My grandfather was born in the 1890's in the Guangdong Province in China in the county of Toison in Namchong village #49. At the age of eight his father who had immigrated to the United States died so the money he sent back to support the family no longer came. My grandfather could not be raised by his mother so he sold himself as an indentured laborer to a neighbouring farmer to ride the water buffalo to till the rice fields. At the age of 15 , he ran away to Canton and worked with the criminal element. His job was to find people looking for a place to gamble and bring them to a card game where the marks were fleeced of their money. At age 18, Lee Duck apprenticed as a cook for a year and a year later apprenticed as a tailor. He caught the bubonic plague and almost died. He packed up and went back to his village and set up a small tailor shop. The Chinese workers who had built the railroad in Canada had returned to the village at the age of 40, and had found themselves a young bride and bought some land and were so to speak semi-retired would come to Lee Duck's tailor shop to drink tea and reminisce about the old days working on the railroad. The retired railroad workers offered to sponsor Lee Duck to go to Canada to the Golden Mountain to seek his fortune and then to return to Canada. Lee Duck came to Canada in 1905. In 1911 he purchased my Grandmother from the Soon Family and she became his second wife in Canada. She was 16 and he was 25. My Uncle Jimmy was born a year later and a few years later my father Harvey in born. My Uncle Jimmy passed away in the 1980's and my father passed in May of 2014 at the age of 95. Here is the earliest photograph of my Grandfather Lee, wife Der Soon Yet, Jimmy the eldest and my father Harvey in a baby stroller in a studio picture taken in Vancouver. The Chinese inscription says the photograph is the gift by Lee Duck to his Soon relatives. Lee Duck addresses the Soon as his Uncle.
