Heritage Community Foundation Presents
Alberta Online Encyclopedia

Top Left Corner

Top Right Corner

Top Right Corner
Home Top English | Français Sitemap Search Partners Help
Home Bottom
  • Home
  • Land of Opportunity
  • Settlement
  • Rural Life
  • Links
  • Resources
  • Contact Us!
  • Heritage Community Foundation
  • Heritage Community Foundation Logo

The Heritage Trails are presented courtesy of CKUA Radio Network and Cheryl Croucher

CKUA Radio Network logo

Visit Alberta Source!

Government of Alberta

Government of Canada

 

Louie Hong

Louie Hong arrived in Canada from China in 1909 at age twenty-five; a widower, he had to leave his three children behind with relatives. After a year working as a CPR cook, he joined the southern Alberta ranching outfit of the notable millionaire, Pat Burns, and cooked on the range for two years. Then, in 1913, he opened a small store/restaurant at Cluny, east of Calgary, at the time Cluny had just a few residents, a grain elevator, and an optimistic Asian entrepreneur - Louie Hong. In 1914 he opened a laundry there, too, but soon hired two men to run it.

In 1916 Louie opened a general store; three years later, he built a larger structure himself and soon thereafter sold the laundry. Louie always kept prices low (for a large turnover) and did so well that he added on to the store a number of times. In 1926 he married and the couple had nine children.

Community-minded, generous, a reliable friend who had a fine sense of humor, he garnered a legion of friends over a very large area of southern Alberta. He passed away, in 1969, at age eighty-four: a very popular, fine man had gone, and many mourned.

Reprinted from Moon Cakes In Gold Mountain: From China to the Canadian Plains by Brian Dawson with kind permission of the author.

We also suggest:

[back] [New Communities] [Adventurous Albertans] [First People and Settlers]

Albertasource.ca | Contact Us | Partnerships
            For more on the history of settlement in Alberta, visit Peel’s Prairie Provinces.