{"id":622,"date":"2011-10-16T20:07:15","date_gmt":"2011-10-17T03:07:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/ccmm.sodadesign.com\/?page_id=622"},"modified":"2026-01-29T17:31:20","modified_gmt":"2026-01-30T01:31:20","slug":"monty-lee","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/www.ccmms.ca\/staging\/9619\/veteran-stories\/air-force\/monty-lee\/","title":{"rendered":"Monty Lee"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Monty Monying Lee was born March 17, 1923 and raised in Vancouver&#8217;s Chinatown at a time when Chinese born in Canada were denied the right to vote. He was the eldest son of a vegetable pedlar,\u00a0Kum Shing (Sam)\u00a0and his wife Kwok See Lee.<\/p>\n<p>He was initially rejected by the RCAF when he tried to sign up. But eventually, the race restriction was lifted and in September 1941 Monty began training with the Air Force.<\/p>\n<p>He went on to specialize as a bomb aimer and flew\u00a0in a variety of bombers including\u00a0the four-engine\u00a0Halifax bomber.<\/p>\n<div id=\"attachment_1916\" style=\"width: 327px\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.ccmms.ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/Lee-Monty-standing-2.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-1916\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"size-large wp-image-1916\" src=\"http:\/\/www.ccmms.ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/Lee-Monty-standing-2-317x500.jpg\" alt=\"Monty Lee in his Mae West\" width=\"317\" height=\"500\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.ccmms.ca\/staging\/9619\/wp-content\/uploads\/Lee-Monty-standing-2-317x500.jpg 317w, https:\/\/www.ccmms.ca\/staging\/9619\/wp-content\/uploads\/Lee-Monty-standing-2-127x200.jpg 127w, https:\/\/www.ccmms.ca\/staging\/9619\/wp-content\/uploads\/Lee-Monty-standing-2.jpg 554w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 317px) 100vw, 317px\" \/><\/a><p id=\"caption-attachment-1916\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Monty Lee in his Mae West<\/p><\/div>\n<p>Monty\u00a0was assigned to coastal patrol and was stationed out of Labrador.\u00a0He spent hundreds of hours flying up and down the eastern coastline looking for German U-boats while\u00a0accompanying merchant marine convoys out to sea.<\/p>\n<p>His efforts enabled hundreds of ships to carry vital supplies from Halifax to war-ravaged Great Britain.<\/p>\n<p>Monty was an active member of the Chinese Canadian Military Museum up until the very end of his life.\u00a0Sadly, he died on December 4, 2019 at age 96.<\/p>\n<div id=\"attachment_1914\" style=\"width: 340px\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.ccmms.ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/Lee-Monty-in-parachute-outfit.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-1914\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"size-large wp-image-1914\" src=\"http:\/\/www.ccmms.ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/Lee-Monty-in-parachute-outfit-330x500.jpg\" alt=\"Monty Lee in his heated flight suit\" width=\"330\" height=\"500\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.ccmms.ca\/staging\/9619\/wp-content\/uploads\/Lee-Monty-in-parachute-outfit-330x500.jpg 330w, https:\/\/www.ccmms.ca\/staging\/9619\/wp-content\/uploads\/Lee-Monty-in-parachute-outfit-132x200.jpg 132w, https:\/\/www.ccmms.ca\/staging\/9619\/wp-content\/uploads\/Lee-Monty-in-parachute-outfit.jpg 941w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 330px) 100vw, 330px\" \/><\/a><p id=\"caption-attachment-1914\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Monty Lee in his heated flight suit<\/p><\/div>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=NwF8wTHsM-w\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Watch<\/a> Monty describe his experiences to his\u00a0grandson in 2014.<\/p>\n<p>Check out Monty&#8217;s interview for the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.thememoryproject.com\/stories\/504:monty-lee\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Memory Project<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>Check out a <a href=\"https:\/\/vimeo.com\/237838957\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Summer 2017 interview<\/a> with Monty.<\/p>\n<h3><\/h3>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Monty Monying Lee was born March 17, 1923 and raised in Vancouver&#8217;s Chinatown at a time when Chinese born in Canada were denied the right to vote. He was the eldest son of a vegetable pedlar,\u00a0Kum Shing (Sam)\u00a0and his wife Kwok See Lee. He was initially rejected by the RCAF when he tried to sign [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1035,"parent":378,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"template-nosidebar.php","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-622","page","type-page","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","post-preview"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ccmms.ca\/staging\/9619\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/622","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ccmms.ca\/staging\/9619\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ccmms.ca\/staging\/9619\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ccmms.ca\/staging\/9619\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ccmms.ca\/staging\/9619\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=622"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"https:\/\/www.ccmms.ca\/staging\/9619\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/622\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3527,"href":"https:\/\/www.ccmms.ca\/staging\/9619\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/622\/revisions\/3527"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ccmms.ca\/staging\/9619\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/378"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ccmms.ca\/staging\/9619\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1035"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ccmms.ca\/staging\/9619\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=622"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}