Person

Gin, Wing Den

[1904]-1971

GIN Wing Den was born in China around 1904 or 1905 in the district of 台山 Toisan/Taishan. He spent his early childhood in China, before traveling to Vancouver, BC.

He arrived in Vancouver in 1919 as a student. It is unknown where he studied, but he learned to speak English fluently with no accent. While he was young, he worked as a houseboy for a family in Shaughnessy, a well-off neighbourhood where Chinese and Jews were banned from owning property. Wing Den’s family believes he may have honed his English there.

Later, as a young man, he worked on the steamship lines travelling the Vancouver to Alaska route, eventually becoming a chief cook.

Wing Den travelled several times back to China during the late 1920s and 1930s. On one of these trips, he married. He had four children, all born in [台山 Toisan / Taishan]—three sons and one daughter.

Under the conditions of the Exclusion Act, his wife and children could not join him to Canada, and he had to return by himself. From 1934 to 1948, he was unable to see his children due to the Japanese invasion of China, WWII, and the Chinese civil war.

The end of the war years coincided with the end of Canada’s Chinese Exclusion Act, which allowed Wing Den to travel back to China after a 14-year absence. During this period, Wing Den had another son with his wife.

He helped his family travel first to Hong Kong. After much paperwork, Wing Den’s wife and his youngest four children were finally allowed to enter Canada. However, his eldest son was unable to emigrate, as Canada’s immigration laws placed strict limits on family reunification for those of Chinese descent. Wing Den’s eldest son began a new life in Hong Kong, and Wing Den never saw him again.

After retiring, he ran a corner convenience store located at 16th and Camosun Street. For this, he was well-liked and well-respected by locals, who knew him as “Don Gin.” Locals would drop in to buy food, soda pop, cigarettes or newspapers, and chat with him about the latest news of the day.

Jack Gin, Wing Den’s grandson, recalled, “I had a lot of time with him as a young child. He never talked about the loneliness and pain of living basically by himself for decades while having a family in China. His wife and children were probably his motivation to keep going and surviving in a place that was difficult to succeed in. After he had a first heart attack around 1969, he and his wife moved into the basement suite of our East Vancouver home, and I got to spend more time with him. We enjoyed playing cribbage, and he'd make me the best lunch on school days, which I would run home for.”

Wing Den passed away in 1971 at the age of 67.