Thomas Wie Po

Our beloved Papa, Thomas Wie Po, died of congestive heart failure on Saturday, Nov. 18, 2023. He sailed on his last cruise from the North Shore Hospice in North Vancouver, Canada. He was 86 years old, roughly a month short of his 87th birthday on December 28, 1936.

He likely stopped at Hawaii and visited Australia and New Zealand before he reached heaven. He talked often about going on a last cruise as a family, but specifically not to Alaska since he had already been four times.

Unfortunately, he left his family behind this time. They are three living siblings out of seven - Ah-tiak, Ah-keng and Bia, and his rather large immediate family: devoted wife Bia; children Mimi, Mary Ann, Jo and Tom; grandchildren Jessy, Tifanee, Teagan, Dominic, Isabella (AKA Elizbeth) and Monika (AKA Veronica), and the latest love of his life, Kenny (AKA Guppy). He never forgot that he was a proud and delighted Tai Kong (great grandpa). He even asked to wear a bracelet made by his grandchildren that said “Tai Kong” in his last few days at the hospice – he got his wish.

Our Papa’s life was rich with extended family: many cherished in-laws, plus well-loved nephews, nieces, and their families. We could fill a small cruise ship with just the extended family and treasured close friends that he left behind. He often said that he didn’t have much material wealth but was a millionaire when it came to friends.

He sailed on to meet family who have gone before: his father Po Kok-Hing, mother Wie Siok-Wan, older sister Pina and younger sisters Ah-be and Ah-ta. (He was Ah-ti to his parents.) And of course, he finally gets to hug Apple again, who will forever be four years old, his youngest child and our youngest sister who died too soon in 1979.

Besides travel, Papa loved his garden, but he was a farmer first. He ran not one, but two sugar cane farms – the 600 hectare Hacienda Mimi and the 100+ hectare Hacienda Aida. He traded sugar too, working with his father to help grow Arca and Company and its subsidiary Bee Hing Trading. Arca became one of the largest sugar trading companies in the 1960s and early 70s, until Marcos declared martial law and took control of the Philippine’s sugar industry.

That’s when Papa moved our family to Canada, where instead of “working” in the garden through our gardener, Carlito, in Bacolod (our hometown in the Philippines), he got on his hands and knees himself. He got soil under his fingernails (and mud into the washing machine to mom’s chagrin), growing tons of garlic, gigantic zucchinis and a bonanza of sweet corn, peas, beans, lettuces, Chinese vegetables, kale… And then there were the flowers – he planted a kaleidoscope of lavenders, mums, daisies, roses, irises, dahlias, peonies, poppies…

His love of nature bled into his next business in Vancouver, owning and running a pet store, first in partnership with family (our Siko and uncle Ernest) and later, with just our mom for over a decade. He then “retired” to manage a prefab construction facility in North Delta.

He and our mom moved many times during his time in Vancouver. Wherever he moved a garden sprung forth, and when he moved again, he left behind a riot of flowers and budding fruit trees. Now in our sister Mary Ann’s garden, some of his precious peonies bloom.

He told stories, loads of them, making our mom’s eyes roll each time, of his time growing up during the Second World War, of working in the haciendas, of taking care of the workers, and of his “tinuntohan” (mischievous times) spent with dear friends and our uncle and aunties growing up. He mercilessly teased his many nieces and nephews whenever they came to visit and took us all on adventures that kept our generation of cousins pretty close, even today, through many shared experiences.

His kindness, generosity, impishness, love language of food (especially sweets), and his love of nature and travel, now live on with his grandchildren, and hopefully his great grandson Kendrick Thomas Brown, who was born just in time to meet his Tai Kong.