Chinese in Niagara Falls ON

There are a number of captioned photos of KIM CRAITOR (b. Sept. 1946) on the Niagara Falls Ching Ming Festival website. I had thought about these pictures as a mutually beneficial photo op: enhancing his political popularity and raising the Chinese community profile. However, that simplistic opinion had been formed before meeting Kim Craitor at the Ching Ming Festival this year. I still believe the spin-offs from his attendance at the festival as being correct but I also sense something else. Googling “Kim Craitor”, I note much attention has been devoted to his public face – human resource development, alderman, MPP, and currently, returning alderman – but little about his personal background has been revealed. Incidentally, wife Helen and a son Christopher are mentioned. When Kim Craitor worked on Bill 33: an act to amend the Children’s Law Reform Act giving grandparents access to their grandchildren, he met with petitioning grandparents. In the provincial legi...

I think the summers between my birth in 1952 and 1960 were more leisurely ones for my mother. She could spend more time at our home on Park Street to look after my brother and me. Once the school year was over and summer break rolled around, Mother’s main focus had to be us. She could not easily run between my father’s restaurant and home because there was no one to look after us in the interim. We couldn’t stay overnight at the Drummond Road restaurant my father operated at the time as there was no room. So from a child’s perspective, summers were simpler. For a few of these at home summers, Mother organized a holiday event: walk from our home up to Queen Victoria Park to look at the falls. The three, or so, kilometer walk there was indeed an adventurous outing with our mother, a rarity in that it was not errand-related. At the bottom of Park Street, we crossed River Road and followed the continuous walkway right up to the Horseshoe Falls. My brother and I often...

While my mother was alive and living with my brother, neither of us would consider bringing fast food or take-out home. It was an extravagance my mother would not suffer silently.  If during my annual visit back to Niagara Falls, I treated my brother to something other than what our mother cooked, the burger, sandwich or pizza would be subjected to all sorts of scrutiny: How much did it cost? It’s not made from quality meat? That won’t fill you up. She could make something much tastier. What a waste of money. However after Mother broke her hip and did not recover, she went into care. My visits to Niagara were still only once a year but during those times, take-out food was de rigueur. My brother’s favourite was Arby’s roast beef with curly fries but even he would tire of it. Eventually came a longing for Chinese food. The Far East Restaurant at 6536 Thorold Stone Rd. was a convenient stop en route back to long decommissioned St. Paul Ave. restaurant where my brother...

Diaspora can refer to both a people scattered from their homeland and the place where they settle. In the case of my parents, they left China and eventually arrived and stayed in Niagara Falls. While making a home within an ethnic enclave such as Chinatown makes sense for linguistic, social, and economic reasons, some Chinese came to Niagara Falls and did not choose Chinatown. As a child, I likely believed that the Chinese who lived outside Chinatown did so because they had more money and could afford to live somewhere nicer. I certainly believed that to be true about the Lew family (Post #23) because they had a beautiful house and two restaurants on Victoria Avenue ( Rose Garden & Jade Garden ). However, my long-time friend, Randall Robertson, challenges me to consider other perspectives. Randall grew up on Eastwood Crescent – two properties up from Jade Gardens – where he could see the two sides of the property. He saw a “decorative, illusionistic front” ...