Chia-Chi Lu Chen

Born in Beijing, China, Chia-chi grew up during the Sino-Japan and Second World Wars. She wanted to be a geographer; she was definitely the family navigator on all road trips and family vacations. She chose, however, to study accounting because it was practical. She married the man who patiently tutored her in mathematics so that she could pass her university entrance exams, and who wooed her with love letters over the course of their eight-year-long courtship. With Edward Tzen-hwa Chen she started a family in Taipei, Taiwan, and in the 1960s they decided to immigrate to Canada through the first racially-neutral points system. In 1968 Chia-chi, Edward and their two daughters Wendy Ming Yu Chen and Millie Ming Yen Chen arrived in Toronto, Ontario. Within a year of arriving in Canada they tragically lost Wendy to a car accident; a third daughter, Cecilia Ming Si Chen, was born shortly thereafter. Chia-chi and family initially lived in Toronto’s Chinatown district, subsequently moving to Bloor West Village where she lived with her immediate and extended family for the rest of her life.
Chia-chi embraced the joys of life. She loved to cook, sing and dance: she never let any visitors out of her house without a belly full of delicious food, and she tried hard to teach the jitterbug and cha-cha to her offspring; she danced right up until close to the end. She sought out beauty: she loved art, music and nature, and she was always smartly dressed. She surrounded herself with plants; she mourned the death of the maple tree in the front yard and was heartened by the planting of a new elm in its place. A self-declared city girl, she would nonetheless tell tales of scampering around the Sichuan countryside, jumping from high hills and stealing carrots from the neighbouring farms on the 10km walk to school when she was young, and stoically camping with her young family all over North America in the 1970s and 80s. Despite never learning to swim, she loved going up to the lakeside family cottage in the Haliburton Highlands. An adventurer at heart, she finally found the time to start traveling solely for pleasure in her late 60s, when she visited Alaska, Mexico, the British Isles, Continental Europe and the Mediterranean, as well as China and Taiwan.
Diagnosed with terminal cancer in December 2017, Chia-chi determined that she had lived a full and fruitful life; she died peacefully at home surrounded by her loving family. Among those she leaves behind are good friends from her folk-dancing group and horticulture club, long-time friends in the GTA, her treasured nieces, nephews, great-nieces and great-nephews spread across the globe, her daughters and their partners, Millie Chen, Warren Quigley, Cecilia Chen and Yohann Hétu, and her beloved grandson Finn Chen-Quigley. She is deeply missed but will remain intensely influential and much loved.