by May Q. Wong
“Sixo-calack. You come,” Ah Thloo would call to say in her pidgin English. That was the Cockerells’ invitation for dinner at six o’clock and a game of mah-jong, at which Ah May would be the fourth. They played three times a week, for hotly contested pennies a point. The winner kept half the pot, while the pot bought a monthly treat for dinner.
Ah Thloo proudly displays her garden harvest, 1989.
MAY Q. WONG, VICTORIA
Ah Thloo plays Mah Jong with in-laws Doreen and Jeff and
goddaughter Ah Ngan Jean (visiting from Hong Kong), 1990s.
MAY Q. WONG, VICTORIA
Ah Wei died in 2001, of a stroke, at the too-young age of fifty-three. All the family’s bad genes had apparently been visited upon him, shortening his life. One of the most difficult things for a mother to bear is the death of a child, no matter how old that child is. Ah Thloo had worried about Ah Wei all his life; he had been needier than her other two children. As he grew older, everything was a struggle for him—mentally, socially, and physically. At the evening meals, her prayers for him were the longest and most fervent. Ah Thloo absorbed the sad news philosophically; she was relieved that he no longer had to battle his demons. She sent Ah May and Michael to Montreal, to give Ah Wei’s eulogy and to bestow one last kiss from her.
About three times a year, Ah May took her mother on the ferry to Vancouver, to visit friends and to shop. Ah Thloo became reacquainted with Ah Aie, the little girl who had slept in her house in the hamlet. Ah Aie had married a Gim San law who worked in the fishing camps in remote parts of British Columbia. Now a senior herself, she and her family had lived in Vancouver for many years.
It was through their stories about life in the hamlet that Ah May finally understood Ah Aie’s relationship with the Wong family. She, Ah Lien, and their older sister, Ah Ngan, who lived in Los Angeles and loved to gamble, were the daughters of Ah Ngay Gonge, the man who had given Ah Dang the train ticket to Montreal; he was the old man Ah May and her brother used to visit at his laundry on St. Hubert Street when she was very young. Sadly, only the middle daughter, Ah Lien, ever saw their father after he went to Montreal. The eldest was married and had moved away by the time he went back to China to father the youngest. After Ah Thloo married and left the hamlet, she never saw Ah Lien again, but they kept in touch through letters.
Ah Aie and Ah Ngan came together to Victoria to visit Ah Thloo. They had different personalities and had lived very different lives, but when they were all together, they giggled like little girls. They sat close, with Ah Thloo between them, holding hands, as if they could not bear to lose one another. They reminisced about giew see, olden times, laughing about how poor they had been, and what they had had to do to make do.
“I am so lucky! How was I so fortunate as to have this last daughter, and live out my life in this paradise on earth?” Ah Thloo wondered out loud to her friends, as they gazed at the mature trees framing a view of the ocean, with mountains a distant backdrop. “The weather is so good, the air is clean, and it is never too hot, like nonge toon or too cold like Mon-de-haw. When I was a girl, watching our buffalo, I never dreamed of coming to live in a place like this.”
All of Ah Thloo’s “children” came to visit her. Her goddaughter, Ah Ngan Jean, brought her physician husband and daughters, Susan and Susanna, from Hong Kong. The girls came back to visit Ah Thloo four years later, to introduce Susan’s fiancé to their surrogate grandmother. The girls could not speak directly to Ah Thloo—they spoke Cantonese and did not understand her dialect, so they spoke English to Ah May, who translated—but they all felt a special bond.
Ah Sang, the young man who had taken Ah Thloo and young Ah Wei touring in Hong Kong while they waited for their visas, travelled from Australia to visit. He and his son Alan were on a round-the-world trip and made a point of stopping in Victoria.
Ah Thloo sitting between Ah Aie and Ah Ngan, 1990s.
MAY Q. WONG, VICTORIA
All three of Ah Lai’s children came to see their grandmother. Ah Fuy, the eldest, visited a number of times from New York, while Ah Thlam Moy, the youngest, came from Australia. Ah Doon moved to Victoria from China with his wife.
Ah Fuy and Ah Thloo had built a bond since 1966, when the girl was only three years old, and the relationship had deepened through her earlier trips to Montreal from New York. During one of her visits to Victoria, when Ah May was away with Michael, Ah Thloo shared the story of her wedding night and the events that had started the rift between Ah Dang and herself. She had never told the story to anyone, but it was time someone else knew what had happened. The simple act of telling it made Ah Thloo feel like a swan’s feather being lifted by a fresh spring breeze toward the heavens; she could see so far that her perspective was different. The memory stayed, but the last vestiges of her resentment and hurt were gone, replaced by a feeling of peace. Afterwards, grandmother and granddaughter cried, and as they dried each other’s tears, they both recognized the change in Ah Thloo. Thereafter, Ah Thloo could even acknowledge her own love for Ah Dang.
Ah Sang and son Alan bring an Australian sheep skin for Ah Thloo, 1990s.
JEFF COCKERELL, VICTORIA
Ah Lai eventually came to Canada as well, and she and Ah One lived in Ah May and Michael’s house on three separate occasions, varying in duration from six months to a year, between 1994 and 1999. Michael learned to speak Ah Thloo’s Chinese dialect and Ah One taught everyone qi gong. An inventive and accomplished cook, Ah Lai offered her culinary skills as a gift and eventually pursuaded her mother to relinquish the kitchen. In 2002, they emigrated to Canada, sponsored by their son. Ah Lai no longer needed her father’s papers.
Ah Thloo lived with Michael and Ah May for more than fifteen years. “In all that time, we never had a cross word between us,” Michael liked to say of his relationship with his mother-in-law. “She respected our boundaries, never interfered, and never took sides.” It was not that Michael and Ah Thloo didn’t understand each other; rather, that they had a special rapport that did not always require language. Neither Ah May nor Michael had any idea how much English Ah Thloo actually understood, but she would sometimes surprise them by commenting appropriately, in Chinese, about a topic they were discussing. However, if they argued, Ah Thloo just quietly went to her room and left them alone to resolve their problems. If Ah May talked to her about it, she comforted her daughter but never said anything against “Mikoo.” Ah Thloo’s own marriage had taught her that issues between a husband and wife could not be resolved by anyone else.
Left to right: Ah Fuy, Ah Lai, Ah Thloo, and Ah May
sitting in front of the heavenly view, 1990s.
RON OF TIVOLI STUDIOS, VICTORIA
Before Ah May moved in with Michael, Ah Thloo had predicted, “He will take good care of you.” Had she known he would take that same care with her? His care, and her acceptance of that care, were a reflection of their mutual love and respect. There is a special grace in allowing oneself to be cared for. Ah Thloo was always thankful; she also kept her sense of humour. Ah May had been raised to expect to be an active caregiver for her aging parents. She felt she had received from them everything a person needed to succeed in life—love, a sense of humour, and trust—and she had accepted her caregiving role as a privilege. Now she could give back.
One of the things Ah May did for her mother was a pedicure, which was a bonding ritual for them. Ah Thloo often reminisced about the routine she had developed as a girl with her dear grandmother, and she took obvious pleasure from having her feet and toes touched, manipulated, and kneaded. As a child, Ah May had always been disappointed when she couldn’t get a laugh from her mother by tickling her feet. “It’s from walking barefoot for half of my life. A farmer’s daughter can’t survive in the rice fields with sensitive, thin-skinned feet. Every day I stood in water and my toes kept me balanced in the mud,” Ah Thloo noted practically, as Ah May gave her a massage.
Ah Thloo would sit back and tell Ah May stories about giew see, the olden times. One
day Ah May asked her about Canada’s old immigration laws, as she had recently found her father’s head tax receipt. It was folded up in an old, blue, plastic bank account book holder. It looked well worn: the folds were reinforced with tape, it had yellowed with age, and it smelled old and bitter.
It must have been a precious thing—it was her father’s passport to a new life, his entry fee to a wonderland full of promise, his key to the door of fulfillment—but he had never talked to Ah May about the how doo, head tax. It wasn’t a secret; it just wasn’t something the family talked about. Since her childhood, Ah May had known about the tax and the law that had resulted in estranged families like hers.
It wasn’t until her mother told Ah May about Ah Dang’s early life that she could guess at why her father had kept the paper hidden. Perhaps the document served as a symbol of his own dark experiences in those long ago days. It was also a shameful testimonial to the way Canada had targeted the Chinese people for discrimination. No other immigrant group had been shut out entirely, forcing a generation of men to endure a lifetime away from their families.
Despite the discrimination Ah Dang had been subjected to, he was a proud Canadian. He took his rights and responsibilities as a citizen seriously, paid his taxes, and happily showed off his Canadian passport whenever he travelled abroad. He could have thrown away the painful record when it was no longer required as identification, but in addition to the sorrow it was drenched in, perhaps it was also a reminder of his adoptive father’s trust: that he might reinvent himself and create a life filled with more hope than bitterness.
The Guan family gathers to celebrate a birthday, 1995.
A GODDAUGHTER, GUANGZHOU
On a day when Ah May was giving her mother a pedicure, a radio program featured a Chinese-Canadian organization that was lobbying for restitution. The speaker was asking people who had paid the tax, or were direct relatives of those who had paid it, to make themselves and their views on compensation known. Conversing in Chinese, Ah May asked her mother what she thought. “Mommy, a Chinese group is asking the government for redress on the head tax.”
“What are they asking for?”
“An apology and a symbolic repayment of the head tax.”
“An apology is a good idea. We Chinese built the railroad that helped make Canada a country. There was no reason to tax new immigrants after we finished the job. When the tax didn’t work, they stopped us all from coming. That’s why your father lived here and I had to stay in China for so long after we were married.”
“Did he have enough money to bring you here?”
“Sure, he had money. Your father worked hard and saved enough to go back to China three times. We would have been safer in Canada. Remember, there were wars all over China. But Canada wouldn’t let our family come. The government has to say, ‘I am sorry for discriminating against the Chinese.’”
“What about paying back the five hundred dollars Daddy paid?”
“How much would be enough? Some of it? All of it? Would they give interest, or give today’s value? Too little would be insulting. How much would be too much? Someone is bound to complain, no matter what the amount. No amount they give could make me forget the starvation and fear we endured by being left behind. Nothing would erase the heartache of separation between your father and your sister and brother. Gan-na-aie is known as a fair country. That’s why so many people from around the world come here to live. To keep being fair, Gan-na-aie must recognize its wrongs and apologize.”
Portrait of Jang Tue Sue Wong, 1970s.
ROBERT WONG, MONTREAL
Unfortunately, Ah Thloo missed the apology by four years.
However, she lived to witness the return of Hong Kong to the People’s Republic of China, and more importantly, she was reunited with her daughter, Ah Lai, in Canada, and met all three of her great-granddaughters. Her last words were about how clever those girls had become and much she loved her family.
On December 14, 2002, the pastor from the Chinese church joined Ah Thloo’s family by her bedside. It was as if Ah Thloo had been waiting for a formal introduction to heaven, for as soon as the pastor began to pray, she shrugged off her frail earthly mantle and passed away peacefully.
Her daughters made sure Ah Thloo took her final journey fully clothed, complete with shoes, underwear, a pantsuit, and a new Christmas vest. She would have enjoyed her funeral banquet, attended by many friends from the church and the community. Her cremated remains are contained in a cloisonné, Chinese-style urn, for she did not want her ashes to be scattered. They rest instead with a view of the heavenly landscape she enjoyed so much in life.
My dear fellow citizen: Today you are becoming a member of our great Canadian family, with its common values of freedom, respect, tolerance and sharing. By coming here, you have enriched our collective history with your own experience.
—Governor General Michaëlle Jean, Letter to New Citizens
EPILOGUE
Canadian—At Last
VICTORIA, 2007
“I swear that I will be faithful . . .”
With my nephew, Ah Doon, translating for his parents, Ah Lai and Ah One repeated the phrases in Chinese. This was the final step in becoming Canadian citizens; their required five years of residency had passed in a flash, and they had submitted their applications only a few months earlier. Their English was still far from fluent, coming to Canada as they had in their sixties. Learning a new language was hard, so they were given some leeway with the translation. In addition, the officials had come to their home to perform the ceremony, all quite a sharp contrast to the drawn-out process experienced by our father when he had sought a country to belong to.
Judge Brown, a citizenship judge based in Vancouver, came to Ah Lai and Ah One’s apartment in Victoria on June 13, 2007, to conduct a private swearing-in, in deference to Ah One’s bedridden condition. He was blind, and his right side was partially paralyzed, the result of a long-ago stroke, so he raised his left hand during the ceremony. Michael and I took the pictures for posterity.
Donning her black robe, accented with pink, Judge Brown opened the formal ceremony with a talk about the significance of becoming citizens during the year 2007. “Canada is celebrating sixty years of Canadian citizenship. Before 1947, people were considered British citizens. The Canadian Citizenship Act recognized a separate Canadian identity from the rest of Great Britain.”
That year was also when the Chinese Immigration Act of 1923, known as the Chinese Exclusion Act, was finally repealed, lifting the ban on Chinese immigration. On June 22, 2006, Prime Minister Stephen Harper apologized, on behalf of Canada, for discriminating against the Chinese by imposing a head tax.
While neither of my parents lived to witness the apology, they would have approved of the government’s acknowledging this institutionalized prejudice and been satisfied that it was done formally, in the House of Commons, where the original offending legislation had been passed. Mother and Father had lived their lives in Canada with their heads held high, not allowing other people’s attitudes and behaviours to cow them. They were as proud of their Chinese heritage as they were of their Canadian identities, and they had patiently hoped that the Canadian government, with its reputation for upholding justice, would eventually right this particular wrong.
About a year after the prime minister’s announcement, I requested a copy of the apology statement to keep with my father’s head tax document. I had not known the date of my sister’s citizenship appointment when I made the call, but when the statement arrived on the very morning of the ceremony, it seemed fitting that she, as the one who had stayed in China because of the legislation, should be presented with it.
My sister and brother-in-law were among the one hundred and sixty thousand new citizens sworn in that year. Eighty-five percent of all immigrants to this country want to be Canadians. And why not? Canada now revels in its diversity.
Ah One, Ah Lai, and Ah Thloo enjoy a famous garden, 1990s.
MAY Q.
WONG, VICTORIA
The judge kept her message brief, then started the recitation of the Oath of Allegiance, pausing after each phrase. My sister held a copy of the oath in her free hand and stood close to Ah One’s raised hospital bed. Ah Doon stood between his parents, translating. All three started with slight smiles on their faces. As they came to the end, their smiles and voices, especially my brother-in-law’s, became wider and stronger, emphasizing each phrase with anticipation of their new status. “. . . and bear true allegiance to Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth the Second, Queen of Canada, . . . and that I will faithfully observe the laws of Canada and fulfil my duties as a Canadian citizen.”
Then Ah One turned his beaming face toward our voices to pose for a photograph. Written messages from Governor General Michaëlle Jean and from the minister of citizenship and immigration were also presented.
Author with her father, 1981.
ROBERT WONG, VICTORIA
“Congratulations!” said Judge Brown, shaking their hands. “I welcome you as Canadian citizens!”
By taking on the mantle of Canadian citizenship, my sister not only shed her Chinese passport but also shrugged off the stigma of being the daughter left behind. She had accepted the apology by Canada’s highest office as well as the challenge of creating a new life in her parents’ chosen country.
Michael and I rushed forward to hug Ah Lai and her husband. Returning my welcoming embrace, my sister said, with a smile and a catch in her voice, “Ah Moy, Mommy and Daddy in heaven are very happy. Today, we have realized their lifelong dream. Finally, our whole family has been reunited as Canadians!”