The Importance of Being a Storykeeper - A Conversation WIth Mr. Poon
Mr. Poon’s love of storytelling was very clear during our one hour chat. We learned a lot about his family history and about Chinese Canadian history (such as the Edmonton Chinatown we have today is the third location as the city has forced it to move multiple times). This series of interviews has shed light on what wonderful Asian cultures and communities have to offer, while also acknowledging the historical struggles and racism that has existed. Racism towards Asians has been normalized, even if it is being tolerated and laughed at. Our generation is realizing what this is, by starting to call it out and fight back. This normalized behaviour needs to be unlearned.
While getting to know Mr. Poon during our interview, we learned that:
Mr. Poon attended Parkview Junior High where Mr. Jorgensen was his gym teacher and Mr. DC was his drama teacher. He attended Jasper Place High School
His mom attended Vic and even swam in the swimming pool!
Mr. Lee and Mr. Poon are related distantly! Mr. Lee’s aunt is married to Mr. Poon’s dad’s uncle.
Mr. Lam and Mr. Poon have known each other for 8 years and graduated from the same class in university.
Mr. Poon’s roots are Taishanese (similar to Mr. Lee)- an area in southern China known as the “Homeland of Overseas Chinese” as this area of China was where many of the first Chinese immigrants to North America came from to help build the railroads initially and then branched out into other areas of work.
Taishan is highlighted above in red on both maps.
What is your story?
I am a second generation Chinese Canadian, born at the Royal Alexandra Hospital and raised in Edmonton. You know you haven’t moved far in life when you work across the street from where you were born! My parents were born in Canada as well. My mother was born in Watrous, Saskatchewan and my dad in Stettler, Alberta. My family has been in Canada for well over 100 years. One of my great grandfathers on my dad’s side came over in the 1890s and was working in the lumber yards in BC. He did not become a resident/Canadian citizen, but his son did.
I am very fortunate to have my Chinese heritage and to be a Chinese Canadian. I don’t hold on to as many of the traditions values as a new immigrant might. It has been very precious to blend/integrate/incorporate that heritage and culture in my family, especially now that I’m a new father.
My mother’s family came from Hong Kong in the 1950’s. Her older brother was born in Hong Kong and there are seven kids in total. After leaving Watrous, they moved to the Kingsway area of Edmonton, where my mother attended Victoria Composite High School. You can find her in the school year book – she talks about using the school’s swimming pool, so my Victoria connections go way back. I am not as familiar with my mother’s family history. I know my grandparents, but not great grandparents on that side of the family. My grandmother only speaks Taishanese and still takes care of her own home in Edmonton.
My father’s family is well known in Stettler, Alberta, where the Poon’s were a pioneering family in the community. My great grandfather, Yik Poon, ran the restaurant on the mainstreet in Stettler and his family sponsored many extended family members to become Canadian citizens. They supported, billeted, and provided work for the family members who were new to Canada. I am proud to share that.
In the 1950s, many independent grocery stores in Edmonton were run by Chinese families, and many of those in West Edmonton were run by extended family members of the Poon family. My grandfather ran one in Glenwood, near Jasper Place High School, called Yik’s Grocery (after my great grandfather). There were living quarters attached to the grocery store, so they would live there and run the store.
Yik Poon paved the way for a lot of Chinese Canadians. We had a lot of firsts in our family. My father was the first Chinese Canadian to work for the Edmonton Ambulance Association - he broke that cultural barrier. My grandmother’s sister was one of the first Chinese nurses in western Canada (featured in a documentary called The Lost Years by CBC’s Kenda Gee).
Author’s note: The Chinese Head Tax ended in 1923 and was followed by the Chinese Immigration Act 1923, (known also as the Chinese Exclusion Act) which banned the entry of virtually all Chinese immigrants for the following 24 years. This had an impact on many Chinese families who were forced apart either by these laws/policies or because of the impacts of World War 2 when Japan had invaded China. Mr. Poon’s family was heavily affected by this.
My paternal grandmother did not come over until after WW2. She lived through the Japanese occupation of China and witnessed the horrors of war as a young girl, including the murder of her great-aunt by a Japanese soldier. My grandmother herself came within inches of being killed by a bullet from a Japanese zero plane that was strafing civilians walking along a road in rural Taishan. She froze and my great grandma was able to pull her down at the last second. To this day, she still feels the vibration of the bullet missing her arm. That was a 50 calibre bullet, it would have killed her. The war ended and then the communists took over. Her family fled to Hong Kong in the middle of the night. Their immigration to Canada was delayed due to the Chinese Exclusion Act (her father was in Canada at that time).
My paternal grandfather’s story is similar to my grandmother’s - the family was also separated from their father due to the Exclusion Act and WW2. After the war, his father returned to China to search for him and brought him to Canada. In Taishan during the war, he belonged to a gang of teenagers in the village whose job was to keep everyone alive. They came up with their own language - a hybrid of Taishanese and Cantonese so the Japanese soldiers could not understand them and they could communicate in secret. When he came over, so did many other friends/relatives who were part of the gang. They stayed very close for the remainder of their lives.
There are so many tragic experiences from that time. My grandmother also recalls the year during WW2 when the Japanese were trying to starve the Chinese civilians by taking their food to feed their own soldiers. The civilians were going to die. However, something rare happened. Bamboo, which is like a rice, rarely blossoms and that year it did. When everyone was on the brink of death, the bamboo blossomed and fed the village. My grandmother has a very strong spiritual connection because of that – they were on the brink of disaster and the village was saved. I have enough stories my grandmas have told me that I could probably make a movie out of.
Have you ever struggled with your cultural identity?
My relationship with my heritage is there, but not there at the same time. I’m truly a Chinese Canadian and not an immigrant.
Your son is biracial. What do you want to teach him regarding his ethnic background and having the best of both worlds?
Culture and history shouldn’t be cherry picked. My parents had selectively chosen which values to hold onto. I was not sent to Chinese school (my father and mother did and determined it wasn’t the best way to spend a Saturday). I’m not fluent in Cantonese or Taishanese. I can’t have a full conversation with my grandmother. I deeply regret that I didn’t take the time when I was younger to learn it. I want to encourage my child to learn the language. I want the inquisitive mind to be there for him to want to learn more of our heritage. I want to take the traditions/values and have him be proud of them. Understanding where his heritage comes from is important to me.
I want to pass on the family stories/experiences to my son. I’d like to record and document them for my extended family. Generation after generation, your extended family can lose connection and you don’t know who is who in your family. I feel fortunate my grandmother kept a strong family network and I know my 5th or 6th cousins.
Do you feel it is important to celebrate our cultural differences and experiences?
It is important in order to remember and acknowledge the journey and the experiences that exist. We live in a multicultural society. Mr. Lam and I are part of a very small group of Asian Canadian social studies teachers. You may see more science/math teachers of Asian descent. Now that we see the diversity within the community in general, we need to see this reflected in subject areas for teaching. It’s fantastic that we are seeing more Asian communities having their representation on an equal platform and celebrating other cultures that are less represented.
The Chinese and Asian movie stars I celebrated growing up were all martial artists: Jackie Chan, Bruce Lee, Sammo Hung. Fun fact: Sammo Hung shot a movie in Edmonton in the 1980s called Paper Marriage. It is a Hong Kong film set in Los Angeles shot in Canada (you can search it on Youtube and see the Edmonton skyline or the Santa Maria from WEM). When we think about Asian rep in film, we still see a lot of whitewashing happening. There was a Hollywood TV show called Kung Fu starring David Carradine. The protagonist went across the USA teaching people martial arts. Many people don’t know this, but Bruce Lee had come up with the idea and it was stolen and then whitewashed. Another example is the Japanese anime inspired movie Ghost in a Shell. When adapted into a live -action film, a white actor was chosen to play a Japanese character in 2016! Recently, the TV show Hawaii Five-0 stars Grace Park and Daniel Dae Kim both left the show after failed salary negotiations, when they were reportedly offered less compensation than their white counterparts. The scary part is complacency. We come from cultures where it is acceptable to ‘tow the line’, as a polite or repressed culture, unlike western cultures that are outspoken and loud. So, we may not like what we hear, but we are respectful. Nowadays we bring it forward and we talk about it, but the youth are advocates and showing us what we need to be doing to support ourselves.
What is your favourite part about being Chinese?
Red envelopes! But now that I have a child, I have to hand it out*. Our history - we are a culture and civilization that has been around for a very long time. As a Chinese Canadian, I don’t have the same access to our heritage as someone who still lives in China. It’s cool for me, as I become more engaged in learning about my cultural heritage/history, to be able to have a wealth of info, learning about family or culture is invigorating. One of my favorite things is our food. I truly love it - Trying new foods and sharing with others. I am not talking about westernized Chinese food such as green onion cakes (Edmonton creation) or ginger beef (Calgary creation) or chicken balls. What I mean is banquet style foods and dim sum (Hong Kong level dim sum is incredible). Learning more about arts forms is something I want to do, especially as a media arts teacher.
*Author’s note: red envelopes are handed out on special occasions, such as lunar new year, where the elders in the family pass out red envelopes filled with money (“lucky money”) to family members who are younger and single.
How does your heritage impact your life at work or home?
I feel proud now, although my values are more Canadian. When I’m at school, because of my exterior, it gives me an advantage to help connect with other minorities because they see visually that I’m a minority. I’m very fortunate that with my upbringing, I had access to all opportunities I wanted. Before I became a teacher, I was a professional in the broadcast TV industry for 10 years. When I worked there, the crews I worked on were predominantly white. I was able to go to international events, including the Vancouver and Sochi Olympic games as the lead support technician (I missed an opportunity at the Beijing Olympics as they were looking for a technician who could also translate). There were only a few minorities on the crew. By being there and representing our culture, it shows that racial/cultural barriers can be broken in professions where minorities are under-represented. I never felt anything like discrimination when travelling internationally. It was interesting to go to these places and be immersed in the culture by representing our community and heritage while being on a crew that is very North American.
While my family assimilated to a certain degree, I am an Albertan born and raised. There is still a lot of work to do. I really appreciate the students at Victoria taking a lead on this and look forward to working together. We need to be able to tell the stories of our ancestors and be proud of our history and our struggles.
