Person

Wong, Dan On Lee

• 黃勤衍

1904-2000

WONG On Lee (known in Canada as Dan) was born on April 12, 1904 in a small village in [台山 Toisan / Taishan] county, in China’s Guangdong province. Dan arrived in Canada in June 1922, traveling to Vancouver on the Empress of Asia steamship, and paid the $500 head tax required for Chinese entry to the country.

Dan was 18 years old but was recorded as 15 years of age. He arrived with a 13-year-old “paper” brother. Travelling together meant a degree of security for the youth and allowed two families to benefit from having sons in Canada.

Dan headed to the Brooks, Alberta area to work with an uncle who cooked in a CPR work camp. From there, Dan worked in restaurants in Tompkins, Saskatchewan and The Pas, Manitoba. In 1927, he settled in the southeastern Alberta farming hamlet of Queenstown, where he opened a café.

Dan became a very proficient cook. A long-time friend from Queenstown told the family that Dan had perfected his skill for making apple pies and pancakes during his café years. He said Dan often sold his pies while enjoying his love of community baseball in Queenstown. Dan eventually converted his café into a general store.

In 1933, Dan returned to China and wed Mah See. The long years of the Chinese Exclusion Act were in effect, so Dan had to return to Queenstown on his own. When he left China, Mah See was pregnant with their first child. She remained in China, living with Dan’s mother and extended family. When Dan returned for Canada, he had no idea how long it would be before they could be reunited. Shortly after his return to Canada, the couple's first son, Gene, was born.

Through the years, Dan continued to operate his well-stocked general store and became a fixture in the Queenstown community. After WWII, the Chinese revolution, and repeal of the Chinese Exclusion Act in 1947, Mah See and Gene were able join Dan in Canada in the fall of 1949. After being on his own since the 1930s, Dan was now able to be in the company of his wife and and finally meet his son, now 15 years old. Between 1951 and 1955, Dan and Mah See had four more children: Lily, Ken, Art and Fred.

In Queenstown, as with other farming communities, a general store was important and relied upon for food and necessities. During hard times when money was tight, Dan often allowed customers to purchase on credit. There were times when he would be reimbursed months or years later, and sometimes not at all.

As the years passed, Queenstown’s population, along with its economic and business activity, declined. By 1960, approximately 30 people remained in the hamlet. Dan decided that a move to the Calgary area would be better for the family. Dan’s oldest son, Gene, had already settled in Calgary with his wife, after originally moving to the city for post-secondary education.

Dan and Gene decided to purchase a corner store (Parkway Store) in Calgary in 1961. Gene operated the store while a second story was added to the building to include family apartments. By November 1963, the renovations were complete, and Dan and the rest of the Wong family left Queenstown and moved to Calgary.

The Calgary store was typically open from 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. daily, 363 days a year and only closed on Christmas and New Year’s Day. Dan kept the store stocked with groceries and had a wide variety of other goods including clothes, houseware, toys and hardware. It was truly a family operation with everyone spending time working in the store.

Operating a corner store occasionally had its dramatic moments. One Saturday evening in November 1989, a teenager attempted to rob the store. Dan, by then 85-years-old, used a hockey stick he kept behind the counter to fight off the would-be robber who pulled out a knife. Dan didn’t realize he’d been injured until he took off his shirt to reveal a blood-stained undershirt. Dan was taken to hospital to treat the wound. Despite the injury, Dan opened the store as usual on Sunday morning. On Monday morning, the Calgary Herald headline of the incident read “Blade no match for 85-year-old”.

Dan’s wife, Mah See, passed away in 1993 after suffering from poor health for a number of years. Though Dan’s family encouraged him to retire, he continued to run the store. Keeping busy and his love for interaction with his regular customers kept him going. In the latter years, when the store was not as busy as it once was, you would often find Dan chatting and laughing with a customer, with a hockey game on the store’s TV in the background.

By the time Dan moved to Calgary in 1963, he had already worked in and operated small businesses for 41 years in Canada. Dan would go on to operate the Calgary store for another 34 years. In 1997, at the age of 93, Dan suffered a debilitating stroke which left him in an extended care home. He passed away in 2000.

Dan was always admired for his hard work and determination and remembered for his great cooking, healthy appetite and his hearty laugh. He had a wonderful laugh that would come from his belly and his entire body would shake. The old-timers in Calgary’s Chinese community referred to Dan by the nickname “Happy”.

Around 1995, Dan learned that his older brother’s family in the home village had a telephone. He hadn’t spoken to his brother since his visit to China in 1933. He called the family but because his brother was disabled and the family needed to arrange to move him to the phone, Dan wasn’t able to speak to him on this call. He promised to phone again a few months later on Chinese New Year’s. When Dan called, he learned that his brother had recently passed away. This was a reminder of the sadness and disappointments that Dad faced in his life, but also his resilience.

Dan loved to wear Viyella plaid shirts in the winter. In his later years, instead of changing shirts for special occasions, he would put a tie on his plaid shirt. When his son Fred pointed out that the tie didn’t match with his shirt, he simply responded “At my age, I don’t have to match”.

Description supplied by collector/curator