Meena Wong likes to describe herself as a “social engineer.”
“I build bridges that bring everybody together,” she told Business in Vancouver during an interview at the campaign headquarters of the Coalition of Progressive Electors (COPE).
Wong is the first mayoral candidate the venerable left-wing municipal party has run since 2002, when Larry Campbell ran and won on the COPE slate. He and others in the party would later go on to form what would become Vision Vancouver, the party that has held power in the city of Vancouver since 2008.
While COPE ran on a combined slate with Vision in 2008 and 2011, the strategy proved disastrous in the last election: only one COPE candidate, Allan Wong, was elected, and he later resigned from the party to join Vision.
Since that time, COPE has been rocked by infighting, and several high-profile members left the party. COPE regrouped with a platform calling for city government to be heavily involved in building and running affordable housing and reduce “monopoly developer profits.”
But in the months leading up to the election, Wong has been stunned to see labour groups like the Vancouver and District Labour Council support Vision instead of COPE.
Luckily for Wong, she’s used to working hard in challenging circumstances. The 53-year-old graphic designer, teacher and community activist says it’s time for a change.
“Look at the last six years, what Vision has done to Vancouver,” Wong said.
“The lack of transparency, the lack of accountability, the lack of respect for neighbourhoods, for communities. They’re divisive. They’ve divided this city, and people are rising up.”
While Wong talks about being a figurative bridge-builder, a real bridge looms large in her past. In 1973, Wong was an 11-year-old girl about to cross the Lo Hu Bridge between China and Hong Kong. She didn’t know it at the time, but she was about to leave China forever.
“On one side was a PRC [People’s Republic of China] soldier and on the other was a British soldier in camouflage,” Wong remembered.
“I was terrified when I saw the British soldier. I thought we were betraying our country. At that age – 11 – under the Cultural Revolution teachings, those are the enemy in camouflage. … I thought the PRC soldier was going to shoot us in the back. … That was the longest bridge ever in my life.”
Wong’s parents, both medical doctors, had been targeted by the authorities in the 1960s. Wong recalls Red Guards raiding the one-room apartment where she lived with her brother and parents, taking away anything associated with a middle-class lifestyle: her mother’s clothes and jewelry, her father’s camera, family photos.
“You could taste the fear,” she said.
She also recalls the huge sacrifices her parents made to give her and her brother a better life. Her father stayed behind in China while the rest of the family fled to Hong Kong; Wong would be separated from him for six years.
Meanwhile, her mother worked two jobs as a nurse and learned English as well as advocating for her medical training to be recognized in Hong Kong.
“My mom took me and my brother, when I was 14, to the first rally of my life, in front of the Ministry of Health in Hong Kong, and rallied and demanded that they find a way to regain their licence,” Wong said. “Two years later they were allowed to take the exams.”
Wong said those sacrifices allowed her to have a better life. In 1981, she travelled to Canada to complete her university education. She studied business management in Alberta and then completed a degree in art history at Brock University in Ontario.
Her first job, as a graphic designer in Toronto, was a lesson in standing up for her rights. A supervisor told her she couldn’t legally apply to be a permanent resident because she had a work permit.
Wong said she knew her legal rights because she had worked closely with the lawyer who helped her get the permit; she couldn’t afford to pay the lawyer, but she had bartered typing and translation work in return for legal services.
“I picked up the phone and called the immigration officer. … He said, ‘No, that’s not true, who lied to you? What company? I’ll make a record of it.”
Getting a coveted designer job at the Toronto Star was another lesson in tenacity: Wong called the head of the design department every week until an opening came up.
She got the job.
Wong later headed a department at Carlton Cards, then retrained as an animator and worked as an instructor at Centennial College. She also worked as a constituency assistant for Olivia Chow when Chow was a Toronto city councillor.
She came to Vancouver in 2002 to take a job as a counsellor at a private school and has since worked as a mental health facilitator with Vancouver Coastal Health.
Since 1989, she has managed her parents’ condominium rental properties in Toronto, an experience that she said gives her insight into what is needed to make her party’s affordable housing platform work.
“That’s why I put forward the vacant-property proposal: if you want to purchase property and invest in our city, do the duty to our city,” Wong said, referring to her party’s plan to tax vacant homes.
“Either rent it out at an affordable rate so the city residents can afford to rent it. If you can’t afford to rent it, you’d better pay your duty to
your city so I can use that money to build affordable housing in Vancouver.”
Wong said she also looks back to advice her grandmother, a member of a land-owning family in pre-Communist China, gave her father:
“People are like water and government or the community leaders are like a boat. People can float the boat; they can also sink the boat,” she said. “So when there’s a community in trouble, you’ve got to be there to help the people and help the community.”
@jenstden
