Item 13 - Interview of Irene Chu

116 MB (1 file) : mp3 ; 0 hr., 50 min., 58 sec.

Audio recording of interview with Irene Chu conducted by Vivienne Poy in Toronto, ON. Interview conducted in English.

From Transcripts [Extended notes] compiled by Vivienne Poy:

Irene Chu, (student visa 1963, 1965 dependent), interviewed in Toronto

• born in Shanghai in 1938
• father left China for Hong Kong in 1948. There were tens of thousands of acres of land registered in his name, as well, he had a stock brokerage firm called “Humber Thumber”. He knew he would be [targeted] by the Communists. Her mother didn’t want to leave at first, and only left after the Communists took over the country. She wanted to believe that the Communists would only be there for a short time, so she left all her valuables behind in Shanghai. She even left all her [jewelry] with her neighbour.
• The six children were left in Shanghai in the care of 3 servants. They were quite happy, because in the Communist regime, there were a lot of meetings and activities, and the students didn’t have to be serious about studying, and without the parents there, they were free to do whatever they liked.
• In 1952, the children finally got the exit visas to go to Hong Kong. The reason they were allowed out, Irene believes, was that there was enough money in Shanghai for them to live, and they were not receiving any support money from [outside], so there was really no reason for the government to keep them there. Those people who were getting remittances from overseas had a much more difficult time.
• Three sisters, a younger brother, Irene and a servant left Shanghai in August 1952. Her eldest sister didn’t want to leave because she was having fun, and her friends were all there. However, by December, she changed her mind, and left for Hong Kong.
• 2 months after Irene arrived, her family arranged for her to go to a Chinese school, True Light (Jun Guang). The environment was totally different, the Cantonese culture was strange to her, and she could only speak Mandarin and Shanghainese. She went to school the first day in shorts, but the school was very conservative where all the students wore cheongsam. The headmistress told Irene she couldn’t come to school like that. So the next day, she went in jeans, and again, she was reprimanded by the head mistress. The following week, her cheongsam school uniforms were ready, so she could go to school in uniform. She only stayed there for three months, because her mother insisted that the children go to an English school.
• By the time the children came out to Hong Kong, their aunt and grandmother decided that it would be too much of a risk for them to bring the mother’s [jewelry out]. It was then still in the neighbour’s safety deposit box. If the children were caught with it, they would not be allowed to exit. It was finally confiscated by the Red Guards in the 1960s. Strange enough, the contents were recorded. In the 1980s, the family was contacted, and compensation was made in cash, but the evaluation was ridiculous, eg. $50.00 for a carat of diamond! The money had to remain in a bank in Shanghai.
• Through a friend’s help, Irene’s mother was able to get all the children into a school called St Rose of Lima, ran by the Franciscan nuns. Irene had to be put back to primary school even though she should have been in Middle school. Eventually, she was able to catch up with her English, and caught up with the other students. That’s why all the children became Catholic. The nuns were very good teachers and good to them.
• Her father lost a lot of money in business in Hong Kong. Her mother was very unhappy and cried all the time. As a refuge, the children would go to church and became very devout. Irene went to church every morning and every evening for 10 years(1952-1963). Because Irene played the piano and the organ, she would be asked to play for the parish, as well as for all the weddings on Saturdays and Sundays. She would help with all the hosts for communion, washed the altar for the church, and counted the collection money on Sunday night.
• The St Rose of Lima school used to only go up to Form 3, and then the children would go on to commercial schools. Because Irene and her sister were very good students, the headmistress decided to add classes to go up to school cert. Irene and her sister were in the same class, and theirs was the first class that [attended] the school cert. After school cert, Irene went to Marynor to attend Lower and Upper 6.
• In 1959, she went to Hong Kong university, with the intention of studying Math. But the Math professor was very discouraging, because he believed Math should be for men and not women. On the other hand, the English Professor was very accommodating, and encouraged Irene to take English. She graduated in 1962 in English Literature.
• She was by then already engaged to Donald, her future husband. The two were in the same kindergarten and primary school in Shanghai. By grade 5, he and his family left for Hong Kong. Throughout the 11 years she was in Hong Kong, she never met him. Donald went to McGill to study Medicine, and eventually was in the rooming house with Irene’s cousin. This cousin was always very proud of his cousins, the 5 girls in Irene’s family, and had pictures of them with him. One day, Donald went into the cousin’s room and saw Irene’s picture, and said he went to school with her in Shanghai. The following summer, when Donald went back to Hong Kong, he looked her up. A year later, they got engaged. Just before, her mother passed away. She was in 2nd. year university.
• After graduation, she went to teach 1year in Math in Marynor. she then applied to go to McGill.
• In 1963, Irene came to Canada on a student visa to McGill to study English Literature and to be with Donald, who had intended to go back to Hong Kong after he graduated from Medicine. They were married in Montreal. She felt very lucky to be accepted by McGill in post graduate school because very few were accepted from Hong Kong at the time. She studied for 1 1/2 years. When she had her first son, she was trading baby-sitting with a PhD student who lived upstairs, and who also had a baby. But when the PhD student had her second baby, she decided to postpone her studying, so Irene lost her baby sitting arrangement. She also discontinued her studies.
• In 1965, when Donald graduated, because of the political situation in Quebec, and the fact that he couldn’t speak French, he couldn’t [practice] there. He applied to intern at St. Michael’s Hospital in Toronto. He was making about $200.00 a month, which was just enough for rent. Irene needed to go to work.
• By that time, Irene had her second child. She was accepted to teach at St. Joseph College school. There, again, she taught Math but also English. However, she couldn’t just go and teach. She needed to go to summer school to get a license, but then she couldn’t go to summer school without being a landed immigrant. So, she went to apply, but was told that she couldn’t apply unless her husband applies also. As a woman who is married, she had no right to apply as a landed immigrant. Those were the rules then.
• Donald then applied to be an immigrant, not because he wanted to be Canadian, but because Irene needed to get a job. Irene then was a dependent on his application form, which made it possible for her to attend Ontario College of Education (OCE)
• In 1966, after Donald’s [internship], they decided to go back to Hong Kong. He made all the arrangements and they went back. But, by the end of the year, there were riots in Hong Kong, which was the spill over from the Red Guards riots in China. They were back in August, and Donald’s parents had an apartment for them to live in. But because Donald’s sister was getting married in November, the apartment was given to her instead, and the parents were going to get another apartment for them. Donald was very angry, and within a week, he wrote to St. Mike’s to apply for a residency in Radiology. He was accepted. The parents thought that it was because of the riots that their son wanted to leave.
• In Jan. 1967, Irene was pregnant again. This time, her in-laws gave her the ultimatum that, either she had an abortion, or else leave the two children in Hong Kong while she and Donald came back to Canada. They contend that their son was going back to Canada for more training, and having 3 children with them would be too disturbing for him. Being a very subservient daughter-in-law, she had the abortion. She wasn’t sure whether it was legal in Hong Kong or not, but a relative of theirs from China was doing abortions in Hong Kong, and Irene was brought to her office for the procedure. She was also under the impression that Donald also wanted her to have the baby aborted. Being a catholic, it bothered her a lot. She was so tense and stressed that she was put on tranquilizers. In May, 1967, they were back in Canada.
• Soon after they were back, Donald got his citizenship (due to all the years he spent at McGill). At that time, the requirement of residency was 5 years. Irene got hers a bit later as an “attachment” of Donald. A letter was sent to her to let her know that she had become a citizen.
• Irene was very happy to be back in Canada, but Donald felt that he should be in Hong Kong, and always felt very foreign in Canada. After a while, the practice was so good that it would not have made sense to move back. But the last few years of his life, he did spend a lot of time there.
• When they first returned, as a resident in Radiology, Donald was only making a couple of hundred dollars, so he took a part time job with a clinic in Scarborough. The reason he went into Radiology was because he believed that because he was Chinese, no one would accept him as a doctor. After 2 months in [Radiology], he realized he was only looking at films all day and no patients. In the mean time, in his part time job, he was very well [received] by his patients, so he decided Radiology was not what he wanted. He left the programme and joined the clinic as a salaried helper in general practice in 1968. The administrator wanted him to join the partnership, which meant putting up $20,000.00. He checked the books, and found that the administrator was taking all the money while the doctors had to work hard just to get by. For $20,000.00, he could have his own practice. So, he left the clinic and looked for an office space. One of the drug salesmen told him that Markham was a good town to have a practice because there were only 5 doctors there. Irene and Donald drove on the weekend to see the area, and talked to the people in Markham, and in Unionville, they discovered that there was no doctor in the area at all.
• On the Old Kennedy Rd. and just north of [Hwy]. 7, there were about three hundred new houses, with a strip plaza there. On the upstairs of the strip plaza, Donald rented a 2 bedroom apartment to start his practice. The rent was a lot cheaper than the commercial rent downstairs. He was busy right from day one because there was no doctor in the area. A year later, the land lord offered Donald space downstairs with exclusivity in the plaza.
• Donald started to look around, and there was a house, just around the corner. At that time, Unionville had a by-law that would allow a doctor to practice from a private home without living there. He bought a 3-bed room house and practiced from there until he died. Subsequently, Irene also had her real estate office in the basement. When Donald passed away, the house was rented to tenants. Irene recently sold it.
• After the Chus came back to Canada, Irene stayed home looking after the children and at the same time, she gave piano lessons to the children in the neighbourhood. They would have a recital in her home once a year.
• In the mean time, she also took up oil painting, and was exhibiting and selling her paintings. Later, she also had a painting work shop in her home. This came as a surprise because she was very poor in drawing as a child. However, she had always liked oil painting. One day, she was flipping through a Simpson’s catalogue and saw an oil painting set for $19.95. She started by copying a picture of a Chinese junk, and decided that it was very good. So she enrolled in the Agincourt Collegiate evening course for beginners, as well as getting herself a private teacher. The teacher asked her to join the Scarborough [artists] guild, and take part in the exhibition. There was a group who were the jury who decide whether the paintings were good enough for exhibition. That was how she started. Her first painting sold for $40.00. Later, she was invited to exhibit in various synagogues, and most of her customers were Jews.
• In her volunteer work, she helped with the establishment of the Chinese school, and in that school, there was a Chinese painting teacher, and from that teacher, Irene also picked up Chinese painting techniques. She was also invited to show in various galleries in Toronto, and unfortunately, because of the recession, they are now closed. She is now starting to build up her portfolio again.
• Irene did a great deal for the community as well as fund-raising. She was [appointed] by the [Mulroney] government as a citizenship court judge and later, also became an immigration appeals judge.
• Irene remains religious in a spiritual sense, but she is no longer a practicing Catholic. When she came to Canada, she still went to church every Sunday. In 1965, when she was pregnant with their second child, Donald was interning and was working at St. Mike’s on Christmas day. She went to church with her sister (her husband, a doctor, was also on duty at the hospital). There was a heavy snow storm when the Mass was over, they tried to get a cab, but they couldn’t. They asked the other parishioners to give them a lift to Leslie and Lawrence, and Don Mills and Eglinton, and no one from the entire church would do it. In the end, a policeman who was just getting off duty saw them knee deep in snow, and gave them a lift. She became very disillusioned by that kind of “Christian” spirit.
• Irene still continued to go to church. When they moved to Agincourt, because of the building of the new church, for 5 or 6 weeks, during the sermon, the pastor talked about nothing but asked for money. She became very fed up. She decided that she would just keep god in her heart, and live an honest life, but she wouldn’t go to church anymore. Occasionally, she would go to a Buddhist temple.
• At one time, she was interested in running in politics. That was the time when the country was talking about [Multiculturalism], and she was very vocal. When she had her exhibitions, she would talk about the [multicultural] aspect of her paintings. The Scarborough Education asked her to speak, and her profile was raised in the community. She was also helping in various fund raising. When Bill Davies was Premier, his executive assistant asked Irene if she was interested in running in politics. At that time, Scarborough was one riding under Thom Wells, and it was going to be split into two. By that time, the Chinese population in Scarborough was already 10% to 15%, and if Irene took one of the riding, and if the Chinese all came out to vote, she would get in. And if she won, she would more than likely to get a portfolio, because she was Chinese and a woman. She considered it, and decided not to run. She believed that Donald wasn’t very keen.
• 1978, the Council of Chinese Canadians in Ontario, CCCO, held a conference at the Toronto Hotel. Dr. Xi, Director of ROM, and Prof. Jerome Chan of York U. were guest speakers on the topic of [multiculturalism]. The next year, they were going to hold another conference, and needed a [coordinator]. Irene applied and got the job. The conference was called “Living and Growing in Canada, Chinese Canadian Perspective.” It was planned for November, 1979, at the Royal York Hotel, with 600 participants. In September, “Campus Giveaway” was aired on CTV. At the beginning, Irene was not aware of it, but the students down town were very upset, and asked for help from many people. Lawyers, Chinese and non-Chinese, told them they had no case. When they heard about the preparation meeting, they found out that Irene was the [coordinator]. They went to her, showed her the segment of the film, and asked to have the floor in the conference so that they could air this issue. When Irene saw it, she said “of course.”
• Because of the issue being aired in the conference, there had to be follow-up. An ad hoc committee was set up “CCCO against W5.” She was going to chair that committee and have certain number of participants, but Donald was very much against it. So, instead of Irene, Donald chaired it. The reason he was against it was that she was slipping in her house keeping, in giving him care, and that she was getting too involved with the community. she still did all the background work, wrote a lot of things, contacted a lot of people, went to speak to a lot of them, but he was the one on the film, [getting] all the headlines. So Donald became the Chairman, and Joseph Wong became the Vice-Chairman. Prior to April, CTV wanted to negotiate. By the time of the conference, they had solicited help from 17 cities across Canada. all the people came to the conference and donated money. It was decided that the Chinese Canadian Council for Equality should be formed. 2 years later, the name became Chinese Canadian National Council.