More About Wee Tan Louie

An interview with Chris Brown

CBC National reporter Chris Brown was able to track down more on Wee Tan Louie for a special Remembrance Day story. He spoke with Mark on BC Almanac.

Mark Forsythe: Tell us more.

Chris Brown: He was born on a homestead near Kamloops in 1894 to parents who’d come here to work in the gold fields and later build the railway. When war broke out in 1914 he had been working as a ranch hand on the Douglas Lake Ranch near Merritt. There were a lot of obstacles, but he made a decision to try to enlist. What is remarkable about this story is his determination to fight for his country when it was clear it didn’t want him because of the colour of his skin.

Mark: So what happened in 1914 when war broke out?

Chris: A lot of young Canadian men signed up but Chinese Canadians were effectively banned by the army. Throughout the whole war, in an army of six hundred thousand, only a couple of dozen would ever be allowed in the ranks. But young Wee Tan was more determined than most. He bought a horse and he rode from the Kamloops area over the Rocky Mountains in the dead of winter. According to his family, that was a three-month journey. Wee Tan was trying to enlist in an Alberta regiment. And unlike BC, Alberta regiments were accepting Asian recruits. He was off to the war, and in the spring of 1918 he was on the front lines as a machine gunner and a chauffeur for the officers. I talked to his youngest son, Wayne Louie, who is in his seventies and lives in Kamloops: “I think it’s unbelievable what he did. I mean how many people would do that? How many people would go and fight for your country when you weren’t wanted. I mean, he was very patriotic to Canada. He wanted to make this his home. And he wanted us to grow up proud, not only being Chinese but being Canadian.”

Mark: Given all the racism of the time, why did Wee Tan do it?

Chris: Well, he died in 1970 so we can’t ask him directly, of course, and his kids didn’t before he died. But this is Wayne Louie’s best guess: “That was his dream, to fight for his country. This is his country. He was born and raised in BC, and I guess he just wanted to be as good as the next person, in reference to white people.” There really didn’t seem to be much to gain for Wee Tan, or any of the other few dozen Chinese Canadian vets. They came back to a country that still didn’t want them; where it would take another thirty years to get the right to vote. And yet, he had this burning patriotism, to take this incredible trip over the mountains. He eventually settled in Ashcroft and had a successful trucking company and raised a family.

Mark: You met his wife?

Chris: That’s another incredible twist to this story. Wee Tan’s wife, Lilly, was fifteen years younger than him, and after he died she continued living in their bungalow, and she’s still alive on this 2013 Remembrance Day. Lilly Louie is 102, born in 1911. I visited her and she told me her husband never spoke about the war: “Never, never, never. And he never talked to the children about it. And they never asked him about it. He was gentle. He looked after his family and was good to the children.”

Over forty years after he died, his wife’s memories of Wee Tan are dimming. But she is a living link to the Great War, a widow of one of Canada’s very first Chinese Canadian soldiers—a young man who went to war, with seemingly nothing to gain and everything to lose, and thereby made a very powerful statement about his loyalty to his country.

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