Behind the Stories at the Chinatown Storytelling Centre

By Carolyn B. Heller, MONTECRISTO Magazine, Mar 17 2022

In the 1930s, Robert Wong and his brother Tommy built an airplane in Vancouver’s Chinatown. Not a model plane, but an actual 17-foot-long aircraft, dubbed the “Sea Scout,” constructed in wood, and powered by an automobile engine, that Robert flew from Vancouver’s Sea Island. The Wongs were still in high school, when Robert ordered the plans to build a plane; the brothers did the initial work on their craft in their family’s Chinatown apartment.

The tale of the Wong brothers’ aviation adventures is just one of many stories about the people and history of Vancouver’s Chinatown that are shared in the Chinatown Storytelling Centre, which opened in November in the former Bank of Montreal Building on East Pender Street. Unlike a more traditional museum that focuses on artifacts or objects, the Storytelling Centre highlights personal stories… Read more

Plane Builders Robert Wong and Tommy Wong.
Photo courtesy of Evelyn Wong.