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Entering the funeral hall, you could immediately see around the coffin the numerous bouquets of flowers that the community of Ahuntsic placed in front of the business of Mr. Yong, who was killed in his convenience store on November 6 last. This gesture very well represents the spirit of love, sadness and great solidarity that has surrounded his family since this fatal attack in the Lille convenience store in Ahuntsic.
According to Danny Morin, who works at the nearby store and witnessed the tragedy, three young people in their early 20s entered the convenience store at noon with a knife and took the life of the owner. After doing the irreparable act in broad daylight, they went out nonchalantly with a case of beer. The culprits have still not been found. Mr. Yong's family members are so afraid for their safety that they did not want his full name to be publicly known, a request that was accepted out of respect.
When she got wind of the tragedy, Julie Gougeon, a regular customer, did not want the family to feel alone in this ordeal and wanted them to understand that the community supported them. The day after the murder, she organized a vigil in front of the convenience store where more than fifty people came to pay their respects to the owner. They left a lot of cards, letters and bouquets of flowers that are now found around the casket.
A family man devoted to his community
“We had no one when we immigrated here to Canada from China,” one of the family friends present at the funeral told us in Mandarin, who preferred to remain anonymous. “Mr. Yong's family and mine were from the same culture, so we helped each other and took care of each other in this foreign country.” Thus, a strong friendship was born that has lasted for over thirty years. Over several years of support and solidarity, the two families have united and consider each other to be members of the same family.
The unexpected departure of Mr. Yong, a 49-year-old father, was very difficult for everyone. It is obvious that family values were very important to this convenience store owner. His loved ones put together a large slideshow full of photos of wonderful memories: Mr. Yong riding a bike with his son smiling back, Mr. Yong coming out of the snow pulling his children on a sled, Mr. Yong celebrating several birthdays in front of big cakes with his loved ones.
“That's how I remember Mr. Yong,” Ms. Gougeon said as she looked at the photo slideshow. She and her husband had been going to the store for several years to do their regular shopping, preferring to support their small local convenience store rather than the big supermarket chains. “He was a very generous man who knew his customers and took care of them. Even Mr. Yong told my spouse that he smoked too much! ”, she recalls. Ms. Gougeon is not the only one to keep warm memories of the owner.
Camille Duchesne, another regular customer, preferred Mr. Yong's business to others closer to home for the same reasons. “I actually liked going to him better because he was the owner. He was definitely friendlier than the others,” she explains to me, describing an always happy man she went to see every day for his daily cigarettes. “He [recognized] everyone's orders. When I changed my order a bit, he always noticed.”
A tsunami of community solidarity
When she heard the news, Ms. Duchesne initially did not believe it. “I remember crying, not necessarily out of pain, but really out of anger,” she recalls. When she finally realized that it was really about her favorite convenience store, her rage led her to create a fundraising campaign with her boyfriend to help the family through this ordeal. The campaign was shared with his family and several Facebook groups in the Ahuntsic neighborhood. Calvin Wu, Mr. Yong's cousin, got wind of this campaign and continued to share it with those around him, where it was very successful. In less than two weeks, more than $13,000 was raised.
“Things happen,” he said. “It could happen to anyone on the street. We just didn't expect that to happen to us. But hey, we have to do everything we can now to get through it.”
He also started his own Fundraising campaign to support the widow, since she will no longer be able to work after this tragedy and she has three children to support. Mr. Wu really wanted to honor his cousin who had dedicated his life to supporting his family, and to helping the family pay for school fees for children who were still minors. At the time of publication of this article, the campaign raised over $5,000.
Small Chinese traders have had enough
“We are here to be in solidarity with them. He is one of us, a small trader from the Chinese diaspora like us,” says a woman who preferred to remain anonymous in Mandarin. “When something like this happens, we really have to make a noise to make people understand that it is unacceptable and that we are not going to let go.” Like more than thirty people at the funeral, this woman did not know Mr. Yong personally, but shared his profession.
This group of foreigners, united by the same culture and the same profession and coming from all over the Montreal region, was gathered in a break room. Retailers shared their common stories, their outrage at this act against one of their own, and their calls for action. Most are immigrants of Chinese origin in their fifties who arrived in Quebec in the 90s, as was Mr. Yong. In this group, sadness turned into anger that prompted them to take action. Nobody wanted Mr. Yong to be forgotten. They wanted to do everything they could to honor the dignity of his life and to make sure that his death was not in vain.
Indeed, when they are allowed to express themselves in their native language, it is extremely clear that all the Chinese traders present want to be heard. “I don't understand why they don't talk about it in the newspapers,” another merchant, who owns a tobacco store in Laval, told me in Mandarin. “In the early 90s, my sister was attacked in her business. It made the front page of the Journal de Montréal. I am in shock that this event did not make the headlines.”
Like the two other women who were sitting next to her, she was genuinely concerned for her safety at work since that sordid event. Moreover, many traders present at the funeral expressed a feeling of insecurity about their profession because of the pandemic and the vandalism that occurs there on a regular basis.
Breaking the silence
“We have to be in solidarity with other small traders, regardless of where they come from, because we all have the same problems,” says Wuhen Taxue, a small merchant who saw the store next door to his had its windows smashed last week. Other retailers are also full of stories of thefts, vandalism, and customers harassing them. Shuling Chen, a former small trader, is tired of people in power ignoring these problems and the demands of the traders. In a passionate speech that the group of small Chinese traders listened to attentively, he called for mobilization.
“One person can convince three. If we mobilize the entire Chinese community on this, we will make our voices heard. We are going to say that we are angry and sad loud and clear,” he said in Mandarin. “We must continue to do actions all the time and take action to put pressure on people! ” Zi Xiang, another former small-scale trader, followed up this speech with his own speech in Mandarin where he proposed concrete actions. “We are going to organize a full day of street protests in the city center and we are going to write open letters to politicians and police stations,” he said.
“We are going to have signs in the windows of our convenience stores to protest against this. If one person does something, the others will follow. We, the Chinese diaspora, really need to be heard when things like that happen! At the announcement, the entire crowd cheered.
The model minority takes action
Bei Shan, a journalist from Shanghai who has lived in Montreal since 2015, was also present at the funeral. She believes that the silence of this community is due to several factors: “There are a lot more convenience stores than you think, but it's just that you forget about them because the Chinese owners don't speak the language.”
According to her, the language barrier and the feeling of insecurity among Asians in Montreal silence their many demands. “Immigrants, far from where they were born, choose to be peaceful and hardworking,” underlines the host of the Montrenese show, strongly criticizing the myth of the model minority. “I know that they need someone who wants to [...] go out and express themselves [for the community].” Moreover, Marvin Rotrand, city councillor of Côte-des-Neiges-Notre-Dame-de-Grâce, a neighborhood with a large Asian population, passed a motion to denounce acts of hate against people of Asian origins last June.
The motion, supported by several Asian organizations, the Concordia Students' Union, the McGill University Student Association, and the Center for Research-Action on Race Relations (CRARR), is a historic move to denounce the rise of anti-Asian racism. Among other things, the motion asks the city council to ensure the safety of Montrealers of Asian origin.
But in the meantime, the community is already taking charge. Jimmy Chan and Eddy Li, an activist for the Asian community and the owner of a security guard company, worked together to create a professional security unit that will patrol Chinatown every night. Unit 21 of the SPVM met with them to collaborate together on neighborhood safety, a very unusual spirit of cooperation for police officers.
Is the murder of Mr. Yong a hate crime? It is difficult to know at this stage, but however, CRARR reports a surge in hate crime cases against Asians since the start of the year. The organization offers pro bono legal aid services for victims of hate crimes, who are often left alone and lack information on how to proceed. The organization currently offers services in Mandarin and Cantonese, in addition to services in French and English. Mr. Niemi suggests to the victims of contact your organization as soon as possible after an assault so that they are informed of their options and avoid making ignorant mistakes.
Far from the stereotype of the silent model minority that is often attributed to them, it is clear that Asians are hungry for change. They are ready to organize themselves to be in solidarity with one of their own who left too soon, to defend their interests and to defend their place in Quebec.