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Mark rode into town one spring afternoon on the mail truck. He had come from Grande Prairie where a cousin of his worked for the contractor, Mr. Frank Donald. The city of Fort St. John was back then a village of 200 people. No restaurant. No bank. One country hotel which served meals at mealtime.
"There may be an opportunity for you up there," said Mr. Donald. "Go have a look."
Before Mark left town, he had leased his present premises for $30 a month from Charlie Brandt. And in a few weeks, accompanied by skillets and pie tins, whisks, kettles, and stew pots, Mark arrived to go into the restaurant business. He brought his outfit from Renown, Sask., where he operated a restaurant as well as a pool room. In 1962 the rent for Mark's cafe was almost six times the original fee, the interior had been renovated once, and where Doctor Garnet Kearney and V.B. Szilagyl once practiced medicine and dentistry upstairs, there was the living quarters for Mark and his nephew's family.
Mark Wah was born the son of a fairly prosperous farmer in Kwangtung province, China. He had two sisters and two brothers. He emigrated to Canada in 1910 in order to make a living, and he started out flunkeying on railroad construction. He was 23 when he came to Canada. After seven years he returned home to the bride his family had selected for him, and he remained a year - long enough to see his first son, a thriving young bundle.
"In China, all is the wisdom of tradition," said Ike Sing, a prosperous merchant, who visited Mark and acted as interpreter during the 1962 interview for the Alaska Highway News. Ike was kin to the promising young Chinese Member of Parliament from Vancouver Centre (1962), and had been for some years a fur buyer in the Chilcotin District of the Cariboo.
"Mark relied on his parents' choice as far as a wife was concerned. It was important that she be of the proper blood lines. This is necessary in China for the simple reason that in density of population there is a danger of marriages within close degrees of kindred, which always weaken the offspring. Mark did not see his wife until he beheld her in crimson silk nuptial robes. In China, marriage is built on respect, not sex. And love comes later."
three trips home to China and Mark had three children. The eldest was educated by his father to university graduation in the old country, and became a doctor educated by his father to university graduation in the old country, and became a doctor of medicine. Mark wished his son to come to Canada. With the help of the late George M. Murray, MP, the son eventually came, attended Mount Allison University in New Brunswick, and decided to switch from medicine to chemical engineering, in which profession he practice in Ontario.
In order to send the money home to keep his wife comfortable and educate his three children, Mark Wah worked hard. In those days a T-Bone steak, French fries, pie, and coffee with soup thrown in cost $.75. Pork liver was $.25 with the same trimmings. A man could eat a filling meal for $.15. Mark cooked, purchased supplies, typed the English menu, and kept his accounts by himself. He hired young ladies of the district to wait on tables for his establishment during rush hours. Some of the respected matrons of the district earned their first pin money from old Mark Wah.
Were the settlers stuck in the mud for days, and long overdue at Fort St. John? A rap on Mark's door would bring the patient old restaurateur down the rickety outside steps to kindle the fire, and get a meal ready, at two or three in the morning.
Could the settlers pay for the meal, or could they sign a chit against the future? Mark gave plenty of jawbone, as did everyone else in that era in the North Peace. Once he received a cheque from a Canadian soldier serving overseas in Germany who remembered an old debt with the kindly little Chinaman. Many of the old conscience account were settled with a cheque and a note through the mail. But many thousands of dollars of meals and grubstakes were never collected.
"I hep people...he hungly!" said Mark simply. Was anyone ever born in Mark's Cafe? No, but darned near it, as they waited for the doctor upstairs, sat on a stool, and regarded uncomfortably an untouched cup of tea or coffee. Did anyone ever die in Mark's Cafe? Temporarily from drink perhaps. But only once did this happen.
"Bleed Gel. Beby cly cly cly.....then stop cly. Baby die. Then bleed gel cly.....ooh ooh ooh". Mark could still see it. The booth by the door. The doctor busy at the hospital...the breed girl hungry.....the baby suddenly still in its blanket, dead.
Mark worked alone in his cafe until 1943, when he sent for his cousin "George". The townspeople called him this, but his real name was Wing Mark. "George was a jolly fellow, in spite of bad leg circulation, which hospitalized him occasionally. The Americans had arrived to build the Alaska Highway, and Mark's place was a noisy heaving, jostling, emporium of food. The soldiers played jokes on him, they kidded him, they walked out without paying, and came back and paid double. They shot crap on the floor, sang songs in the booths, and occasionally roughed the premises up a little bit. But the military police were always within call if the situation got beyond the diminutive proprietor.
In the thirties and until after the war, the town was lighted by Bowes & Herron power plant. People recall that the lights burned until bedtime - the hour of darkness being fixed by the proprietors, usually midnight unless some celebration was going on. This was a morning job, along with cutting up the butter, filling the ketchup bottles, replenishing the condiments, and typing the day's menu in English.
The last duty was the trickiest of all for a Chinese restaurant man of Mark's vintage. He neither read nor wrote English, but the line that indicates the day's dinner soup is traditionally spelled out "Soup du jour", and that is how it goes on the menu, painstakingly typed on a keyboard whose combinations were an unknown factor except as they appeared on the menu. There was wood to be bucked, and stoves to be kept full, the mud to be shoveled out, and the floor to be mopped.
Mark finally closed his door at eight in the evening and worked on the next day's preparations until almost midnight, before grabbing a little sleep. Finally, George had to give up. Eventually he went home to Hong Kong. It was arranged that his son would succeed him, and in time take over the business.
In the meantime, money went home regularly to China to care for "Mrs. Mark". She had never cared to come to Canada, but had been content with her children, and grandchildren, and the life that she and many of her sisters in similar circumstances have made for themselves. Mark didn't know his children, but was content in the knowledge that he had provided richly for them.
In place of a devoted family of his own, he had Mark Lang, an old partner's son. Lang and his wife were good to Mark, showing him respect and deference that would be the envy of many an elderly member of the white race. The little girl Jing, and bright-eyed young Wey, Lang's children, walked down the street with the old gentleman by the hand. They sat on his knee, and he told them stories, admonished them when necessary and enjoyed them fully. When Mark agreed to the 1962 interview, he wished to underline the occasion by a festive dinner. Lang prepared a connoisseur's meal for the old man's guests. This started with a delicious eel soup, and progressed through various more commonly enjoyed Chinese dishes. When the conversation got too far from Centre Avenue, Fort St. John, Mr. Sing interpreted. Mark understands every word said to him, but his interviewer had difficulty understanding all his answers.
Would Mark Wah have liked to go to China to end his years? No, he would not. He would like to be buried right here in Fort St. John.
What would add to his happiness? A trip to see his engineer son? A trip to see China again?
The greatest honour he wanted, he said, was to be known as a pioneer and a builder of this great Northern Canada. After that, he would have been happy to see a little better. His eyesight was almost gone.
"Let up drink a toast to Mark", said one of the guests, "as truly a builder of the country as the homesteader, the trapper, or the freighter."
"Now," said Mark, "I will toast - in Chinese." He lifted his glass. "Hing Toy", said Mark Wah. "Everybody happy." Everybody was. Especially Mark.
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