All through school, her family name had been recorded at the whim of her teachers as Ling or Way or Nee. Helen’s father gave his name variously as Ling Way and as Ling Nee. He had no concern for how it was anglicized or spelled. When he’d first arrived in Ottawa two decades earlier, in 1921, and taken a room above a shoe store on Bank Street, the canvasser for the city directory listed him as Ling Way. It would have been lost on the canvasser to explain the Chinese convention of placing surnames first: that Ling was the surname; Way was the given name shared with his brothers. In fact, the directory listing omitted the other half of his given name, Nee, which was his alone. Neighbours were equally confused about how to greet Helen’s mother, born Sarah Randall, and addressed her as Mrs. Way or Mrs. Nee. The Lings lived in the Jewish quarter of the city, centred around Chapel Street, and straddling the neighbourhoods of Sandy Hill and Lowertown, east of Parliament Hill. That was where Sarah Ling had finally found a landlord willing to rent to her.
What do You think about Lives Of The Family (2013)?
