12. CHINESE LIVES

Neither the city directories nor census records offer much insight into the work and personal lives of Niagara Falls residents. 1911 census did record more information about work life in terms of hours worked per week, weeks employed in 1910, as well as total earnings. However, the information required for the 1921 census was less specific.

Similar to the 1911 census, earnings for the preceding year were recorded; however, the number of hours, days, or weeks worked was not requested. Consequently, inferences about wages in terms of one employer paying more than another, or certain employees being treated differentially, or if room and/or board were deducted cannot be made.

At the same time, entries are often illegible or omitted.

Many Chinese men indicated that they were married but clearly their wives were not living with them. There was one exception gleaned from the 1911 census.

HARRY CHON lived with his wife, Rebecca Chon (b.1889, imm.1908) and their daughter, ALICE CHON (b.1908) at 24 Park Street. Rebecca’s “racial or tribal origin” was stated as “Ireland” and Alice’s as “Chinese.” Of the three Chinese cooks enumerated for 1911, Chon had the longest hours (72 per week versus the other two’s 50) and earned less money for 1910 ($480 compared to $750 and $450).

Why?

Harry Chon could have had: a poorer, or less generous, employer; less “cook” experience; or perhaps received reimbursement in another form. Still, I wonder if he had to work harder because of his family. Not only was Rebecca Irish, she and Alice were Roman Catholic while Chon identified as being Presbyterian.

Back then, inter-racial relationships were highly discouraged and transgressions punishable. For instance, the Toronto Daily Star found news in  "A Chinaman And a White Girl Wedded" (March 28, 1907).

Initially, "three white girls who [had] been living with Chinamen . . . for the past three months" were arrested. Once bailed out, one woman, Jessie Stock, was quickly married to Charles Hing by a missionary. Nonetheless, the Chief Inspector wanted verification of the missionary's authority to perform marriages.

Given the overall conservative views of the times and discriminatory attitudes towards Chinese, I imagine their lives were not easy and am not surprised that the Chon names do not appear in the city directory for 1912 or afterwards.

By 1914, fears of immoral behaviour and evil influences led Ontario, to follow the lead of other provinces, in passing a law prohibiting Chinese businesses from hiring white women. The law remained on the books but enforcement was discretionary.

Accordingly, unless another record emerges, Harry Chon’s family is the first Chinese family in Niagara Falls. But as a child, I did not know this. I thought I belonged to the first Chinese family but in essence, I was on the crest of the first wave of families once the Exclusion Act was revoked.

A child knows the world as what she sees. In my case, I saw my family as being the only;  therefore, the first Chinese one in Chinatown, and later first in school.

Having said that, my concept of what made up a family was shaped and reinforced by what I was taught in school, read in storybooks and saw on TV. Basically in those days, a woman and a child/children were needed to make a "family."

My mother had immigrated to Canada in January 1948. She was one of 66 Chinese to enter Canada that year. My brother was born in 1949 and I in 1952. That was as far back as my lived Niagara Falls Chinatown history took me.

It was not until I began asking questions that I realized how presumptuous I had been. The idea that other Chinese children (besides my brother) had preceded me in school had not even occurred to me.

Then, Robert Wong told me bits of his story:

I came to Niagara Falls in 1951, my grandfather, Dang Tong, was my sponsor. . . . Fortunately I had the opportunity, finished High School (N.F.C.V.I.), instead of working at a restaurant or laundry shop, as many many Chinese did when they came to this country. In those days if you had the high school education, you could get a good job. . . Spent lots of time studying, especially English literature SHAKESPEARE. I could not find any word in my Chinese and English dictionary. Fortunately I had a great English teacher [Barbara Escott] to help me through.

I have only ever known Robert Wong as an adult and then mostly by name - Gnip Goh.

We would have been driving along Stanley Avenue; my sixteen-year old brother at the wheel, my mother backseat driving from the passenger seat while I sat in back indifferent to most of her litany.

At sixteen and driving his own car – our only car – my brother was not an indulged teen but a filial son who drove upon request as our parents didn’t drive.

We would be on our way to pick up restaurant supplies at a wholesaler out towards Lundy’s Lane. Inevitably we’d come along Stanley Avenue past the Gerber Baby Food Factory. Its imposing 100,000 square foot mass prompted my mother to break her chain of instructions with "Gnip Goh works there"  and then continue on.

That matter-of-a-fact comment was an instruction, too, about how we should work hard and strive for something bigger and better than the restaurant life my parents had.

Gnip Goh was proof of possibilities.

At the time, I did not ask about the how or where Robert Wong came from. I must have assumed he, as a fully formed and competent adult, had somehow parachuted into Niagara Falls and Gerber Foods.

But no, he came to Niagara when he was about seventeen and worked hard. If my mother had explicitly filled in these gaps about Robert Wong’s background for me, I must have forgotten or in a childlike way paid insufficient attention. However, I am attending now.

In 2016, Robert Wong wrote:

I don’t think Jack and Mary were the 1st and 2nd Chinese born in Niagara Falls. I have heard that a family by the name of CHONG had a restaurant, had three children by the names of James, Mary, and Edward. They were outstanding scholars at NFCVI [Niagara Falls Collegiate Institute], also received a Ph.D., teaching, and engineering degrees from University of Toronto.
That was way back at least 10 years before I came to Canada. They moved to Toronto.

Who were these amazing Chongs
with a long standing academic reputation?

Earlier this year, I told Randall, my friend whom I had gone to school with about my Chinese in Niagara Falls project. His aunt, Carolyn Gill, a retired pharmacist, was born in 1925 and lived in Niagara Falls until 1945. Randall asked her about her experience with Chinese in Niagara Falls.

She told him:

The only Chinese people I knew growing up were the ones who ran a restaurant down on Bridge Street, near the Lower Bridge. Grandpa knew them from railway days and took us there. I understood they had been employed as cooks on a dining car in the railway system. [My great-grandfather was a conductor on the Michigan Central trains until well into his seventies.] The only Chinese young people I remember were 2 guys in our Grade 13 class [this would have been at NFCVI.] One (who was rather brilliant) seemed to be a lot older than the other, whose name was Ed Chung. I don't know whether they were brothers or just related.

Aha . . . check for a different name spelling.