Identity area
Type of entity
Person
Authorized form of name
Sam, Marjorie
Parallel form(s) of name
- 李春嬌
Standardized form(s) of name according to other rules
Other form(s) of name
- Lee, Gue
- Wong, Marjorie
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Description area
Dates of existence
1921-2015
History
Marjorie Sam (known after marriage as Marjorie Wong) was born in Brantford, Ontario on June 17, 1921.
Her father, Charles Sam, owned a restaurant called Purity Cafe on Market Street in Brantford, Ontario. He cooked a la carte and hot meals for many customers who worked in the area (adjacent to the train station) while her mom, Rose, baked pies and sweet desserts.
When Marjorie was a toddler, she fell on the hardwood floor in the cafe. The injured areas of her arm and orbital eye developed into bovine tuberculosis, because she had been drinking unpasteurized milk. The photo on her C.I.45 certificate shows a lumpy sweater hiding the arm which had just had the bone scraped of the TB infection. She lived at the Brantford Sanatorium children's wing until she was 10 years old. The head nurse took a liking to Marjorie and essentially raised her. When she returned to her family, she learned to understand the Cantonese dialect of her parents, but never became conversant in the language.
At the age of 16, Marjorie worked as a nanny for an army family. She earned about $20 a week including room and board.
When she was 19, Marjorie trained to become an aluminum welder and in Brantford helped build the fuselage on the Mosquito airplane. Now she was earning about $50 to $60 each week. In 1945, she moved to Toronto and worked at Wong's Fruit Market where she met Archie Wong (Wong Ng Chee) and married him the following year, on February 4, 1946.
Together, the couple would have six children and Marjorie would not work outside the home again until she was 43. Then she worked for another 27 years: as a supermarket cashier, as an inventory clerk at the Eaton's catalogue store, and finally at Sears.
She was a woman who really embraced things that she enjoyed.
In retirement, Marjorie became a huge fan of the British soap opera “Coronation Street.” She would watch it every night and then the entire 2-hour re-cap on Sunday morning. It was a great thrill for her to be taken for a drink in a small village pub when visiting in-laws in England.
She also loved watching Toronto Blue Jays baseball games, at the stadium or on television. She always got totally involved, shouting and cheering on the team. As one of Marjorie’s children recalls “If I phoned from my home in B.C. while a game was being televised, she didn’t want to talk. I had to try again later.” Over the years, she attended many Jays games and collected "bobble heads" as the team chased after a pennant and World Series Championships.
Marjorie also loved photography. She always had a camera available to take daily snippets of life and embraced digital photography with a passion. Her love of the camera influenced one of her children to become a photographer.
In later years, as her children left home and embraced special diets (e.g., vegetarianism, Indian, etc), Marjorie adapted her cooking. Trying new dishes was Marjorie's way to encourage her kids to visit more often for family dinners on Sunday.
Marjorie passed away on March 17, 2015.
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