Identity area
Type of entity
Person
Authorized form of name
Chin, Mee Hang
Parallel form(s) of name
Standardized form(s) of name according to other rules
Other form(s) of name
- Mrs. Wong Choon Fong
- wife of Wong Choon Fong
Identifiers for corporate bodies
Description area
Dates of existence
1898-1955
History
CHIN Mee Hang arrived in Canada on May 3, 1914, as a single woman. On May 8, she was married by an Anglican minister to WONG Chong Fong in the immigration shed in Vancouver. She claimed to be aged 18, but her year of birth was 1898.
Her new husband was 32 years of age and working as a porter, likely at the same place he lived, at the West Hotel near Vancouver’s Chinatown,
The couple eventually moved to Cumberland on Vancouver Island, and Fong worked as a cook for the local coal miners. By 1921, the couple had two children. They would eventually have five children in total: two daughters and three sons.
As was common at the time, Fong had another family in China and there were long periods he would be away visiting them, leaving Hang to care for their five children on her own. On one visit to China, Fong was murdered, apparently by a member of his own family. That left Hang to struggle on her own in Canada and we are not sure how she made ends meet as there were few social services for Chinese during that period.
Perhaps because of these struggles as a single mother of five in a hostile country, Hang was remembered as being very tough and strict who sometimes played favourites with her grandchildren.
She passed away on September 28, 1955. Her death registration papers indicated she died of pneumonia, with malnutrition likely a contributing factor to her death.