Family and Early Life
Clarkson's ancestry lies with the Hakka in Taishan, Guangdong, China, from where her paternal grandfather (伍培 Pinyin: Wǔ Péi) emigrated in the late 19th century to Chiltern, Australia. There, he operated a general store called Willie Ah Poy Fruitier and Confectioner, Ah Poy being his name in the vocative, based on the Taishanese pronunciation, and what Australian immigration officials heard Poy enunciate in response to their request for his name. Poy's first son, William (伍英才 Pinyin: Wǔ Yīngcái), was born in Victoria but was later sent back to Taishan, from where he made his way to Hong Kong. There, he worked with his father for the Canadian government and met and married Ethel Poy, with whom he had two children: Neville, born October 29, 1935, and Adrienne, born February 10, 1939. The elder went on to become a plastic surgeon in Toronto and married Vivienne Poy, who herself became a Senator.
Clarkson describes one of her earliest memories as that of hiding in several Hong Kong basements during the Japanese invasion of the territory in 1941. It was only through his Canadian government connections that her father gained his family the opportunity in 1942 to flee the occupation to Canada, as part of the repatriating of Canadian government staff from the fallen city. Even so, the Chinese Immigration Act, 1923, prevented the Poys' immediate entry into the country until the Department of External Affairs intervened and cited an unfilled quota in the prisoner of war exchange programme with the Japanese Imperial Forces that would permit the Poy family free passage into Canada. The family settled in Ottawa, though William had lost almost all of his substantial fortune, and the Poys lived in a cramped duplex. Clarkson attended public school in the city and, in October 1951, was lined up with her class to see Princess Elizabeth, Duchess of Edinburgh (later Queen Elizabeth II), as the royal motorcade passed through the city.
Read more about this topic: Adrienne Clarkson
Famous quotes containing the words early life, family, early and/or life:
“... business training in early life should not be regarded solely as insurance against destitution in the case of an emergency. For from business experience women can gain, too, knowledge of the world and of human beings, which should be of immeasurable value to their marriage careers. Self-discipline, co-operation, adaptability, efficiency, economic management,—if she learns these in her business life she is liable for many less heartbreaks and disappointments in her married life.”
—Hortense Odlum (1892–?)
“Freud is all nonsense; the secret of neurosis is to be found in the family battle of wills to see who can refuse longest to help with the dishes. The sink is the great symbol of the bloodiness of family life.”
—Julian Mitchell (20th century)
“But she is early up and out,
To trim the year or strip its bones;”
—Edna St. Vincent Millay (1892–1950)
“The man Shelley, in very truth, is not entirely sane, and Shelley’s poetry is not entirely sane either. The Shelley of actual life is a vision of beauty and radiance, indeed, but availing nothing, effecting nothing. And in poetry, no less than in life, he is “a beautiful and ineffectual angel, beating in the void his luminous wings in vain.””
—Matthew Arnold (1822–1888)