Person

Yee, Joe Mun

• Yee, George

1907-1978

YEE Joe Mun (known in Canada as George Yee) arrived in Victoria, B.C. in 1923. Hailing from a poor peasant family, George was chosen by his village elders to go to Gold Mountain, find work, and help support his family back in China.

George had no formal education. He knew how to read and write Chinese but never went to school to learn English. In his early years in Canada, he was a labourer and found work in market gardens in Victoria and Vancouver. It took him 13 years to pay off the debt incurred from the $500 head tax.

Around 1937, George moved to Black Diamond, Alberta. With meagre savings, George bought three acres of land, started growing crops, and established the town’s first and only market garden business. Every day, for some 35 years, George drove his truck from town to town selling his produce. Eventually, his children would help run the farm.

During the 1930s, there was little to no communication with his family in China due to the Sino-Japanese War. In 1941, George would start his own family here in Canada. He married Yuen (Lorna) Lim, a Canadian-born Chinese woman from Cumberland, B.C. The couple tied the knot in Vancouver on November 15, 1941. They moved back to Black Diamond and would have eight children together. Lorna was born in Canada and had status as a British subject which she lost when she married George. At the time, when a woman married, she assumed the nationality of her husband who, in this case, was considered a Chinese national by the Canadian government.

George became a Canadian citizen in 1958. In 1960, after decades of silence, he received a letter from sister #6. She was planning to be in Vancouver for a short stay, and George travelled there to meet her. He never discussed this journey, nor what he learned about the fate of his family, with anyone.

Near the end of his life, in 1977, George went to Hong Kong to visit family. From there, he tried to enter China but did not have the visa requirements to do so. Adding to this disappointment was his contracting of gout. This last opportunity for George to finally see his family members in China after almost a half-century of separation slipped away. He died shortly after, on January 27, 1978.

Like so many early migrants who experienced separation and discrimination, George never spoke about his past to his children. Only after George died did his children realize he paid the Chinese head tax and that spurred them to learn more about his history.

Years later, his wife Lorna, as the surviving spouse of a head tax payer, became one of the few Chinese Canadians who was compensated when the federal government, in 2006, offered its official apology for the racist policy. More than 80,000 Chinese paid the tax. However, only a small fraction of people (i.e., less than 1,000) received compensation. Most head tax payers and their spouses had already passed away and compensation was not extended to their children.

Description supplied by collector/curator