Person

Lumb, Jean

• Wong, Toy Jin

1919-2002

Jean Lumb was born WONG Toy Jin in Nanaimo, British Columbia in 1919 as the sixth of twelve children; Jean’s parents, WONG Fun Gee (father) and MAH Hone Hung (mother), were Chinese immigrants.

Jean’s early childhood in Nanaimo and Vancouver was marked by discrimination. “As a child in Nanaimo, going to a segregated school, there were many times when I had a terrible feeling of guilt or shame that I was born Chinese. ‘Why are we being treated this way? Why can’t I do what other people do?’”, she recalled. This experience profoundly affected Jean, and shaped Jean’s desire to advocate for her community.

Jean had to quit school at age 12 to support her family during the Great Depression. In 1935, she moved to Toronto and opened Wong Brothers, a fruit store. The store became a success, and Jean brought her family to join her in Toronto.

In 1939, she married Doyle Lumb at the age of 20; Jean and Doyle would raise six children while running Eng’s Produce, their fruit store. Doyle was born in China; Jean was born in Canada and had status as a British subject which she lost when she married Doyle. At the time, when a woman married, she assumed the nationality of her husband who, in this case, was considered a Chinese national and an "alien" by the Canadian government.

After the Chinese Immigration Act was repealed in 1947, Chinese who lacked Canadian citizenship were still barred from bringing their spouses and unmarried children under the age of 18 to Canada. Jean, inspired by her own childhood experience of a loving family, joined a delegation of 40 Chinese and non-Chinese men lobbying the federal government to lift the restrictions. The delegation met with Prime Minister John Diefenbaker in 1960. As the only female delegate, Jean played a high-profile role during the meeting. She explained, “The questions from the floor were mostly directed to me because of the fact that I was a woman and the issue was family reunion.... I feel very lucky that I had the opportunity to be out front as an official spokesperson. Women have always had to be too much in the background.” After the meeting, the government allowed Chinese with legal residency to sponsor their relatives’ arrival in Canada.

One of the most lasting legacies of Jean’s activism would come in the 1960s, after Toronto demolished two-thirds of Chinatown to make space for a new City Hall and public square. In 1965, the city proposed further expropriation, and Jean formed the Save Chinatown Committee to preserve what was left. The Committee successfully fought back, and in 1969, Toronto committed to preserve the remainder of Chinatown.

Jean spearheaded numerous efforts to build bridges between Chinese Canadians and the rest of Canada. Jean and her husband opened the Kwong Chow Chop Suey House in Toronto’s Chinatown in 1959; it operated for 26 years as a treasured community hub. Jean also established the Chinese Community Dancers of Ontario, which performed lion and classical Chinese dances across the country. In 1967, the troupe performed for Queen Elizabeth II at Canada’s Centennial celebrations. Throughout her life, she represented Toronto’s Chinese community in various capacities: she held Chinese cooking demonstrations on television and radio shows, took on leadership roles in many organizations such as the Chinese Cultural Centre, and served as a citizenship judge.

Jean Lumb passed away in 2002, but her legacy of service lives on through the Jean Lumb Foundation, and the Jean Lumb Public School in Toronto. She is the first Chinese Canadian woman and first restaurateur to be inducted into the Order of Canada.

Wong, Robert Shun (1917-1988)

Description supplied by collector/curator