Person

Goon, Pearl

• Wong, Pearl

1910-1999

Pearl Goon was born on March 17, 1910, in Vancouver, BC.

Her father, GOON Ling Dang, ran a store selling meat and Chinese groceries, as well as three fish canneries. Her mother, Jennie Goon, was the daughter of laundryman, WAH Chong, and the first Chinese person to attend public school in Vancouver.

Pearl’s family lived a relatively privileged life in a house with chandeliers and a piano; they were one of two Chinese families that lived outside of Vancouver’s Chinatown in the early 1900s. Pearl grew up with maids, took tennis lessons, and learned to play the piano and banjo.

Pearl and her family attended the Anglican Church half a block away from their home, where Pearl was baptized. Every Sunday, her mother would hold prayer meetings and tea with ladies from the church. In the evening, her mother’s Chinese lady friends would play mahjong.

Pearl attended Laura Secord Elementary School, where she was the only Chinese student below the eighth grade and was regularly teased and harassed. For high school, she attended Britannia Secondary, where she finally met other Chinese students.

When Pearl was 11, her mother died. Pearl and her father moved into her brother Tyson’s home, where she lived until she was married.

After graduating high school, Pearl took a commerce course and a typing test to apply for a job at the potato board, but the board would not hire her. She recalled, “[the employer] said, ‘We don’t hire Chinese.’ That was a slap in the face… It didn’t hurt me; it just made me mad and I made my mind up that some day I would work for a Caucasian company.” Instead, Pearl found work at a Chinese grocery store.

In 1931, when Pearl was 21, she was being harassed on a streetcar when Benjamin Wong, a 24-year-old bellhop came to her rescue. Pearl fell in love with him, and they married on October 17, 1931 at the Chinese United Church.

The couple settled into a house in Vancouver’s Chinatown, where they had four children: Rod (b. 1932), Carole (b. 1936), and twins, Roberta and Barbara (b. 1937). Their house was near the train tracks, and unemployed labourers laid off during the Great Depression frequently knocked on the door to ask for food. Pearl would make coffee and toast to feed them. She also would take her son, Rod, to the White Lunch restaurant on Hastings to enjoy a milkshake before a movie, even though the establishment was whites only.

Pearl and Ben were determined to move out of Chinatown. They lived with Ben’s father in Chinatown from 1942 to 1949, until Ben’s father passed away; then, they moved out of Chinatown to live on 57th Avenue.

In 1950, Pearl got a new job as a bookkeeper, finally able to use her commerce training. A year later, the family built a new home at Willow and 41st Avenue.

Pearl passed away on February 6, 1999.

Wong Shee (wife of Goon Ling Dang) (1891-1977)

Wah Chong, Jennie (1872-1921)

Wong, Benjamin Wah Bain (1907-1985)

Description supplied by collector/curator