Switch to classic view. They were de facto bachelors, if not bachelors in fact. During the first half of the twentieth century, many men of Chinese heritage enjoyed sex, companionship, love, and family life.
Perhaps as many as a third were married to or lived common-law with women of white heritage, and many more frequently engaged in sexual and intimate relationships with sex workers they sometimes sought as long-term companions.
These relationships were not without controversy, of course, but many people within the community accepted them, and women of white heritage, including sex workers, were integrated into the community in diverse ways. In , Corporal H. Neeson from the small Ontario town of Campbellford and his wife Louisa of Norfolk, England, moved to the city of Toronto with their first child, Eileen.
Chu Yat Bo passed through the neighbourhood selling wares from the Oriental Shoppe, a Yonge Street store where he was employed. Over steaming cups of tea Harry and Eileen grew increasingly enamoured of each other. After his wife gave birth to a son, Harry returned to Toronto alone, as was the practice and the fate of male migrants of Chinese heritage who travelled overseas for remunerative work. By the time Harry returned, Eileen had also married and had given birth to twins.
In or she left her Anglo-Canadian husband to establish a household with Harry. Eileen assumed she would retain custody of the children of her first marriage, but she was sadly mistaken. Historians have long assumed that because of a preference for women of Chinese heritage or because of the intense racism to which migrants of Chinese heritage were subjected, interracial relationships such as these were anomalous.
