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Family Businesses and Community Leadership
Archival material links the family to produce businesses, grocery operations, hospitality ventures, and community leadership within the downtown core.
Businesses associated with the family included Suey Lee Co., Suey Lee & Sons, and later ventures connected to the Midway Hotel.
Life and Work in Chinatown
In early Duncan, produce businesses were physically demanding operations. Families worked long days unloading deliveries, stocking shelves, and serving customers from early morning until late evening. Produce often spilled out onto the sidewalk in front of storefronts, creating colourful and busy streetscapes that became familiar parts of Chinatown.
Like many Chinatown families, the Chows lived and worked together. Apartments and living quarters were often located above or behind businesses, and children helped after school and on weekends.
More Than a Business District
But Chinatown was more than business.
Benches outside storefronts became gathering places where neighbours watched downtown activity, shared news, and spoke in Cantonese and Toisanese.
Restaurants, laundries, grocery stores, and meeting halls formed a tightly connected community that provided familiarity and support during a period when Chinese Canadians often faced discrimination and exclusion.
The Midway Hotel and Expanding Opportunities
One of the family’s most significant business ventures became the Midway Hotel, which represented a major expansion from smaller storefront businesses into larger commercial investment and property ownership in downtown Duncan.
The Role of Women in Chinatown
Archival references connected to Helen Lai Yee Chow also help preserve the important role women played within Chinatown families — supporting businesses, managing households, preserving traditions, and helping families remain connected during difficult years.
Redevelopment and the Loss of Chinatown
By the late 1960s, redevelopment dramatically changed downtown Duncan. Buildings associated with Chinatown were demolished, and the physical neighbourhood disappeared from the landscape of the city.
Yet the families remained.
Preserving the Legacy
Today, the Chow family story survives through photographs, newspaper articles, storefront images, and descendants who continue helping preserve the memory of Chinatown and the community that once existed there.