Ching Tiny

While I was in Brentwood once more for grocery shopping I spotted this old man wandering near by. I approached him and asked him for a picture. He kindly agreed and invited me for a coffee inside a COOP supermarket.

Ching Tiny was born in 1931 and grew up in the province of Kwang Dong in southern China. There he worked as a farmer until he became 18. In 1950 his grandfather, who was working on the establishment of the Canadian railways in the 19th century, told him to come to Canada. So Ching left his Mother and his 4 brothers and went to Canada, where he begot 4 children by himself.

In Canada he got 5 years of education in Telecommunication. Afterwards he worked as a telephone operator with ATG/Telus for 35 years. Ching told me how the telephone connections were switched by hand in the old days. In 1993 he retired and lives on a reasonable pension right now. Everyday he comes to that COOP supermarket to get his coffee.

It was very interesting to talk to Ching - we sat together over 1 hour and talked about global warming, the problems in the economically fast growing China and the nature of humans in general (and our conclusion was that we are too lazy - we make efforts to change things to the better only if our own lifes are seriously affected).