Item 26 - Interview of Rosita Tam

98.9 MB (1 file) : mp3 ; 0 hr., 43 min., 13 sec.

Audio recording of interview with Rosita Tam conducted by Vivienne Poy in Markham, ON. Interview conducted in Cantonese.

From Transcripts [Extended notes] compiled by Vivienne Poy:

Rosita Tam (entrepreneur - principal applicant) 1986, interviewed in Toronto by phone, spoke entirely in Cantonese, Summer 2002, (Daisy).

• Born in Hong Kong on May 14, 1953. When she was a month old, her mother, a concubine, moved her own family to Macao. Rosita has two older brothers by her own mother.
• Rosita’s father started working in garments on a very small scale right after the War. By the time she was born, he had a growing business in garment manufacturing in Hong Kong, and he would like to expand to Macao. His wife’s family stayed in Hong Kong, and the family by the concubine was moved to Macao to give him a base.
• The two families lived together in the same house in Hong Kong, but with an expanding family, Rosita believes that it was better that they moved to separate quarters.
• In Macao, Rosita’s mother, who was very capable, helped her father to get established. After Rosita, her mother had another daughter and a son, so there were 5 children from her own mother, 6 children from the wife, with a total of 11 children.
• Rosita went to school in Macao until high school graduation.
• Rosita’s father’s business prospered. Their factories wove yard goods (cloths), dyed them, designed and made them into garments - Lun Hap Garment Factory. They exported their products to Europe and the U.S. They made private labels for large companies. Rosita grew up in that environment helping in the factories and in the business.
• After high school graduation, her father wanted her to stay home to help with the business. He was of the old school, believing that girls don’t need that much formal education. However, she expressed the wish to go abroad to study and applied to go to a university in Taiwan. At the time, her father was doing business with China, and because of the political situation between China and Taiwan, he preferred her to go somewhere else. In 1974, Rosita went to Centenary College in New Jersey to study accounting. In the same year, her younger sister went to Canada to study. After 2 years, she was going to transfer to North Eastern in Boston. She went back to Hong Kong for the summer, and her father was not well. He needed extra help in the company because their business was expanding very quickly. He persuaded Rosita to stay at home to help out. ( 1967) She worked between Hong Kong and Macao, travelling back and forth a few times a week.
• Rosita got married in 1978. Her first son was born in 1979. Her husband was a social worker. Rosita continued to work until 1982 when her daughter was born. She wanted to stay home with the children for a few years.
• By the mid 1980s, there was talk of change of sovereignty of Hong Kong back to China, and Rosita was worried about her children having to grow up under Communism. At that time, she considered immigrating to Canada, not only because she had always had a good impression of Canada, it was also an easier country to immigrate to. By that time, her younger sister had already moved to the U.S. with her husband, so she had no family in Canada.
• In 1985, she applied to Canadian immigration as an entrepreneur in the garment business to immigrate to Montreal. The application went in at the beginning of the year, and she was called for interviews within 6 months, one in Hong Kong and one in Montreal. She had to present a proposal of her business plan. Because of her youth (she was only in her 30s), the immigration officer in Hong Kong went to see their operations and their factories to confirm her capability.
• As an entrepreneur, her requirement was employment of between 2 to 10 people because she was setting up in the wholesale business of garments produced from their factories in Hong Kong and Macao. The intention was that she would open a factory in Montreal if business went well. Her business had to be established within 2 years. She was advised by her immigration lawyer that it would be easier for her to immigrate to Quebec because of the garment business, so it would be easier to get landed status. Somehow, the language problem was not in the consideration.
• The family immigrated to Canada in mid 1986. Rosita was under the impression that she could use English in Quebec, and she could learn French gradually. When she got there, she found out that the Quebecers wouldn’t speak to her in English. Even in the schools, not only her children had difficulties, (6 & 3 year olds), as a parent, she also had difficulties communicating with the teachers. Despite the difficulties, she established her sales office and employed a French Canadian sales manager.
• Both garments and fabrics were shipped from Hong Kong for wholesale. Sales were in much smaller [volumes] compared to what she was used to in Hong Kong, and it was difficult to collect payments, even with extended credits of 6 to 9 months. She found that the sales manager was ineffective. Business didn’t do well. Besides, she really wanted her children to be educated in English. After they moved to Montreal, since her husband was a social worker in Hong Kong, he wasn’t able to find work, so he stayed at home to look after the children, and he was not happy.
• By the end of 1987, she decided to move the family to Toronto. The intention was to continue with the garment business. She looked into the possibilities of an office and in opening a factory, but came across the problems of unions. The facts of strikes scared her because she said in Hong Kong, she didn’t have that kind of experience. Also, at that time, many factories went bankrupt because of lack of business. She also found Canadians, at that time, were not fashionable like Hong Kong or Europe, so that would not have been the right kind of business to be in. Canadians companies also don’t order by the ten of thousands of dozens, like what she was used to in their Hong Kong business. In her experience, she had not seen an order of one thousand dozen, which would only be equivalent to making their samples.
• Rosita stayed home with the children. Her husband tried finding work in social work in Toronto, but found that it is very different from Hong Kong since many of the projects were on contract basis with the government. He went to George Brown and studied heating and air-conditioning. He worked in [maintenance]. One night, he was called in the middle of the winter to the roof of a shopping mall, and because it was very windy, his ladder fell. There would not have been any way for him to get down if a kind person had not walked by and put the ladder back for him. Since that experience, he didn’t want to do that kind of work anymore. He then went to George Brown again, and took a course in Chinese cooking.
• By 1988, Chinatown was very busy and crowded and business was booming. Since Rosita’s husband was interested in Chinese food, her friend told her that there was one business in the food court in the Dragon Centre, at Dundas and Spadina, was for sale. She and her husband went to look and saw that it wasn’t too big, they decided that he could probably manage since neither of them had any experience with the food business. He ran that business for 4 years.
• By 1991, Scarborough began to boom, and Chinatown was gradually taken over by the Chinese immigrants from China, as well as the Vietnamese. The Chinese from Hong Kong were going less and less down to Chinatown since they could get everything up town. Rosita suggested to her husband to sell the business and move up town, particularly when they lived in Unionville.
• At that time, they looked for a restaurant to run, and found a location on Woodbine. In order to do that, it was absolutely necessary for Rosita to get back to work, particularly when she was the business person who knew how to deal with people. By then, the children were getting older, and a part time person was hired to help at home.
• Both husband and wife worked together running the restaurant. She still spent a lot of time with the children everyday, in between the busy hours at the restaurant. By 1994, Rosita found out that her husband had a mistress outside. That was when the woman, a masseur, phoned her at the restaurant. Her husband denied it. This went on for 2 years.
• In 1997, Rosita was [diagnosed] with breast cancer. She had surgery and radiation. She refused to have chemo-therapy because she was afraid she would be so weakened that she would not be able to work. At the same time, her son was just graduating entering university and her daughter was in high school, and they really needed her. They were good students and she wanted to be there for them. Their father had no interest in them since he had his girl friend.
• Rosita was determined to survive. She looked after her own health, exercise and took Chinese herbal medicine. By then, it was 1998. She took three months off to recover, and she realized that she needed to be psychologically well to build up her resistance. She made the decision to separate from her husband. Her husband didn’t want to move out, with the excuse that he wanted to be with their children. She found out that, in a legal separation, as long as the couple sleep in separate bedrooms and stop sexual relations, they could remain in the same house and be considered separated.
• Rosita had hoped that they could one day get back together if only he would get rid of the girl friend. But, it didn’t happen. In 1999, Rosita went back to Hong Kong for a visit in order to think clearly what her next step should be. On her return, she asked her husband for a divorce. At first he refused, but she applied to the court. In 2000, the divorce was granted. She altered the name of the restaurant slightly, not so much that it is unrecognizable, but it does give her a sense of renewal in her life.
• Her husband went back to Hong Kong and she continued to run the restaurant by herself. He never married the woman, and in fact, she seemed to have lost contact with him, so she constantly called Rosita to make demand for money. She maintained that she was the wife and should have equal share in the restaurant at the divorce, and threatened Rosita with underworld characters, she even threatened the waiters for going to work. Rosita contacted the police and the woman had been warned. She had stopped bothering Rosita, but still send people to try to get money from the restaurant.