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Type of entity
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Authorized form of name
Wong, Toy
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- Pong, You Toy
- Wong, Chew Pang
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Description area
Dates of existence
1879-1953
History
WONG Toy was born in China in 1879 in X’iao ao village, Hengjiang, in the [台山 Toisan / Taishan] district in [廣東 Guangdong] province. He traveled to Canada as a young man and settled in Vancouver's Chinatown. In China, he was a son of a scholar. In Canada, he tried his hand at many businesses: restaurant, pawn shop, landlord, eventually buying an entire building at 168 East Pender Street in Vancouver, later known as the Bank of Montreal building.
In 1934, Wong Toy heard of a business opportunity in Alert Bay off the northern tip of Vancouver Island. He purchased a piece of property 50' X 25' on Fir Street. Over the next year, he and his sons built a three-storey building with a general store on the ground level and two levels for family living quarters. The store went through many iterations depending on what the local market needed. In the end, one son, Wong Bing Foon, took over the family business and operated it for a 50-year run as Wong Toy & Sons Ltd. until his retirement in 1985. The building still stands today and is the Orca Inn in Alert Bay, BC.
Toy’s first wife was Jay Sze (b. 1885, d. Jan 2, 1952). They had four daughters and one son, Bing Foon, who volunteered and joined the Canadian Army in WWII.
Toy’s second wife was Chou Heung (b. 1901), marrying Toy when she was only 15 years old. She would give birth to four sons and three daughters. Two of those sons, Frank and Bing, volunteered to join the Canadian Army in WWII.
After the war ended, Toy’s second wife, Chou Heung, moved back to Vancouver with her family and ran the pawn shop. Meanwhile, Toy’s first wife, Jay Sze, stayed with her family in Alert Bay.
Chou Heung died in November 1951 and eldest son ran a restaurant called the Pender Café. Meanwhile, the middle son opened an accounting office, Bing Wong and Associates, in the family building on Pender Street.
Toy died in Vancouver on January 24, 1953. He was 73 years old.
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