Yvonne (WONG) Chow

She had a curious and inquiring mind and a love of learning. Born to a different generation, Yvonne was raised in a traditional yet progressive Chinese family, where the value of education was never in question. It was also a privilege, and among four daughters and one son, her father could only afford to send his son to university. Yet never once, was there even the slightest hint of resentment as she recounted that a university education could never be hers. Her only regret was that she never learned to play the piano. This was a woman who lived life with grace, gratitude, positivity, and generosity.

Born at the beginning of the Great Depression in Elm Creek, Manitoba, Yvonne Wong was the youngest of five children. Growing up without running water or central heat or indoor plumbing, she said she never wanted for anything and didn’t feel poor. But if asked, she never shied away from declaring that she grew up poor. Being the youngest, Yvonne enjoyed special status and benefits: she was doted on by her eldest sister Helen who ensured she was never handed the task of plucking freshly killed chickens. That job was assigned to sister Megan.

Still in her teens, she caught the eye of a young man who would become her husband of 72 years, while he was visiting her brother Jimmy, a fellow Engineering student at the University of Manitoba. Fate was sealed for their union when following one of his visits, he discovered chocolate bars in his coat pocket placed by her approving mother. At the age of 23, she left the open-sky prairies for the West Coast and married her love, Wayne (Way) Wing Chow in Vancouver BC. After spending 5 years in Regina, Saskatchewan, and with their first-born daughter in tow, they continued westward to Vancouver Island and made their forever-home in Victoria BC. Wayne and Yvonne raised their family of five children in Victoria, where she remained until her death at the age of 94.

Yvonne was a loving and resilient soul, and understood that life wasn’t always fair…but it could still be a good, full and rewarding life. She stepped forward in life in her small but mighty way and became a voracious reader, a diary-writer, a solver of The Globe and Mail crossword puzzle, bridge player, a symphony-goer, a practitioner of Tai Chi, a walker, a knitter, a Chinese cook and talented baker of the most ethereal chocolate chiffon cakes – reserved for birthdays only. When her children left home, she never looked back and much to Wayne’s chagrin, she quickly converted bedrooms into dens and home offices lest one of them had thoughts of returning. Seemingly contrary to this, if you asked Yvonne, she would always say her happiest years were her years raising children.

She and Wayne travelled the world far and wide – visiting her ancestral village in China, drinking butter tea in a yurt on the vast and open stretches of Mongolia, enjoying a gelato in an Italian piazza, purchasing precious saffron in an open-air Turkish market, and in later years, cruising across the Pacific to Hawaii or up the coast to Alaska.

She was mother to Gaylene (Keith), Larry (Lai Ping), Doug (Tong), Marla (John) and Warren (Hong Ying) and loving Poh Poh/Ma Ma to 9 grandchildren – Michael (Marta), Sves (aka Steph), Christopher, Alicia, Vanessa, Andrew (Jessie), Patrick, Dominic (Elaine), Chloé (Aurora), Christine (Ethan) and Sarah.

We will miss her terribly, but most of all we celebrate her life and are immensely grateful that she enjoyed a long and happy one.

A Celebration of Life will be held at 2pm, January 27, 2024 at First Memorial Funeral Services & Garden of Memories, 4725 Falaise Dr., Victoria BC, V8Y 1B4. Flowers gratefully declined; however, please consider making a donation to the Victoria Symphony (victoriasymphony.ca). As a lifelong music lover and symphony-goer, Yvonne would have loved that.