-- From 1857 to the Present --
Allen Choy & Sons is a first generation diversified family business of restaurants, refrigeration, HVAC, appliance and geothermal sales and service, petroleum sales, agricultural land and cattle production.
1857 California Gold Rush: Choy Yet Jak (Great, Great, Great, Great, Grandfather)
(Allen's Great Grandfather)
As the first known Choy of our family, the great land owner and trader Choy Yet Jak arrived in San Francisco in 1857 during the end of the California Gold Rush of 1849 on a slow junk from China to seek his fortune. It took an arduous 6 months of sea travel each way as the junk blew back to Japan to start the journey over again.
Beginning work as a miner, he bought a donkey to trade gold, gloves and mining supplies before returning to China as gold prospecting ran out.
Choy Yet Jak never returned to North America again, but instead hired the strongest bamboo spear-thrower to stake land in the Chinese land competition process, eventually buying and acquiring over 13 sections of land in the area of Noygu.
1910 Humble Beginnings: Henry Choy (Allen's Father)
Our operations begin with humble background. Choy Yet Jak’s grandson, Henry Choy (Allen’s father) arrived in Canada as a railroader in 1910 after taking the mandatory swim in a disinfectant pool in Hong Kong and paying the $500 ($16,500CAD 2022) Canadian Head Tax (The Chinese Immigration Act 1885). After saving his earnings from railroading, Henry worked at the Exchange Cafe on Main Street Winnipeg as a cook. Eventually, with cousins, Henry opened a restaurant in 1930s Winnipeg that served the destitute cashing in their depression years food vouchers.
With exclusion rules (The Chinese Immigration Act, 1923-1947) preventing his wife from coming into Canada, Henry returned to China just before World War II to visit his wife and family and to start the process of bringing his son Allen to Canada. This was the first time Allen met his father and, unfortunately during that terrible time of war and Japanese invasion, Henry’s wife and young daughter died in China. Henry returned to Canada after the War, leaving Allen in China just as the Maoism movement of 1949 redistributed his grandfather’s land holdings away from private ownership. In returning to Canada, Henry ran restaurants above a department store in Montreal, but after two mysterious fires which destroyed his businesses and the department stores below, Henry departed for Manitoba to the small towns of Newdale, Langruth, Griswold, and Strathclair. (Department of the Interior document researched by Stephanie Buri Choy MA and submitted by Hant and Dawn Choy)
Allen and Judy and Family: From War-Torn China to Prairie Establishment
Restaurants, Retail, Service, Petroleum and Agriculture
Allen witnessed great starvation and loss in China during War II as a child, where Allen’s mother and sister died during the invasion. After the War, as Maoism/Communism spread in China in post World War II late 1940s, Choy Yet Jak’s empire of land holdings disappeared with redistribution. Allen then moved to Hong Kong to seek a better life where he worked as an electrician while his father Henry Choy remained in Canada.
In 1951, Allen arrived on a freighter to San Francisco and took a guarded train to Alberta before arriving in Manitoba. He worked for cousins and relatives including Dick Choy in Welwyn, Saskatchewan while learning English and life in Canada before purchasing his father’s restaurant in Strathclair in the late 1950s.
Once called the “Boston Cafe” (many cafes of the early era were named after large American and European cities), Allen renamed the restaurant to “Allen and Judy’s Cafe” with his new wife Judy who arrived from China nearly ten years later.
From poverty, Allen and Judy converted the old 7-UP and Orange Crush steel-sign-clad former horse barn into a restaurant. They made improvements to the barn, raising it’s sloping floor and adding lights from it’s dim 1 lightbulb setting. The arrival of waterworks in the early 1960s finally ended hand pumping and carrying water from the CPR station a 1/4 of a mile away.
They worked long hours and days serving Chinese dishes that Allen introduced into the menu along with common Canadian sandwiches and meals. Unlike traditional Chinese food of the Cantonese area of southern China, “Canadianized” or “North Americanized” Chinese food evolved from the early railroad cooks who prepared meals with leftovers for themselves as Henry cooked. Engineers, curiously seeking a better palate, tested, appreciated and requested the hasty preparations for themselves, subsequently introducing North America to the modern Chinese menu.
The "Boston Cafe" to Become
"Allen and Judys Cafe"
Allen
Of interest, few restaurants on the Canadian prairies actually served Chinese meals up until this time. Egg and ham sandwiches and liver and onions were common then along with King Oscar sardines on toast. Allen, in just experiencing fast paced and worldly Hong Kong, believed introducing Chinese food as a specialty along with the simple western plates of the time would evolve on the prairies. He taught the preparation to restaurants his cousins owned. Su Choy, of neighboring Newdale’s “Paris Cafe” was just one of them (see Bill and Su-On Hillman’s comprehensive site: http://www.hillmanweb.com/). His father Henry agreed and later with his new wife, Judy, served thousands of sweet and sour, chop suey and chow mein dishes as favourites among locals and travelers.
Judy and Allen
Judy and Allen in front of the "Boston Cafe"
Judy and Allen
Retail and Service
Now a family of six boys in Strathclair, Allen and Judy opened a sporting goods and television-appliance store adjoined to the restaurant named C+E Supplies with their friends Bob and Margaret English (Choy & English). Panasonic and Quasar televisions were sold with Inglis, Whirlpool and Speed Queen appliances. Sporting goods including baseball, hockey, cycling, fishing equipment and rifles and munitions were sold too. CCM, Sekine, Remington and Baretta were popular brands. Peterborough boats, Arctic Cat snowmobiles, Honda motorcycles and Toro lawnmowers were brand name products also sold in little Strathclair. Televisions, electronics and appliances were continuously repaired both in-shop and on the road covering a wide area of western Manitoba.
During this time, Allen and Judy adjoined the former red brick Royal Bank/Louis Molgat building to the restaurant to become the “Teen Centre” complete with a juke box, arcade machines, a pool table and shuffle board. Open daily, generations of teenagers enjoyed meeting and dancing under the multi-coloured florescent lights. Many met their first dates and future partners there.
C&E Supplies: Bob and Margaret English
Judy and Allen
Allen's Cafe and C&E Supplies 1980s
Restart in Shoal Lake
In 1993, the Strathclair restaurant-retail-service operation burned to the ground with cousins barely escaping. Bill Lewycky, businessman, mayor and long time friend of Allen’s of the neighboring town of Shoal Lake ten miles (16KM) west offered his hardware store. Renovations created a new restaurant adjoined to a retail-service store again. Judy managed the restaurant and banquet room while the retail appliance half expanded into refrigeration, air conditioning and geothermal repairs covering a large area from Moosomin and eastern Saskatchewan to Minitonas to the north.
Family Immigration and Sister Restaurants
It was during the 1980s and 1990s that the Choy family helped immigrate more family from China to experience the wonderful opportunities Canada offered. These families learned the restaurant business and, with the guidance and support of Allen and Judy and family, opened sister restaurants in Boissevain (“Choy’s”), Rossburn (“Choy’s”), Brandon (“Double Happiness”) and Esterhazy (“Mei’s”). Others the Allen Choy family helped immigrate over this time continue businesses in Toronto, Calgary, Edmonton and Winnipeg.
Restaurant and Petroleum
In 2000, the Choy’s opened Choy’s Restaurant and Service along Yellowhead Highway 16 in Binscarth, Manitoba. This new venture of petroleum sales and confectionary with a restaurant continues to serve a wide area of communities including Foxwarren, St. Lazare, Birtle, Gambler First Nation, Weyweyseecapo First Nation, Russell and truckers and travellers along Yellowhead Highway 16.
Agriculture - First Generation Farmers - Land and Cattle
Somewhat out of the ordinary and remarkable, in the mid-1970s the Choy’s began farming. The local Federated Co-op pressured to sell and service similar products and services sold through C+E Supplies with threats to build a new restaurant in Strathclair. Coincidentally, venturing into farming started with this background and a kick-start from three supporting individuals who ate in the restaurant: Elmer Shmyr offered to sell his 1/2 section of land north of Strathclair while friend Gordon McInnis of Farm Credit Corporation (FCC) offered a loan. Old-timer “Grandpa Cap” Ed Glenn offered to teach Allen and the boys how to farm. Walter Hachkowski shared his knowledge of mechanics. Soon, friend Lorne Wilson worked and taught Allen and the boys farming to eventually live at the farm full-time.
Beginning with the 1/2 section of grain land from Mr. Shmyr, the farm took on “pioneering-like” roots using 1920s equipment. The McCormick Deering steel wheeled seed drill (converted from horse-drawn) and antique W-30 hand start tractor were the first pieces of equipment used. Antique John Deere “B”, “D”, “G”, “R” and 820 tractors were later added and put to use, not as antiques, but as main equipment.
There was considerable banter on the Choy operation by many local “not-well-wishers”. Pranksters flattened tires, drained water onto good land and even shot and killed a prized Simmental bull while equipment was often vandalized or stolen. One neighbor demanded Allen “go back to the kitchen where you belong” to which Allen responded, “someday I’ll be farming right beside you” and to which the farmer responded “it’ll be the day I die when you farm beside me“: he died as a neighbor(!)
The bare land grain operation expanded with it’s first purchase of seven Simmental cattle from the hockey player Bobby Hull in the late 1970s. Over the years, the herd built up with a mixture of Herefords and other breeds to peak at 650 head including a feedlot and pure-bred operation under the registered brand name of North Salt Lake Farms.
The Choy’s currently focus on grain, growing canola and wheat on now just under 7,000 acres (10+ sections) of Newdale clay loam between Hamiota, Shoal Lake, Strathclair and Elphinstone.
Allen and Strathclair Blues Sr. Hockey Team 1975
Back Row: Allen Choy, Calvin Martin, Barry Miller, Vernon Franks, Reggie Moffat, Drillon Beaton, Gilles Vermette, John Gill, Glennis Rothnie, Rob Willis
Front Row: Barry Coutts, Jim Geekie, Blaine Martin, Dennis Memryk, Norman Jack, Ken MacDonald, Larry Memryk
The Choy family has been very community involved with Allen managing the Strathclair Stampeders and Blues senior hockey team and midget baseball. Many events were held, including Valentine dine and dances, summer camping at Lake Audy, turkey shoots, snowmobile poker derbies and exchange games with North Dakota. Many friends and some former NHL players continue to visit and hunt with Allen.
In 2017, Judy suddenly passed away. Her dedication to her family and community is forever remembered.
The Choy’s thank their customers and friends over the years and appreciate the opportunity Canada has offered this first generation enterprise.