Gim Wong — page 5

By Julie MacLellan,reporter

They worked wherever they could - on farms, in canneries, in laundries. In the earlier years, it was often for no wages, but just a meal a day.

Even as late as 1941, when Wong was 19 and got a job in a cannery at the mouth of the Skeena River, things weren't much better.

As an adult, he made 17.5 cents an hour. His younger brother, as a youth, made 12.5 cents an hour. White men doing the same jobs made 35 cents, while white youth made 25 cents.

"There was no negotiating. We accepted it. Every penny counted," Wong says.

In another job, working on a farm on Sea Island, they'd make $1 for 12 hours' work, and it would cost 10 cents each way to take the trolley. Many of the women walked the long miles from Chinatown and back again, just to save the 20 cents.

And these were the people expected to raise $500. NEXT