Item 28 - Interview of Suit-Ching Koo Lui

88.4 MB (1 file) : mp3 ; 0 hr., 38 min., 37 sec.

Audio recording of interview with Suit-Ching Koo Lui conducted by Vivienne Poy in Scarborough, ON. Interview conducted in Cantonese.

From Transcripts [Extended notes] compiled by Vivienne Poy:

Suit-ching Koo Lui, (co-applicant) 1970, interviewed by phone in Toronto, summer 2002, in Cantonese. (Susan)

• Born in 1929 in Tangshan in Hubei province from a family of farmers. There were 4 or 5 siblings but she couldn’t remember because most of them died in the big earthquake in the 1970s. When she was 6 years old, Suit was adopted by her father’s older sister because she didn’t have any children. Her aunt actually wanted to adopt one of her brothers, but the grandparents decided that it should be Suit.
• After adoption, Suit went with her adopted parents to Qingdao in 1935, and lost contact with her biological family. Her own surname was Hong and Koo was the married of her adopted mother. When Suit was over 10 years old, a son was adopted.
• During the Sino-Japanese War, the family went to Tianjin where Suit went to high school and later trained in nursing, where she worked for about a year in the same hospital where she did her training. She graduated the same year when the Communists liberated Tianjin. That year, her adopted parents went back to Qingdao and Suit remained in Tianjin . Tianjin was the first city to be liberated, and it happened in 3 days. On her graduation, there was fighting in the streets, and she remembered the many injured soldiers and civilians brought into the hospital where she worked. For 2 days and 3 nights, they had to work and had nothing to eat. Suit said she was not used to the Communist ways, especially with the constant political meetings. The Communist troops needed the nurses to go with them to liberate the southern cities, such as Wuhan, Hankou and Guangzhou. She would have been picked because they preferred those nurses who didn’t have families in Tianjin. Suit’s adopted father died that year of a heart attack because he saw in the papers the fighting in the city and that Tianjin was liberated, he was sure his adopted daughter was dead. Suit went to see her mother who was still in Qingdao. She returned to Tianjin and was constantly dragged into meetings for self criticism. If she had stayed, she would have had to go south with the Communist army, so she left with a friend for Guangzhou, where she stayed for about 2 months and then went out to Hong Kong (1950). She never saw her adopted mother again.
• In 1950, it was easy to go to Hong Kong. No papers were necessary. Those who wanted to enter Hong Kong only needed to answer questions verbally, particularly for people from [Guangzhou]. It was a little more problem for Chinese from northern China. Suit crossed the border with a Cantonese woman whose son went to high school with her in Tianjin, and who later became her mother-in-law. This family (Liu) had already moved to Hong Kong before Liberation, and Mrs. Liu went to Guangzhou to bring Suit to Hong Kong. She told the officials at the Hong Kong border that Suit was her daughter (there was a bit of resemblance) who grew up in north China since she was little, and that’s why she couldn’t speak Cantonese. This woman’s family worked at the border crossing at Lo Wu (Luo Hu), and knew many officials who knew the family had a few daughters, but didn’t know exactly how many. It was easy for Suit to cross the border.
• In 1953, she got married to Mrs. Liu’s son who worked as a clerk in an office. Her first daughter was born in 1954.
• Suit’s nursing license was not [recognized] in Hong Kong, so she worked as a private nurse. After a short while, she found a job working in the office of an Ear, Nose & Throat doctor. Later, she worked in Kwong Chung Hospital. Without her Hong Kong license, she could work in a hospital, but the pay scale was lower while she did the same work as the other nurses, even in the operating room, so she was not happy.
• In 1964, she arranged with the Kwong Wah Hospital to work for free for 6 months in their nursing school which was attached to the hospital, in exchange for a letter which would allow her to take the exam for a Hong Kong license. She got her license that year, and Kwong Chung asked her to back there to work, and she refused. She was upset that they didn’t pay her at the same pay scale as others before. She worked as a private nurse, and in the same year, she became pregnant with her younger daughter who was born in 1965. Suit worked 12 hour shifts and she had lived in help at home for the children.
• 1967-8, her in-laws had already immigrated to Canada, and would like her and her family to immigrate as well. Suit was worried about her English language skill and the problem she would have in finding work, so was not too keen to make a move. Her main reason to immigrate was for the educational opportunities of her children, besides the fact that the grandparents wanted the grandchildren to be near them.
• when her eldest daughter reached the 4th year of secondary school, Suit was worried that she would not be able to afford to send her to university because it was costly in Hong Kong. So in 1969, when this daughter was a year from graduation from high school, the decision was made to immigrate.
• They applied to Canadian immigration as co-applicants because it was necessary to add her husband’s to Suit’s points as a nurse in order to have enough. They arrived in Toronto in August, 1970.
• Suit stressed the main reason for the move was for the education of her daughters. Aside from the cost of education in Hong Kong, the standard was also very high. The problem was that her eldest daughter was not the best student, and Suit was afraid she might not pass the Hong Kong matriculation exams, which would mean that she would not get into university. Besides, Suit said private school fees were very high in Hong Kong, and it almost impossible to get into government school. When her younger daughter was in Kindergarten, it was costing her hundreds of dollars per month. Education is free in Canada, and University fees are a lot cheaper in Canada than in Hong Kong. Later, when her daughters went through university in Canada, the fees were very low.
• Suit was really afraid that if they stayed in Hong Kong, she would not be able to afford to give her daughters the best education possible. So, even if she had to struggle financially in Canada, it would be worth while.
• They arrived in Canada in August, 1970, For the first 2 months, Suit didn’t work, and then she applied to George Brown to study English (ESL). She was living with her in-laws at that time, so she [was] able to attend school without worrying about having a babysitter. The course was subsidized by the government, and she received appro. $40 a month. It was for 6 months, five days a week, 6 to 8 hours each day. Any day the student doesn’t attend class, money would be deducted for that day. When Suit finished, she was given a certificate. After she finished, she still didn’t feel confident enough in English to look for work where English had to be used.
• Around the time Suit finished the course, she moved out of the in-laws’s home. For reasons that was not explained, she separated from her husband because he stayed with his parents. That was 1970, the younger daughter was only 5. Suit didn’t want to leave her to go to work, so she took in sewing to do at home. A year or so later, a friend in the U.S. asked Suit if she would consider looking after their baby, because the mother was going to work, and they didn’t have anyone they could trust to babysit. They would pay Suit the equivalent amount for doing her sewing. So this baby boy (2 months old) was brought to Suit and lived with her for over a year. A year or so later, Suit said to the parents that it is not good for their son not be know them and that they should take their son back. Besides, she didn’t feel it was good for her family to have another child in the home, particularly because she had family problems with her husband.
• Being a rather shy person, Suit didn’t have enough confidence, and she said she didn’t know people who could introduce her to work as a private nurse. She said her English was not good enough for her to take the RN courses and exams, so she tried to apply to take the exams for nursing aid. Part of the form required her nursing school to complete, so she sent it back to her school in Tianjin, and she never heard back from them. She produced her certificate from Hong Kong, but was told that was not sufficient because that was not where she was trained. So, she wasn’t even given a chance to take the nursing aid exam.
• Suit knew she had to work, so a friend suggested she take a course ( 3-6 months) in key punch, because she herself worked in it. The training centre was near Bay and Bloor. That kind of work, which was very noisy, on top of her family problems, made her extremely nervous. When she was taking the course, she had to take medication to calm her nerves. So, when she finished, she decided she couldn’t do key punch.
• Between 1975 to 1982, Suit worked at the Mon Sheong Foundation which ran an old folks home for the elderly Chinese, and nursing care in Cantonese was needed. By 1982, the workers at Mon Sheong were forming a union, and Suit was no longer given the same schedule - night work plus she had the weekends off. She worked from Sunday to Thursday (nights only), and off for Friday and Saturday nights. She was told that she would have to rotate with the others and work different shifts. She thought the others didn’t want her to do only night work because it paid 25c more per hour, and they were also jealous that she had every weekend off. She didn’t want to work away from home during the day yet because her younger daughter was still young, so she quit her job.
• For a short while, she didn’t work. She then got a part time job at the Sheppard Lodge, which was a seniors’ home. She worked the 3p.m. to 9p.m. shift. Her hours were gradually increased to the equivalent of a 6-day week. Her duty was that of a nursing aid. She didn’t need a certificate of qualification because the Lodge hired a lot of health-care workers, many of whom trained for a short time in community colleges. Suit was in great demand because of her nursing training.
• During that time, my fashion design office was looking for home knitters and people who did crochet. Suit said she was happiest when she did sewing and knitting. She came to take knitting to do at home, and when she was free while on duty at Sheppard Lodge. That was when Suit and I first met.
• A year or so later, Suit found that the physical work at the Sheppard Lodge was affecting the nerves at her lower back because of degeneration, and it was causing great discomfort. Around the same time, I was looking for an extra person to work full time in my design office, and because Suit did such beautiful hand work and had always faced her work with intelligence and responsibility, she was offered the position (1984-5). She gave up the position at the Sheppard Lodge and stayed with my company until she retired at 65 (1994). She still comes back to help whenever I need to have work done for me personally.
• Suit is a Christian but doesn’t go to church on a regular basis.
• Does Suit regret immigrating to Canada? In respect to her family situation, she said, there is regret. But, in respect to her daughters, there is no regret at all, it was the right thing to do for them. They were her purpose for immigration, and her own career in nursing is not that important. She is very happy that her daughters are university graduates, the older works in a research lab and the younger is a dentist. She knew she didn’t make a mistake in immigrating. Family problems might have happened even if the family had stayed in Hong Kong, but she doubted that her daughters would have had the opportunities for education that they did.