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Titre: Full interview with Alice Yeh, part 3 of 3
Date : November, 2009
Donateur : Yeh, Alice
Sujet : Chinatown, Citizenship and Civil Rights, Discrimination, Exclusion, Family Life, Family Separation, Cross-cultural Relations, Marriage and Dating
Province : Ontario
Langue : ENG

Yeh, Alice

Alice Yeh (née Yook-Lin Gee) was born in Victoria, British Columbia on October 10, 1919. Alice’s mother, Gee Wong Moey, was widowed in the early 1920s and rented rooms in her house to support the family. The house became a hub of activity in Victoria’s Chinese community. For instance, Alice and her friends used the house as a meeting place for a youth forum, which staged dramatic productions and conducted neighbourhood tours in Chinatown to combat negative stereotypes and raise funds for charitable causes. Alice was extremely active in both her community life and work life. She worked for the postal censorship department in Ottawa, Ontario during World War Two, served as a private secretary to the Taiwanese Ambassador to Japan in the early 1950s, and worked as a social worker for the Catholic Children’s Aid Society in Toronto until her retirement. She also led the Young Women’s Guild at the Chinese Presbyterian Church in Toronto, Ontario, and was an organizer for Canadian branches of the Kuomintang (Nationalist) party. At the time of the interview, Alice resided in Etobicoke, Ontario.

In part three of a three-part interview, Alice Yeh illustrates some of the barriers faced by Chinese Canadians in the 20th century as a result of discrimination. She speculates that some social problems were related to family separation, namely the gambling and prostitution that proliferated in the absence of family life. She also describes examples of inter-racial marriage that challenged her own prejudices.