Right, Left and Centre: THe Politics of Some Canadians by Dave Jaffe. Chapter 39, Part Three; The Lady Who Was A Paranoid.

    The Lady Was A Paranoid: Part Three by Dave Jaffe.


           In the 1970's, Irene went back to school. She took education courses and learned how to be a teacher's aide in a primary school. She ended up working in a school on Vancouver's east side. These were the happiest days of Irene's life. She lived in her own house, earned a decent wage and took many journeys across North America with Arthur.
    Yet in the late 1980's Arthur became ill and started to become frail. Soon he retired from his delivery job and Irene retired to as she took care of her ailing husband. Arthur was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer and passed away in the early 1990's. Irene was now alone. Arthur's death hit her hard. Of course, Irene remained in touch with her two sisters and two brothers, one of whom died. Yet she resented her family.
     "I helped raise them," she said. "Yet they never thanked me." Whether this was true or not, Irene disliked some of her nieces and nephews too. They would ask Irene to come to their homes and see their children. Then they'd go out and leave her to take care of the kids. "They'd come back after a few hours and wouldn't pay me any money for babysitting their children," Irene said.
    Irene Wong ended up focusing on the way she'd been used and abused during her lifetime. These feelings soon blew up into full scale paranoia. She directed this paranoia at one of her sisters and her last remaining brother. "They want me dead," she told people. Yet this wasn't true.
      Irene had no time for politics. She remembered too many white politicians who had denounced the Chinese in the 1930's and 1940's. Also she faced racism, she said. One Jewish man told her that in every month in his adult life, someone said or did something against Jews. Irene smiled. "I go out every day," she said, "and I know that someone will put me down just for being Chinese."
      Wong's family feared any people getting too close to their sister. They drove away an ageing white man who befriended Irene. "They think you want my house," she said to the man who denied this. he left her life and never came near her again. In her early 80's, Irene's sisters and brother put her  in a long term care place. She shared a small room with a woman in her 90's who grew up in the smelter town of Trail. Irene helped take care of this woman.
   Irene Wong died in the 21st century, probably in 2015. Her small house was later torn down to make way for a much bigger house. The new owners paid over two million dollars for this house. In this area there are many people of Chinese origin. And the only people who come around the area wanting home owners to leave their residences are doing this not because they dislike Asian Canadians. They just want to buy the house and maybe sell it for a higher price.