Person

Cho, George Min Ching

• 曹文貞

• Chow, Min Ching

1913-1978

George Cho was born CHO Min Ching in Vancouver on February 20, 1913 in the family home at 65 East 6th Avenue. He was the fourth of seven children. His father CHO Mew was a merchant who arrived in Canada in 1884, one year before the Chinese Immigration Act came into effect. The family is said to have owned market garden land near Burnaby Park, in Kerrisdale, and at the present location of Vancouver General Hospital.

In 1925 at the age of 12, George was sent by his parents to his family’s village of “Ah Who” in the [番禺 Punyu / Panyu] district of China to learn the culture and language. He returned to Vancouver in 1931 at the age of 18 and eventually moved east to Montreal seeking employment.

With business partners, George opened a grocery store named Young’s Market, located on Sherbrooke Street in Montreal’s Notre Dame de Grace (NDG) neighbourhood. The partners eventually purchased a second and third store. George met Susie Woo (Woo Yuet Sue), his future wife, when she applied to work at the Young’s grocery chain. Around 1939, George bought his own grocery store (Young Brothers) on Bernard Avenue in Montreal’s Outremont neighbourhood and eventually invited Susie to work with him there.

He tried to enlist in the army during WWII but was refused because he was deemed too short at 5’2”. George and Susie held off getting married until after the war because Susie’s brother (Harry Woo) had enlisted and she needed to take care and help provide for her family.

George Cho and Susie Woo married on October 13, 1947. They bought a triplex in Outremont just around the corner from the Young Brothers grocery store for their family to live. They had nine children in quick succession, eight of whom survived into adulthood.

George was known to be a quiet man who worked hard to support his family. He’d wake up before sunrise to be at Montreal’s Marché Centrale by 4:30 a.m. to get the best pick of the produce for his store. He worked closely with the other businesses in his neighbourhood where he’d provide the fruit for the local florist’s gift baskets or work out bartering systems with the local Jewish butcher to trade the best produce for best cuts of kosher meat. Every Christmas he would send a huge box of fresh and dried fruit to each of his children's teachers at Guy Drummond Elementary School.

George worked six days a week and only took time off on Sundays, when the store was closed, to go fishing with his family. He sometimes headed down to Chinatown to partake in mahjong; if he was lucky, he would reward his family with boxes of Chinese pastries and baked goods. George himself was a talented home chef and would make 8-10 dishes per meal. From ginger lobster to minced pork with duck eggs, tomato sauce chicken wings to asparagus with bean curd, it was said that he could cook any dish found in Chinatown.

George enjoyed simple pleasures like his La-Z-Boy chair that no one else was allowed to sit in. From this plush throne, he’d watch boxing on Friday nights with an Irish friend named Patty who worked part-time at Young Brothers as a clerk. He also loved to watch hockey and root for the Montreal Canadians.

George sold the business in 1974 after he suffered a heart attack at work. In September 1978, just months before the birth of his first grandchild, he had a second heart attack which would be fatal. He was just 65 years old.

Young Brother’s grocery store can still be found on Van Horne street in Outremont to this day.

Description supplied by collector/curator