was so different. I could not grasp it. Even to this day, I cannot grasp that language. It's just completely different, you know, his dialect.’
In this audio clip, Peggy Soon talks about the different dialects spoken within the Chinese community. She explains that she doesn’t understand the dialect used by her husband and his family, and how they use English as their common language.
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