CHAPTER 47

Original (Published on Evergreen News): 1997-08-01

Rewritten: 2025-05-14

When May comes, I naturally recall the past.

My wife passed away suddenly on May 26th last year. Three days later, on May 29th, was our wedding anniversary. We have been married for nearly 41 years and have known each other for 47 years. On my 36th wedding anniversary in 2019, I was in the emergency room for treatment due to worsening acute depression, and my condition was indeed "difficult to treat". The Cantonese word “五二九” sounds very similar to “hard to deal with”.

The twists and turns in my family's life appeared and developed in Vancouver. The cause can be traced back to Hong Kong. When I was 16 years old, I was told that I was a carrier of Hepatitis B after I donated blood. Lun was born in Hong Kong and was already in Canada when he was diagnosed with autism. The decision to immigrate was based on the experience of living in Hong Kong. In mid-1989, due to the political turmoil in China and Hong Kong, we applied for family reunification.

Life in Canada for the past 37 years has been very difficult, but thanks to policies that benefit the people and the honest folk customs, my family has been like a small boat, surviving the storms. Thank you Canada.

We first arrived in Vancouver on Sunday, September 11, 1988. As soon as we arrived, we had a good impression of Greater Vancouver. My wife’s friend drove from Coquitlam to pick up our family of three. Our friend doesn’t often drive long distances and rarely comes to the airport, so she did it purely out of loyalty. She read the map carefully in advance and drove her vintage car from the 1970s to carefully take us to her home for a temporary stay. I still remember the friendship and the beautiful scenery along the way.

The sky was blue that morning and we walked through the large parking lot to get to the car. Cars are a luxury in Hong Kong and it is rare to ride in an antique private car. I was looking forward to learning how to drive in Canada. The drive is about 40 kilometers. There are new things along the way. The landscape is vast and peaceful. Along the coastal avenue, there are mostly single-family houses on the roadside. Each one is unique, with flowers and trees planted in front of the houses. The whole city looks like a big park. After living there for a while, I discovered that each city has its own characteristics.

After entering Coquitlam, my friend stopped the car for gas refill (37 years later, the gas station is still at the same location), and we got out of the car. It was our first time interacting with local citizens, and they were very polite. After turning a few corners, the car arrived at my friend's house. The house was a "twin house", that is, two connected houses built on a piece of land, with roughly the same interior design and equal ownership. For Hong Kong immigrants, it is a luxury house with a quiet environment.

The wooden houses have a unique smell that I find very "Canadian". Yesterday I was at the Hong Kong airport, bidding farewell to my parents and brothers. After going through security, I couldn't turn back. At this moment, I put down my luggage, washed my face, and officially settled in Coquitlam.

In the neighboring town of Port Coquitlam, we had dinner at Stone Restaurant, the only Cantonese restaurant in the city center (it has changed hands several times, but the store is still there today). The prices were affordable, the side dishes were delicious, and the portions were two or three times the size of those in Hong Kong. We were very satisfied with the meal. Three days later, I stayed at my uncle’s house in Richmond for two weeks, and then moved to a basement in South Vancouver. For convenience, three months later, I rented a leaky basement near the University of British Columbia and lived there for a year.

We both fell in love with Coquitlam at first sight. We loved its green mountains and trees, its winding paths and its simple landscape. We moved back a year later. My friend has moved away, but the twin houses are still engraved in my mind.