標題: | Full Interview with Keith Lock, Part 1 |
日期: | September 1, 2009 |
提供者: | Lock, Keith |
主題: | Arts, Childhood, China, Chinatown, Church and Faith, Citizenship and Civil Rights, Clubs and Organizations, Domestic Work, Exclusion, Family Life, Food, Identity, Immigration, Cross-cultural Relations, Inter-generational Relations, Language, Leisure, Marriage and Dating, Work, War and War Effort, Discrimination, Education |
省份: | Ontario |
權利: | MHSO |
語言: | ENG |
Lock, Keith
Keith Lock, is a filmmaker who resides in Toronto. His work includes the documentary The Road Chosen: The Lem Wong Story and a recent feature-length film, The Ache. Keith’s grandmother, Mrs. Quong Lock, was among the first Chinese women to settle in Toronto, Ontario. So rare was the sight of Chinese women in the city that when she arrived in 1909 to join her husband the Toronto Star announced on its front page: ‘Chinese Woman comes to Toronto.’ After her husband passed away in 1933, Mrs. Quong Lock opened her own hand laundry at St. Clair and Lansdowne to support her family. Her son, Tom Lock, joined the Canadian Army during the Second World War. He and other Chinese Canadians were recruited for dangerous duties behind Japanese enemy lines. Tom arrived in Australia in 1944 for special military training, where he met Joan Lim On. They married in 1945, and Joan was permitted to enter Canada during the Exclusion Period (1923-1947) by way of an Act of Privy Council. She, along with another Chinese Australian war bride, Myrtle Wong, arrived in Vancouver aboard the S.S. Monterey in 1946. Joan and Tom settled in Toronto, where Joan was hired as microbiologist at Sick Kids hospital and Tom opened up a pharmacy in Chinatown.
In part one of a two-part interview, Toronto filmmaker Keith Lock discusses his family immigration background, his grandmother’s work life, family life and her involvement in the church and community in the first half of the twentieth century. He discusses Toronto, Ontario’s Chinese Canadian community in the pre-Second World War and post-war years. He also provides a detailed account of his father’s army involvement and training as a member of a secret World War Two operation. Keith discusses his mother’s early life in Melbourne, Australia, and his parents’ courtship and marriage during the war.