A STORY OF IMMIGRANT DREAMS

I used to live in central Toronto in a historic district called The Annex.? It's on the northern edge of the downtown area, and it's called The Annex because it was the first district that the old City of Toronto annexed when Toronto started to expand in the late-Victorian period.

Around the corner from my home was a little, 2-storey building in a strip of little, 2-storey buildings – all of them dating from the late Victorian period. ?Originally, it would have been home for a working class family but, when I came upon it, it was a "Chinese laundry".

Chinese laundries were one of the earliest entrepreneurial businesses started by immigrants to Canada:?a hand-laundry service for the emerging middle-class Victorian families that didn't have servants but needed help with specialty domestic services.

I knew about Chinese laundries from stories my mother had told me. ?As a young nurse in the 1930s, she did private-duty nursing for wealthy families at Toronto General Hospital. ?She relied on her local Chinese laundry to keep her uniforms pristine and starched to the point that they would almost stand up on their own. ?Her Chinese laundry was "the best", she said:?friendly people, excellent service, perfect laundry!

When I first moved to the Annex, I used to take my dress shirts to a local branch of a big chain commercial laundry, until one day they lost 2 white French-cuff shirts and turned 2 others into bedraggled remnants.? Enough, I said.?There must be a better way!

The next week, I took my weekly shirt inventory to the little Chinese laundry around the corner. ?"Chow Keong Hand Laundry and Cleaners" it said on the front window.?The building looked tired:?the red Victorian brick had been painted white at some time long ago, but the white paint was peeling off and now grey with Toronto pollution.?The condition of the building made me hesitate, but I remembered my mother's words:?"the best".

The door to the tired grey-white building was bright red, as if to say to the community that the heart of the business was still beating.?I turned the handle, and as I stepped inside a little bell mounted on the inside door frame tinkled to let the owner know that a new customer had arrived.

I waited at the front counter for the longest time.?There were no sounds, it seemed like the laundry was vacant.?Then, a small hunched-over man appeared through a door from a room in the back.?He shuffled slowly forward to the counter.?He explained that the cost for a French-cuff shirt would be twice what I had paid, and it would take five times as long as I was used to waiting, at the chain-store laundry.

"I am all alone and I do all the work myself", he said.?"And I hang all the shirts on the clothes line out back to dry in the sun so they smell fresh and clean."

I was stunned:?twice the cost, five times the wait.?"Why?", I asked.?"Because I am all alone and I do all the work myself", he said.?"And I hang all the shirts on the clothes line out back to dry in the sun so they smell fresh and clean".?Then I understood.?I had never encountered this kind of customer service.?But my mother had known:?"The best", she had said.

So I left my 5 shirts.?And 3 weeks later I went to pick them up.?And it cost a fortune.?And they were perfect.?As my mother would have said: ?"The best!".?

Shortly after, I moved out of the Annex. ?I never returned to the little Chinese laundry around the corner.?And I never knew the history of that little laundry, nor of the man who operated it.?Until now.........

Yesterday, the Globe & Mail ran an article on the little buildings that tell the history of Toronto's working class.?And there was a picture of my little Chinese laundry building, exactly as I remember it! So now I finally know the story of the little Toronto Chinese laundry, and I'm proud to share it as a story of dreams realized.

The patriarch of this Chinese family, Chow Chew Kam, was born in a small Chinese village in 1887. ?He left his pregnant wife behind and immigrated to Canada in 1905, where he earned a dollar a day in the British Columbia coal mines.

In 1906, his son was born and would be raised for the next 15 years by his mother in China, while Chow Chew Kam made his way to Toronto. There, the father learned the hand laundry business and he worked for others.

By 1921 – after 16 years of perseverance alone in Canada – Chow Chew Kam had raised enough money to bring his wife and now 15-year-old son to Canada. ?That son – Chow Keong – opened his own hand laundry business, the 'little Chinese laundry around the corner from where I lived', in 1946. ?Today, at 88-years-old, his son, Dennis Chow, still runs the shop with his father’s name emblazoned across the front window.

I only went there once, but I've called that little laundry 'mine' for many years because, as my mother would have said:?"It was the best!"

AND IT WARMS MY HEART TO KNOW THAT I'M PERSONALLY CONNECTED TO IT!

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