- Person
- 1922-2020
Born Lily CHUNG Quon Dai, also known as Sandra CHONG and later upon marriage as Sandra KING, was born on November 24, 1922, in Vancouver, BC. Her father, Chung Gok Doh, was from Moy Kwok, [新會 Sunwui / Xinhui] county, in [廣東 Guangdong] province, and immigrated to Canada in 1892 with his family at the age of 9. He travelled back and forth between China and Canada, eventually marrying; he brought his wife to join him in Canada in 1914. Sandra’s father worked a variety of jobs throughout her childhood, including as a farmer in Burnaby, as a fisherman, and as a contractor for a cannery near Prince Rupert, but soon returned to Vancouver to start a family with his wife.
Sandra married a fellow Chinese Canadian, Louis Yee KING, who was born in Didsbury, Alberta. In WWII, Louis participated in Operation Oblivion, a secret operation led by the British army that used Chinese Canadians to infiltrate Sarawak in Malaya under the assumption that they would blend into the local population. Louis and the other Chinese Canadians involved in the operation hoped that their contribution would lead the Canadian government to extend equal rights to Chinese Canadians, recognize them as Canadians, and allow them to vote.
After the war, Louis began a poultry business in Vancouver called Visco Poultry. Sandra and Louis hoped to purchase a home and start a family, but they had a difficult time finding a home in Vancouver. Certain neighbourhoods in Vancouver had adopted restrictive housing covenants that banned the sale of homes to Asians, even though Sandra and Louis had been born in Canada. Sandra and Louis thus decided to build a home in West Vancouver. Although certain neighbourhoods in West Vancouver, such as the British Properties, employed similar restrictive covenants, the family was able to build a home in Dundarave in 1949. Their daughter, Leilani, was born a few years later.
Sandra and Louis divorced in 1960, and Sandra started employment in a company that worked with visiting dignitaries to support herself and her daughter. Most notably, she met the Prime Minister of Malaysia, who displayed a keen interest in her, and invited her to join him abroad. Sandra refused, since he was already married, and Sandra had no interest in becoming a secondary wife; she would remain single for the rest of her life. Her daughter, Leilani, recalled, “[she] enjoyed telling that story, as it was a reminder of how things could have been very different if she had chosen that path!"
Sandra worked in the head office of the accounting department of MacMillan Bloedel, a forestry company, until 1989, when she retired. After retiring, she moved from West Vancouver to Richmond to be closer to her daughter and grandchildren.
In the last six years of her life, Sandra had progressive dementia, and succumbed to pneumonia during the pandemic. She passed away on August 20, 2020, at the age of 97.