Ko Bong, Mary
This photograph was collected for the exhibit, “But Women Did Come”: 150 Years of Chinese Women in North America. The exhibit premiered at the Metropolitan Toronto Reference Library in 1987, and brought together two complementary shows, one on Chinese American Women and the other on the history of Chinese women in Canada. The photographs in But Women Did Come document the lives of Chinese women in North America from the pioneer days (beginning in the 1830s) to the 1980s.
Included in this database are photographs from Chinese Canadian family albums and Canadian archival institutions. The online version of the Canadian exhibit is available at: http://www.mhso.ca/ggp/Exhibits/Chinese_Women/.
In 1923, Agnes Chan was the first Chinese nurse to graduate from Women's College Hospital, School of Nursing. She was living in Victoria, British Columbia, but Canadian hospitals were unwilling to hire a Chinese Canadian nurse, so she moved to China to pursue her career. Agnes Chan was one of four official delegates from China to attend the International Congress of Nurses in Montreal in 1929. In 1945, the Women's Cullege Hospital Alumnae Association learned of her harrrowing experience in China during the Japanese occupation of that country and forwarded her a cheque for $100.
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